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GitOps and DevOps are two terms that get thrown around in conversations, job specs or in tech blogs all the time.  They sound similar though.  They are both part of the modern software practices and yes sometimes they get mixed up, but they are not the same thing. Let’s break it down. 

What is DevOps? 

DevOps is a way of working. 

DevOps brings development and operations teams together, to deliver software faster, more reliably and with fewer silos. 

Instead of the developers writing code and then throwing it over the wall to the IT operations teams, the DevOps practice promotes and encourages collaboration from day one.  Part of DevOps is also bringing in automation and tools like CI/CD pipelines to speed things up and catch problems earlier. 

DevOps is a culture or a mindset. It’s not a single tool or platform. It’s about bringing people, processes, and products together to enable continuous delivery and value to end users. 

Remember the goal is always to deliver value to the end users, not just to automate the delivery of software.   

What is GitOps?

GitOps is a way of managing infrastructure and application deployments using Git as the single source of truth. 

With GitOps, all your changes are made in code and stored in Git.  The changes could be a new version of your application or it could be spinning up a new Kubernetes cluster.  

GitOps uses a central Git repository that contains the entire state of the system. It uses Git pull requests to automatically manage and deploy infrastructure or software. The Git repository gives you a trail of changes that’s auditable and version-controlled.

GitOps is one of the ways in which we can work smarter. 

How DevOps and GitOps work together

You shouldn’t be thinking of having to choose one or the other, in fact, most teams use both.

• DevOps gives you the culture and automation mindset.
• GitOps gives you a specific model for how to manage infrastructure and deployments. 

GitOps fits well in cloud-native environments like Kubernetes, but DevOps can apply anywhere, on-prem, cloud, containers or even your legacy systems. 

Final thoughts

You shouldn’t look at GitOps and DevOps as rivals, they work better together.  DevOps sets the stage, the culture whereas GitOps is one of the stars of the show. 

If you want better collaboration and faster delivery across your IT teams you should start with DevOps and if you want a version-controlled automated deployment process you should add in a little GitOps.