A Practitioners Guide to GitOps - Introduction, Principles and Implementation

Stop fighting configuration drift. This guide shows how GitOps treats infrastructure as code, using a declarative state in Git for automated, reliable delivery.

#1about 3 minutes

The limitations of imperative configuration commands

Imperative commands are difficult to manage because they require correct execution order, are hard to script, and can become outdated.

#2about 2 minutes

Shifting from imperative to declarative configuration

Declarative configuration allows you to describe the desired state in a readable format like YAML, while controllers handle the implementation details.

#3about 4 minutes

Challenges of manually applying declarative configurations

Manually applying configurations with tools like kubectl apply can lead to configuration drift, security risks, and deploying untested changes.

#4about 4 minutes

Understanding the four core principles of GitOps

GitOps is built on four principles: a declaratively expressed desired state, automated pulling of configuration, immutable version history, and continuous reconciliation.

#5about 7 minutes

How the GitOps controller pattern works

A GitOps controller continuously compares the desired state in a Git repository with the current system state and applies changes to reconcile any differences.

#6about 5 minutes

Introducing Keptn for application lifecycle management

Keptn is a CNCF sandbox project that acts as a control plane for application delivery, quality gates, and remediation, making it a candidate for a GitOps approach.

#7about 7 minutes

A practical demonstration of GitOps with Keptn

A live demo shows how Keptn uses custom resource definitions (CRDs) and an operator to manage projects, services, and deployments from a Git repository.

#8about 3 minutes

Recap and call for community contributions

The GitOps implementation for Keptn is a work in progress, and community contributions for new ideas and code are welcome.

#9about 9 minutes

Q&A on career, Dynatrace, and Keptn specifics

The speaker discusses their career path from systems administrator to cloud automation, working at Dynatrace, and how Keptn compares to tools like Argo CD.