GitOps and Continuous Deployment at Scale

GitOps uses Git as the single source of truth for infrastructure and applications. We deployed GitOps across 50+ microservices—here's what we learned.

What is GitOps?

GitOps means: 1) Declarative infrastructure (YAML manifests), 2) Git as source of truth, 3) Automated sync from Git to cluster, 4) Continuous reconciliation to match desired state.

Tools: ArgoCD vs Flux

**ArgoCD** provides a powerful UI for visualizing deployments, easy rollbacks, and detailed app health. Great for teams that want visibility and manual approval gates.

**Flux** is more CLI-driven and integrates deeply with Git workflows (GitOps Toolkit). Better for fully automated CD with minimal UI needs.

We chose ArgoCD for application deployments (developers love the UI) and Flux for infrastructure automation.

Implementation

1. **Structure Git repos**: Separate repos for app code, Kubernetes manifests, and infrastructure definitions. 2. **Environment branches**: main = production, staging = staging environment. Pull requests trigger previews. 3. **Application definitions**: ArgoCD Application resources point to Git repos and sync automatically. 4. **Image updates**: Renovate bot creates PRs when new images are available.

Security

Never commit secrets—use Sealed Secrets or External Secrets Operator. Enforce branch protection with required reviews. Use RBAC to limit who can merge to production branches.

Benefits

Deployment time dropped from 30 minutes (manual kubectl) to 2 minutes (git push). Full audit trail of all changes. Easy rollbacks (git revert). Disaster recovery simplified—rebuild entire cluster from Git.

Challenges

Learning curve for teams new to GitOps. Need good Git hygiene. Initial setup takes time but pays off quickly.

GitOps transformed our deployment process from scary manual operations to confident, auditable, automated releases.