GitOps Cookbook

Why are so many companies adopting GitOps for their DevOps and cloud native strategy? This reliable framework is quickly becoming the standard method for deploying apps to Kubernetes. With this practical, developer-oriented book, DevOps engineers, developers, IT architects, and SREs will learn the most useful recipes and examples for following GitOps practices.

Through their years of experience in application modernization, CI/CD, and automation, authors Alex Soto Bueno and Natale Vinto from Red Hat walk you through all the steps necessary for successful hands-on application development and deployment with GitOps. Once you start using the recipes in this book, you’ll have a head start in development cycles on Kubernetes following the GitOps approach.

You’ll learn how to:

• Develop and deploy applications on Kubernetes
• Understand the basics of CI/CD and automation on Kubernetes, and apply GitOps practices to
• implement development cycles on the platform
• Prepare the app for deployment on multiple environments and/or multiple Kubernetes clusters
• Deploy apps for either multiple environments using GitOps and Argo CD, or for Kubernetes clusters
• Create Kubernetes-native pipelines with Tekton
• Provide and extend DevOps skills for the team working on Kubernetes
• Use progressive delivery to put your applications into production

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Introduction

Chapter 2. Requirements

Chapter 3. Containers

Chapter 4. Kustomize

Chapter 5. Helm

Chapter 6. Cloud Native Cl/CD

Chapter 7. Argo CD

Chapter 8. Advanced Topics

From the Preface

We wrote this book for builders. Whether you are a developer, DevOps engineer, site reliability engineer (SRE), or platform engineer dealing with Kubernetes, you are building some good stuff. We would like to share our experience from what we have learned in the field and in the community about the latest Kubernetes automation insights for pipelines and CI/CD workloads. The book contains a comprehensive list of the most popular available software and tools in the Kubernetes and cloud native ecosystem for this purpose. We aim to provide a list of practical recipes that might help your daily job or are worth exploring further. We are not sticking to a particular technology or project for implementing Kubernetes automation. However, we are opinionated on some of our choices to deliver a concise GitOps pathway.

The book is organized in sequential chapters, from the basics to advanced topics in the Kubernetes ecosystem, following the GitOps principles. We hope you’ll find these recipes valuable and inspiring for your projects!

• Chapter 1 is an introduction to GitOps principles and why they are continuously becoming more common and essential for any new IT project.
• Chapter 2 covers the installation requirements to run these recipes in a Kubernetes cluster. Concepts and tools like Git, Container Registry, Container Runtime, and Kubernetes are necessary for this journey.
• Chapter 3 walks you through a complete overview of containers and why they are essential for application development and deployment today. Kubernetes is a container-orchestration platform; however, it doesn’t build containers out of the box. Therefore, we’ll provide a list of practical recipes for making container apps with the most popular tools available in the cloud native community.
• Chapter 4 gives you an overview of Kustomize, a popular tool for managing Kubernetes resources. Kustomize is interoperable, and you find it often used within CI/CD pipelines.
• Chapter 5 explores Helm, a trendy tool to package applications in Kubernetes. Helm is also a templating system that you can use to deploy apps in CI/CD workloads.
• Chapter 6 walks you through cloud native CI/CD systems for Kubernetes. It gives a comprehensive list of recipes for the continuous integration part with Tekton, the Kubernetes-native CI/CD system. Additionally, it also covers other tools such as Drone and GitHub Actions.
• Chapter 7 kicks off the pure GitOps part of the book as it sticks to the Continuous Deployment phase with Argo CD, a popular GitOps tool for Kubernetes.
• Chapter 8 goes into the advanced topics for GitOps with Argo CD, such as secrets management, progressive application delivery, and multicluster deployments. This concludes the most common use cases and architectures you will likely work with today and tomorrow following the GitOps approach.

About the Author

Natale Vinto is a Software Engineer with more than 10 years of expertise on IT and ICT technologies and a consolidated background on telecommunications and Linux operating systems. As a Solution Architect with a Java development background, he spent some years as EMEA Specialist Solution Architect for OpenShift at Red Hat. Today, Natale is a Developer Advocate for OpenShift at Red Hat, helping people within communities and customers have success with their Kubernetes and cloud native strategy.

Alex Soto Bueno is a Director of Developer Experience at Red Hat. He is passionate about the Java world, software automation, and he believes in the open-source software model. Alex is the co-author of Testing Java Microservices, Quarkus Cookbook, Securing Kubernetes Secrets and contributor to several open-source projects. A Java Champion since 2017, he is also an international speaker and teacher at Salle URL University.