GitOps is basically this: your Git repo runs everything. Not just your code – everything. Infrastructure, configs, secrets, the kitchen sink. Sounds crazy? It kind of is, but it works.
Picture this: it’s 3 AM, production is on fire, and Jenkins decided to take a nap. Your ops guy is fumbling around trying to remember which server has what version of what config. We’ve all been there, right?
With GitOps, that nightmare doesn’t happen. Everything’s in Git. Want to see what changed? Git log. Want to roll back? Git revert. Want to deploy? Push to main and watch the magic happen.
I remember when we first tried this at my last job. Our CTO read some blog post and decided we were going “full GitOps” by Friday. What a disaster. We spent two months untangling the mess because nobody bothered to figure out what we were actually trying to solve.
Here’s the thing though – once we got it right, deployments became boring. And boring deployments are the best deployments. No more “let me just SSH in and fix this real quick” at 2 AM. No more “it worked on my machine” arguments. Just push, merge, done.
The catch? Setting it up is like assembling IKEA furniture after a few beers. You think you know what you’re doing, but you’re gonna spend way more time on it than expected, and you’ll probably put something together backwards.