We have to write Kloud with K for some time now, since it is ruled mostly by Kubernetes (K8s). Hence, we need to speak of GitOps as one important trend in DevOps. GitOps enables automatic and versioned infrastructure-as-code lifecycle management, i.e., setup and maintenance of K8s infrastructures based on Helm charts. Each change to the environment is filed in a branch and as a pull request to the respective environment (Git) repository. A build pipeline performs quality assurance and permission checking and applies the change to the target infrastructure. Developers and operators never get in touch with basic tools like kubectl for deployments anymore.

Jenkins-X (JX) brings not only software builds to K8s but also has an integrated GitOps workflow. Besides, operations can even make use of the opinionated GitOps workflow without realizing that there is a Jenkins instance running the pipeline – treating it as a black box GitOps processor. In fact, JX runs the pipeline in a Kubeless (serverless) mode by using Prow and Knative. The latest version is even Jenkins-less by providing TektonCD as build processor.

The talk will introduce Jenkins-X basics from an operations point of view. Then, it will cover the GitOps methodology and how it is realized by JX. Besides, it will show what other benefits JX brings to a development team by simplifying the setup of new, or importing existing microservice applications to K8s.