Gitops vs DevOps: What is The Difference

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Jul 24, 2024

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As the popularity of cloud-native technologies continues to grow, many new concepts are emerging, enabling businesses to quickly produce high-quality software. DevOps and GitOps are two common practices, and there has always been a debate about Gitops Vs Devops. Despite being linked, these differ in many respects, and this read covers all those grounds. 

What is DevOps?

In simple words, the collaboration of software development and operations teams in working towards a single objective is known as DevOps. As a result, people frequently possess experience in development and operations instead of rigorously defined segregated positions. However, DevOps prioritise the culture of cooperation, automation, and continuous improvement.

The improved communication and integrated processes by DevOps can result in quicker software releases and more reliable deployments. So, any firm trying to streamline its development processes, whether in technology or another industry, can use the DevOps concepts. 

What is GitOps?

A specific System Operations (ops) procedure linked to a particular tool is called GitOps (Git). It is an evolution of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and a DevOps best practice that uses Git as the only source of truth and is also regarded as the control mechanism for creating, updating, and deleting system architecture. In other words, GitOps automatically verifies and deploys changes to system infrastructure using Git pull requests.

Difference - Devops Vs Gitops

DevOps vs GitOps: Approach

DevOps works on building a collaborative environment between developers and operations teams, along with automating and integrating the processes between them. It is a philosophy based on how a team should operate, irrespective of what tools they use. In other words, it aims to develop team empowerment, cross-team communication, collaboration, and technology automation, which helps in speeding up development since DevOps bridges the gap between developers and operations teams. A team that has undergone sufficient DevOps training can adopt reasonable practices that can be generally implemented in every process within an organisation.

However, GitOps, unlike DevOps, uses a particular tool, Git, as its source control system. GitOps is a method for performing continuous deployment, particularly for Kubernetes-based deployments of cloud-based applications. When running an environment using tools utilised by developers, such as Git and Continuous Deployment tools, GitOps emphasises a developer-centric experience and is goal-oriented. It uses Git to pull requests to validate and automatically deploy system infrastructure changes to move the organisation closer to its goal. This makes it easier to roll back changes wherever necessary because teams can trace all changes to their codebase in a single location. Moreover, GitOps also makes it simple for teams to automate their deployment procedure, which can hasten development even further.

DevOps vs GitOps: Main Tool

One of the critical distinctions between DevOps and GitOps is the primary tool used in each. 

One may use different CI/CD pipelines with DevOps without being restricted to a single tool. However, DevOps primarily utilises a tool named Jenkins for continuous integration and delivery. An organisation providing DevOps training can easily prepare the team for using such tools. On the other hand, GitOps uses the well-known version control system Git, which helps manage all the files and configurations and collaborate with various team members. 

Though both tools can handle code changes, Git provides more flexibility in branching and merging code, offering a wider variety of third-party integrations. Furthermore, it's crucial to remember that DevOps and GitOps are ultimate approaches rather than particular tools. Therefore, they can both still make use of a variety of other tools outside just Jenkins or Git. Hence, the ideal strategy and tool combination will ultimately depend on the individual requirements and objectives of a given team or organisation.

DevOps vs GitOps: Other tools

Another difference is the consideration of the additional tools utilised in both GitOps and DevOps. Jenkins, Ansible, and Chef are just a few examples of automation tools that are frequently used in combination with DevOps workflows. DevOps can be used with various tools, including supply chain management and cloud configuration as code. Apart from these, other notable categories of tools utilised in DevOps are:

  • Deployment Tools
  • CI/CD Tools
  • Container Management Tools
  • Infrastructure Configuration Tools
  • Tools for Code and Artefact

On the other side, GitOps is focused on using Git as the only source of truth for all system updates. Apart from Git, Kubernetes can be used for implementing changes. GitOps can also be used with various CI/CD pipelines and also uses other tools, including:

  • Flux CD
  • Argo CD
  • Jenkins X
  • WKSctl
  • Gitkube
  • Helm Operator
  • Quay, etc.

