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What is GitOps?
GitOps brings reliability, security, and speed to deployments by enabling fast rollbacks, improving collaboration, and ensuring consistency across environments. Read on to discover why GitOps is ideal for cloud-native and Kubernetes-based architectures and how your organization can stay safe from cyber threats.
What is GitOps?
GitOps is a modern DevOps practice that applies the principles of version control, collaboration, and automation to infrastructure management, allowing teams to manage environments the same way they manage code — through pull requests, code reviews, and automated pipelines.
GitOps enables faster, safer, and more auditable infrastructure changes by syncing the state of your systems directly from your Git repositories using automation tools like Argo CD or Flux.
GitOps vs. Traditional Infrastructure Management
GitOps enforces infrastructure as code (IaC) principles, empowering teams to manage both apps and infra with software development best practices.
Why GitOps Matters
- Improves operational consistency: Automating deployments reduces human error.
- Enhances developer autonomy: Developers can deploy code using pull requests without direct infrastructure access.
- Enables fast, safe rollbacks: Every change is version-controlled and traceable.
- Supports cloud-native architectures: Especially powerful in Kubernetes environments.
- Drives compliance and auditability: Git logs provide a transparent trail of all changes.
GitOps helps bridge the gap between development and operations by delivering continuous delivery with strong governance.
How GitOps Works
- Declarative Configuration
Infrastructure and application states are defined in code (YAML, Helm, etc.). - Version Control via Git
All configuration is stored in a Git repository, which serves as the single source of truth. - Automated Syncing
A GitOps operator (like Argo CD or Flux) watches the Git repo and continuously applies the declared state to the live environment. - Pull Requests as Change Mechanisms
All infrastructure changes go through Git pull requests, enabling collaboration, approval, and automated CI/CD validation.
Common GitOps Tools
- Argo CD: A Kubernetes-native continuous delivery tool that pulls changes from Git.
- Flux: A set of GitOps components for Kubernetes, originally developed by Weaveworks.
- Terraform + Git: Used in GitOps workflows to manage cloud infrastructure declaratively.
- Helm: For packaging Kubernetes applications as declarative charts.
- Kustomize: To simplify configuration overlays in GitOps deployments.
GitOps Use Cases
- Kubernetes environment management
- Multi-cluster orchestration
- Disaster recovery with Git-based state rehydration
- Policy enforcement and compliance tracking
- Secure, auditable CI/CD for regulated industries
FAQs
1. Is GitOps only for Kubernetes?
No. While GitOps originated in Kubernetes, its principles apply to any system where infrastructure can be defined declaratively and deployed via automation.
2. How does GitOps improve security?
By removing direct access to production and enforcing all changes through Git workflows, GitOps limits privilege and improves auditability.
3. What’s the difference between GitOps and DevOps?
GitOps is a way to implement DevOps using Git as the source of truth, with a focus on infrastructure automation and governance.
How Illumio Supports GitOps Security
As organizations adopt GitOps to streamline application and infrastructure delivery, securing the environments these pipelines touch becomes critical. Illumio helps reduce risk by containing lateral movement across Kubernetes clusters, cloud instances, and production environments tied into GitOps workflows.
By pairing Git-driven automation with Illumio’s real-time visibility and segmentation, teams can maintain strong security boundaries — even as infrastructure continuously evolves.
Conclusion
GitOps transforms the way infrastructure is managed by applying software development practices like version control, collaboration, and automation to operations. By using Git as the central control plane and combining it with automated deployment tools, organizations gain greater speed, security, and stability across their environments.