Configuration Management in Kubernetes Environments: A GitOps Approach

Abstract

In the rapidly evolving landscape of cloud computing, the management of containerized applications within dynamic and distributed environments has become increasingly critical. Configuration drift, the unintended divergence between the desired and actual states of a system can lead to operational inefficiencies, security vulnerabilities, and compromised system reliability. This paper investigates the effectiveness of GitOps in addressing the pervasive issue of configuration drift in Kubernetes environments. By leveraging Git as the single source of truth and automating the synchronization of the desired state with the actual state, GitOps offers a promising solution to configuration drift management. This study evaluates and compares the performance of GitOps against traditional configuration management approaches, specifically Ansible, based on time they take in induction, discovery, and remedy of configuration drifts. The experiments include scenarios involving misconfigured changes, network configuration drifts, and application dependency updates. The results indicate that GitOps consistently demonstrates notable advantages in both induction and remedy times across all scenarios, primarily due to its automation capabilities. The findings suggest that GitOps enhances the efficiency and effectiveness of configuration management in Kubernetes environments, particularly in scenarios requiring rapid response and automated recovery from configuration drift.