GitOps Training — Declarative Operations with Argo CD, Flux & Git-Driven Delivery

Who Should Attend

This program is for DevOps engineers, platform engineers, and Kubernetes operators who want to replace imperative CLI-driven operations with declarative Git-driven workflows. If you’re still running kubectl apply from your laptop, troubleshooting configuration drift between environments, or unable to answer “what changed and who approved it” — this course teaches you GitOps, where Git is the control plane and every change is reviewed, versioned, and automatically reconciled.

Learning Outcomes

• Deploy and configure Argo CD and Flux CD for automated Git-to-cluster synchronization
• Design repository structures for monorepo and multi-repo GitOps patterns
• Implement drift detection and auto-remediation — every manual change detected and corrected
• Configure progressive delivery (canary, blue-green) with Argo Rollouts and Flagger
• Manage secrets in GitOps with Sealed Secrets, SOPS, and External Secrets Operator
• Implement multi-cluster GitOps with ApplicationSets and cluster bootstrapping

Course Modules

1. GitOps Fundamentals — Principles. Pull vs. push. Declarative vs. imperative. Git as source of truth.
2. Argo CD Deep Dive — Applications, ApplicationSets, Projects, Sync policies, Health checks, Notifications.
3. Flux CD Deep Dive — Sources, Kustomizations, HelmReleases, Notifications, Image Automation.
4. Repository Structure Design — Monorepo vs. multi-repo. Environment promotion. Branching strategies for GitOps.
5. Secrets in GitOps — Sealed Secrets, SOPS, External Secrets Operator, Vault integration. Never plaintext in Git.
6. Progressive Delivery — Argo Rollouts (canary, blue-green). Flagger with Istio/Linkerd. Automated promotion and rollback.
7. Multi-Cluster GitOps — Cluster bootstrapping. ApplicationSets for multi-cluster. Hub-spoke patterns.
8. Drift Detection & Remediation — Automated drift detection. Self-healing vs. alert-and-approve patterns.
9. GitOps at Scale — 50+ clusters. 1,000+ applications. Team tenancy. RBAC. Resource optimization.
10. Capstone: GitOps Platform — Deploy Argo CD, configure ApplicationSets, implement progressive delivery, manage secrets.

Hands-on Labs (20 total)

Labs include: “Deploy Argo CD and sync an application from a Git repository,” “Configure automated image updates with Flux,” “Implement a canary deployment with Argo Rollouts and automated metric-based promotion,” “Set up Sealed Secrets and manage encrypted secrets in Git.”

Frequently Asked Questions

Does GitOps only work with Kubernetes? The principles originated on Kubernetes but apply to any declaratively-managed infrastructure — Terraform, Pulumi, Ansible. If you can define it in Git and reconcile it automatically, you can GitOps it.

How do you handle emergency changes in GitOps? Emergency changes follow the same Git workflow — but with an expedited review process and automated deployment. The audit trail is intact. You can also configure break-glass roles for direct cluster access with automatic reconciliation back to Git state after the emergency.