The need for a GitOps powered Container Platform
Tags: kubernetes, devops, gitops, cloudnative
Published: 2022-01-19 16:28:44

## Introduction

Enterprises are more rapidly adopting Kubernetes to accelerate digital transformation efforts in the wake of the pandemic. By implementing cloud-native and open source technologies like Kubernetes, organizations can increase agility and time-to-market.

A new study from D2iQ reinforced the importance of Kubernetes, with **77% of organizations claiming that the container automation system is a central part of their digital transformation strategy.**

However, the same study found that while projects in production on **Kubernetes are expected to rise 61% in the next two years**, almost all organizations that use cloud-native technologies have run into challenges related to the complexity in building and maintaining a container platform.

## Challenges with Kubernetes

The journey to Day 2 production operations and Kubernetes success is not an easy one. Day 2 is a DevOps concept that has been around for some time, referring to the development lifecycle phase that follows initial deployment to where the real application demands exist. Challenges in Day 2 are common and complex as operations teams increase the number of nodes and scale applications to keep pace with broader business goals.

The most common challenges organizations face when it comes to adopting Kubernetes are **security concerns (47%)**, **difficulty scaling up effectively (37%), and lack of IT resources (34%)**. Challenges with Kubernetes are not new for developers, as organizations often cite the same challenges for many IT deployments; however, Kubernetes deployment raises the stakes, as it often sits at the center of the cloud-native journeys that are critical to every digital transformation.

Kubernetes challenges are felt by almost everyone, with **94% of respondents claiming **that **Kubernetes is a source of pain or complexity** for their organization. However, those in the Kubernetes trenches often feel the brunt of that pain, with 78% of developers and architects claiming that Kubernetes add-ons cause a great deal of pain and introduce complexity.

## Challenges with Developers

Almost all (95%) organizations that use cloud-native technology have run into challenges, most commonly during the development phase (47%).

This can often mean long hours, shortening the time for business application development, and high-pressure situations that create a draining work environment on developer teams. According to the study, **38% of developers and architects** claim their work makes them feel **burnt out**, **32% say that building cloud-native applications cause stress**, and **28% admit that building applications are very frustrating.**

These feelings of burnout, stress, and frustration can drive IT teams to consider drastic measures, including changing their scenery. 51% of developers and architects say building cloud-native applications makes them want to find a new job. This statistic and sentiment should be alarming to organizations as they need full, skilled developer teams to fuel the adoption of Kubernetes and drive accelerated digital transformations.

## What is important for an organization?


-  Reduce developer(s) and team(s) burnouts

- Increase team(s) productivity

- Shorten time to market

- Save costs

- Avoid technical debt

## The need for a Modern GitOps powered Platform

According to the 2020 State of DevOps Report, **63% of organizations developing software have adopted GitOps as a deployment model**. The top benefit of adopting the platform model, according to the report, is the ability to enable self-service capabilities for application development teams. This would enable them to quickly create and provision the resources their code requires without having to have an Ops person do it for them. For the platform team, they can focus on continuous deployment and platform maintenance, and monitoring independently of the application team.

The platform team creates the platform that would be used to provision developer resources. They set up configuration templates for developers to create the resources they need on their own. These templates are in the form of Git repositories and are managed using the GitOps model. They also put in place limits and restrictions, and privileges for how a developer can customize the templates. If those need further customization, they reach out to the platform team. This approach needs some initial effort, but once set up, developers can provide the resources they need in a matter of minutes.

### Key Benefits of a GitOps powered Platform 

- Developer Self Service
- Reduces platform team’s workload 
  -  By enabling teams to be self-sufficient(RBAC)
  - Integrated logging and monitoring for individual teams

- Leverages Automation 

-Security is built-in & scalable 

-Ready-made audit trail for compliance 

- MTTR(Mean Time To Repair) as low as minutes 

- Improves deployment velocity


> We feel your pain and we might have the answers to most of your pain points.


## Otomi: GitOps powered Container Platform 
 
[Otomi](https://github.com/redkubes/otomi-core) is an open-source and cloud-agnostic platform to run on top of Kubernetes to securely deploy, run and manage applications in an automated fashion.

### Highlights

- Easy to install
   - Easily installed within minutes using helm chart install

- Out-of-the-box experience
   - otomi-console provides an intuitive user experience built on top of the git 
     configuration repository that allows developers to create, configure, manage and 
     monitor containerized applications

   - Offers a GitOps way of working, where the desired state is reflected as code and the 
      cluster state is automatically updated

   - A baseline configuration for integrated open-source applications and add-ons to support the most common Kubernetes use-cases

- Advanced ingress architecture

- Multi-Cloud support

  - Otomi supports the big 3 public cloud providers (AWS, Azure, and GCP) and on-premise Kubernetes.

  - The [otomi-quickstart](https://thecloudodyssey.com/otomi-quickstart) can be used to install Otomi on managed Kubernetes from the cloud providers (Experimentation and Evaluation purposes only)

- Security Best Practices

  - Workload isolation

  - Image vulnerability scanning

  - Network policies

  - Policy enforcement

  - Pre-configured RBAC

  - mTLS

  - Secret Management


> Talk is cheap, show me the code

Sure, you can schedule a [demo](https://meetings.hubspot.com/abhimanyu-selvan) with me. Let's connect and share the pain together ;)