GitOpsCon Europe 2022

A big topic in GitOps that isn't really discussed enough is proper GitOps secrets management and just how serious of an issue it can be in a cloud-native aspect. While normalized usage of Bitnami Sealed Secrets is typically explored, but not much is seen around using HashiCorp Vault. Especially as it pertains to using Vault with Argo Project's continuous delivery tool Argo CD. What exactly is HashiCorp Vault? HashiCorp Vault is a secrets management tool created primarily to control access to sensitive credentials in a low-trust environment. It can be used to manage secrets, encryption as a service, and privileged access. This talk will explore integrating HashiCorp Vault with Argo CD, any pros and cons, and (hopefully) what ended up working for Tracy and her sensitive credentials. Note: A shorter version of this talk was presented at HashiTalks 2022. However, the intent is to go more in-depth with exploration and findings while attempting the integration.

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 Not so long ago, we had to remember lots of commands and their execution order to configure systems and infrastructure. With the rise of Kubernetes and Infrastructure-as-Code, we learned that it's easier to declare the desired state of systems and let other tools bring our intentions to the system. Finally, Git can be our best friend when it comes to storing and versioning our configuration.

To put it to practice we look at one specific GitOps implementation approach from the CNCF Sandbox Project Keptn. Together we walk through declaring the desired state for application delivery in Git, see how the GitOps operator translates that definition into tasks and how those tasks get executed by various tools to bring the desired state to life.

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Using a GitOps controller, such as ArgoCD, to deploy applications allows you to deploy more often, execute rollbacks, and avoid configuration drift. However, what if you are an organization beginning to adopt GitOps and are new to Argo? What if you need to deploy hundreds of applications? Manage several clusters? How do you structure your directory? Or apply GitOps at scale for your organization? You can do all of this with Argo CD Autopilot, which provides an opinionated directory structure, allowing you to promote changes across environments with an ApplicationSet Controller for Argo CD applied by the Autopilot bootstrap. Autopilot enables organizations to simplify disaster recovery and quickly set up one-off environments or easily promote changes by leveraging GitOps. This tool works well for teams that are new to Argo CD but want to enable the ApplicationSet's automation and templating abilities to create, modify, and manage multiple applications simultaneously while also targeting numerous clusters with a no-brainer directory structure.

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