GitOpsCon North America 2021

The great values of GitOps such as commit history for change audit and code reviews / approvals are underpinned by declarative configurations. Both Argo CD and Flux support not just simple Kubernetes YAML definitions, but also Helm Charts and Kustomize. They allow templating and some basic computation for generating manifests, but how declarative are they "to humans"? Any changes to a Git repository can have a significant impact on GitOps platform setup, and code reviews play a significant role for ensuring correctness. Even if changes are carefully made and reviewed, you can still end up with unwanted changes when templates such as Helm and/or Kustomize are used. They are great at managing large and complex configurations, but can be confusing or unclear to humans. This talk takes a closer look at the common pitfalls of using Helm and Kustomize with GitOps, how to tackle them using additional tools, and a potential alternative approach using a new tool called "Importer".

Implementing a GitOps based strategy brings a wealth of benefits including automation and conformance, each of which increases the overall security posture of any software and infrastructure delivery lifecycle. But, how do you ensure that you have fully taken advantage of all of the available options to provide the most secure GitOps environment?  In this session, attendees will learn the role security plays in a GitOps environment and the areas that can be configured to properly enforce appropriate security controls common to organizations big and small including:  

* Git repositories
* Static code analysis of manifests
* Ensuring appropriate rights in a Kubernetes environment
* Taking advantage of GitOps tools configurations
* Operating in a multitenant environment