DevOps vs GitOps: Main Goal

Both GitOps and DevOps share the same primary goal when it comes to organising and managing a software development team, which is to foster efficiency and collaboration. However, the two strategies use different approaches to achieving this objective.

DevOps aims to reduce human intervention through automation and regular deployments, whereas GitOps speeds up development and reduces the amount of reliance on lengthy scripts. Both strategies can lead to effective and efficient software development processes. However, depending on particular roles and preferences, either strategy may be more suitable for a given team or project.

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GitOps vs DevOps: Focus

The primary distinction between DevOps and GitOps is in their respective focuses.

DevOps focuses on fully automating the software development lifecycle. This comprises activities like deployments, monitoring, and code testing.

Contrarily, GitOps adopts a more declarative strategy and focuses on treating infrastructure as code, allowing flexibility and speed while updating the infrastructure.

Also Read: DataOps vs DevOps

GitOps vs DevOps: Use cases

DevOps

  • Online Financial Trading Company: The company deploys the services in under 45 seconds thanks to a DevOps culture.
  • Network cycling: Testing, deployment, and iterative designing become ten times faster using DevOps. When necessary, it can also quickly apply security patches.
  • Car manufacturing industries: The business employees assist manufacturers in quickly identifying defects while scaling production.
  • Airline industries enhanced their code coverage by 85% by switching to continuous testing and deployment.
  • Bug reduction in various organisations: One may reduce bugs by 35% using DevOps. Moreover, product quality and time are beneficial to numerous industries.

Gitops

  • GitOps for Documentation: Product documentation can become more accessible by using GitOps. Therefore, implementing GitOps is a wise decision, given that the document is text-based. Any Virtual Control System (VCS), such as GitHub or Bitbucket, can be used to store ASCII documents.
  • Writing books: Books are based on text, making it simple to align them with a VCS system. The pipeline checks for grammar, spelling, and other issues and converts them into several file formats, including pdf, ePUB, doc, and others.
  • Network slicing: Service providers can split customers and service tiers using GitOps, allowing them to only pay for the bandwidth they actually use.

GitOps vs DevOps: Flexibility

DevOps flexibility is less restricted and more open. It is not constrained to a single system. Hence it gives more freedom in terms of tools and processes.

However, GitOps flexibility is more constrained and less open. GitOps mainly relies on version control tools like Git, which make it simple to track changes and roll back if necessary. However, it also means that the process is constrained to what the version control system can handle.

Also Read: DevOps Vs Full Stack

GitOps vs DevOps: Correctness

Correctness is an essential factor to take into account when comparing GitOps and DevOps.

DevOps's development team is responsible for ensuring that deployments are accurate, even though the operations team may be in charge of managing infrastructure and deploying code.GitOps is designed with correctness in mind. 

However, with GitOps, all deployments are based on declarative configuration files that are kept in Git repositories, enabling automatic verification of accuracy prior to deployment. As a result, 

there is a significantly lower chance of errors occurring, and bad deployments can be more easily rolled back.

GitOps vs DevOps: Accuracy

GitOps and its function are frequently overlooked when considering the DevOps concept. Since Git is used to manage infrastructure and application code, it helps maintain accuracy. Every change is tracked and logged, which makes it easier to roll back changes if something goes wrong or to pinpoint specific updates that may have contributed to a problem. Moreover, updates can be directly sent from the version control system to the production environment, which further simplifies automation. Additionally, teams can operate more quickly and productively, thereby dramatically lowering the possibility of human error. However, traditional DevOps techniques, in contrast, might not have as reliable a tracking system for changes done.

Conclusion

Both GitOps and DevOps are practical approaches for efficiently creating and deploying high-quality software. The addition of GitOps to existing DevOps techniques simplifies experimentation, automates infrastructure deployment, accelerates workflow, and successfully completes mission-critical activities. Hence, it becomes essential to have Devops training to know its implementation. With expert trainers having 20+ years of experience, 6 Months of Certified Project Experience, and a 100% Guarantee, enrol in this Devops Certification Training Course and take your career to a new height.

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