The benefits of GitOps workflows

GitOps is an operational framework applying DevOps best practices to infrastructure automation. Teams using GitOps workflows experience benefits across the entire development lifecycle.

The approach uses Git as the single source of truth for both application code and infrastructure configuration.

A simplified toolchain reduces attack surfaces, since teams use a single platform for infrastructure management.

If an attack does occur, teams can revert to a desired state using the version control system. As a result, GitOps reduces downtime and outages, while enabling teams to continue development in an uncompromised environment.

Teams that must follow strict compliance often experience decreased collaboration in heavily regulated contexts, where policy often limits the number of people who can enact changes to a production environment. With GitOps, however, anyone can propose a change via a merge request, which widens the scope of collaboration while limiting the number of people with the ability to merge to the production branch.

When teams adopt a GitOps workflow, they experience greater access control, because changes are automated using CI/CD tooling, eliminating the need to provide access credentials to all infrastructure components. GitOps empowers everyone to contribute, but greater collaboration accompanies a need to maintain a running history of all changes. GitOps ensures that all commits on the main branch act as a change log for auditing.

GitOps incorporates software development best practices for infrastructure as code, Git workflows, and CI/CD pipelines.

Operations teams already have these pre-existing skills, knowledge, and toolchain requirements, so the decision to adopt GitOps won't result in a significant learning curve. GitOps workflows simplify processes to enhance visibility, create a single source of truth, and maintain a lean set of tools.

How does GitOps create visibility?

A GitOps workflow offers visibility and enhances collaboration, since teams use a Git version control system and merge requests as the mechanism for every infrastructure change. Every update goes through the same review and approval process, and teams can collaborate by sharing ideas, reviewing code, and offering feedback.

How do merge requests facilitate collaboration?

Teams collaborate by sharing ideas, reviewing code, and offering feedback through merge requests. This standardised process applies equally to application code and infrastructure changes.

Does GitOps require new skills?

GitOps leverages pre-existing knowledge and toolchain requirements. Teams already familiar with Git workflows and CI/CD can adopt GitOps without significant retraining.

CI/CD tooling and continuous deployment increase productivity. Teams benefit from automation and focus on development rather than tedious manual tasks.

How does GitOps reduce cost?

Infrastructure automation improves productivity and reduces downtime while facilitating better cloud resource management. Efficient resource usage directly decreases operational costs.

Can developers use their preferred tools?

GitOps workflows improve the developer experience since team members can use whichever language and tools they'd like before pushing updates to Git.

How does GitOps lower the barrier to entry?

New hires and tenured team members become productive quickly. Infrastructure automation removes complexity, enabling anyone to contribute effectively without extensive onboarding.

How do roll back capabilities reduce downtime costs?

Built-in revert and rollback capabilities reduce downtime when issues occur. Fast recovery minimises the business impact of deployment problems. which can also decrease costs.

Teams have an easier time pushing a minimum viable change, since GitOps enables faster and more frequent deployments.

Using GitOps best practices, teams can ship several times a day and revert changes if there is a problem. High velocity deployments lead to more rapid releases, helping teams deliver business and customer value.

How does GitOps improve Agility?

Continuous integration makes teams more agile and responsive to customer needs. Faster iteration cycles mean faster response to changing requirements.

Infrastructure is codified and repeatable, reducing human error. Merge requests facilitate code reviews and collaboration, and they also help teams identify and correct errors before they make it to production.

How does GitOps reduce risk?

Since all changes to infrastructure are tracked through merge requests, and changes can be rolled back to a previous state if an iteration doesn't work out well.

Git workflows reduce recovery time by enabling rollbacks to a more stable state and offering distributed backup copies in the event of a serious outage. GitOps empowers teams to iterate faster to ship new features without the fear of causing an unstable environment.