Accelerate Software Lifecycles Through DevOps Automation

GitOps leverages Git as the single source of truth, and requires that the entire system including infrastructure, code, configuration, and policies be defined in repositories. Next, GitOps takes advantage of Git’s built-in version control capabilities to track every single change made to the system, leaving behind a clear audit trail. The automation really kicks in with GitOps tools like Flux that enable ‘pulls’ and ‘merges’ of the code in these repositories to automate deployments to any target production environment. GitOps not only deploys code, but continually checks for drift in the state of the system and alerts on it. When drift is detected, alerts are sent for manual resolution or even automatic rollbacks can be configured. 

GitOps is game changing for the industry. It is a replicable, automated, immutable construct where your change management, everything happens in Git. - Nicolas Chaillan, Chief Software Officer of the U.S. Air Force

Weave GitOps is a platform that establishes automation of the software delivery lifecycle post continuous integration (CI). DevOps teams can build and maintain GitOps pipelines that introduce continuous delivery, stage promotions, progressive delivery and ongoing management of production applications and infrastructure automatically.

Weave GitOps also simplifies the secure Kubernetes lifecycle management of the entire cluster; applying upgrades and security patches as well as any version upgrades and fixes for components and add-ons can be managed from within Git. Error detection and infrastructure evaluation (drift detection) are baked in from the start. Application teams can spin up identical testing environments and experience frictionless deployment processes. Weave GitOps combines the core principles of GitOps and key open source tooling like Flux, Flagger, Prometheus, and Helm in a single unified solution. It comes in two flavors - Weave GitOps, ideal for teams just getting started with GitOps, and Weave GitOps Enterprise for teams that are ready to kick their automation into high gear and want to waste no time doing it.

There are numerous benefits to DevOps automation with GitOps. GitOps adds technical value as well as business value, in that it improves performance against all critical metrics, from speed to security, stability and ultimately, availability. 

• Greater deployment frequency: With no back-and-forth between teams, clearly defined processes, and tool-based automation, on-demand deployments are the order of the day.
• Reduced recovery time from failures: Rollbacks enable reverting to a previous working state after a failure. This means no more extended downtimes.
• Precise operations across teams: The developer initiates a deployment via a pull request, and an operator approves this request with a merge. Both teams need not touch the production cluster, making operations seamless and clear across teams.
• Built-in secure lifecycle management & compliance: Git’s version control, and all code and related artifacts being stored in Git and YAML files make security and compliance built-in to every step of the DevOps process.

Our Whitepaper “GitOps boosts business performance” describes how GitOps impacts the five key DORA (DevOps Research and Assessment group) metrics and correlates directly with business performance. 

Automation is essential for DevOps and application teams to increase speed.  This is primarily because of how easy it is to break things when moving fast. However, with the GitOps approach and the modern  open-source tooling available today, automation need not be daunting.

You can reduce all manual jobs, tasks, and processes as everything is declarative. Processes can be re-run, or resources can be re-created at any time. I guess this is the big, big, big benefit of automation with GitOps. - Florian Heubeck, Principal Engineer, MediaMarktSaturn Technology (read the case study)

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Weave GitOps makes DevOps automation a reality simplifying the management of the entire cluster lifecycle applying upgrades and security patches as well as any version upgrades and fixes for components and add-ons can be managed from within Git. Application teams can spin up identical testing environments and experience frictionless deployment processes, improving the SDLC. Error detection and infrastructure evaluation (drift detection) are baked in from the start. It enables declarative infrastructure, complete pipeline automation, and built-in security guardrails as every change to the system is versioned and audit-ready.  Contact us for a demo today.