GitOps with Dan Garfield

A newsletter that started as a personal learning and getting-in-touch project by Ivan Krnic grew into a sociotechnical newsletter covering topics of technical excellence, organizational improvements, and productivity.

Years ago, we deployed an application to a cluster of several nodes. Deploying the application was easy, but applying the right configuration to all nodes was difficult. One server ended up with an old configuration, and soon problems started. Although we didn’t end up like Knight Capital Group, it caused us some trouble until we found the cause. That was when I first heard about the “desired state” and GitOps.

GitOps is a set of principles that guide how we manage the desired and actual state (configuration) of our applications. In a nutshell, applications and their state should be:

1. Managed declaratively
2. Versioned and immutable
3. Pulled automatically
4. Continuously reconciled with the desired state

Managing application state this way leads to more frequent deployments, fewer failures, faster recovery from failures, and a happier engineering organization.

And organizations finally have an answer to a million euro audit question: “What is supposed to be deployed and what really is deployed?”

With DORA regulation in place, organizations can’t afford not to use GitOps today.

Listen to my conversation with Dan Garfield on the benefits of GitOps.

We’re back in Zadar for another QED conference and a bonus conference-within-conference Mighty Mainframe!

Our keynote speakers will be Sam Newman, technologist and best-selling book author, and Rosalind Radcliffe, IBM Fellow, CIO DevSecOps CTO.

Register here and join us!

Cloud Native Artificial Intelligence Whitepaper – Cloud Native and Artificial Intelligence are the most critical technology trends today. Cloud Native technology provides a scalable and reliable execution platform and AI is steadily rising as a dominant cloud workload. This paper presents a brief overview of the state-of-the-art AI/ML techniques, followed by what CN technologies offer, and challenges in front of us.

“We” instead of “I” – The team as the smallest unit of delivery – Robert Ruzitschka discusses why teams consistently outperform individuals, even from a purely pragmatic business perspective.

When to adopt Platform Engineering | The DevOps engineer’s handbook – Steve Fenton wrote a helpful guide to assist you in deciding whether you should embark on Platform Engineering.

Enterprise DevOps Governance – If you’re curious about potential metrics to track your DevOps transformation, Graham Zabel shares his insights on metrics that can be utilized across three organizational levels.

I’ve been following Steve Pereira and Andrew Davis for ages, and I even participated in a workshop where guys taught us how to do proper value stream mapping. That’s why I’m so glad that they’ve turned these guidelines into a book accessible to anyone!

Flow Engineering is a practical guide to using value stream mapping techniques to align teams, unlock innovation, and optimize performance. It’s an indispensable tool in your coaching toolbox.