4 Open Source Git Tools to Assist with Kubernetes Deployment
Open source tools have always been quite popular as they provide the liberty to be freely used without any commercial license. Their software has source code that can be implemented, enhanced, and distributed by anyone over time.
A great assortment of open source tools that support Kubernetes applications can be found online too. Kubernetes is a well-known orchestration tool that assists in automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.
Though it is a powerful platform, it is often referred to as a ‘complex technology’. Since Kubernetes is designed to handle ever-changing apps built with microservices, they can get difficult to tackle as a lot of services interact with other services in it.
Fortunately, there are amazing open-source tools available in the market to combat the complexity associated with Kubernetes. They help navigate the paths between Kubernetes and end-users. These tools provide developers the means to test, run, deploy, and monitor apps. They have a user-friendly interface that facilitates optimal use of Kubernetes and its services.
A few such open-source tools you should include in your Kubernetes arsenal are given below.
Kubescape
Kubescape is the first open-source tool that helps check whether Kubernetes has been deployed securely based on multiple frameworks consisting of customized regulatory company policies and DevSecOps best practices, such as NSA-CISA and the MITRE ATT&CK®.
This one-of-its-kind tool developed by Armosec helps administrators manage Kubernetes securely, thereby saving management time. It is based on the OPA engine and ARMO’s posture controls. It retrieves the Kubernetes objects from the API server and scans them by running a set of regos snippets developed by ARMO.
Special Features
Scans running clusters, YAML files, and HELM charts in IaC.
Identifies configuration drifts in real-time.
Detects software vulnerabilities and misconfigurations at the initial stages of the CI/CD pipeline.
Manages exceptions and avoids alert fatigue.
Assists in visualizing risk trends by analyzing past scans.
Integrates to a number of pipeline tools including Jenkins, CircleCI, GitLab, GitHub workflows, Prometheus, Slack, and more.
Kapp
Kapp is an open-source tool that is part of the Carvel deployment CLI suite for Kubernetes. It helps manage multiple resources across the cluster. Kapp displays the changes between your configuration and the live cluster’s version of the resource. They are applied upon user approvals and report how resources are resulting are being utilized.
Special Features
It has no dependencies on server-side elements, exclusive privileges, or any specially customized resources.
It is proficient in working with role-based access control clusters.
Kapp is focused on being both explicit and application-centric. Thus, it provides a simplistic mechanism for viewing resources and allows their simultaneous deployment (even if they all belong to a different namespace).
Kapp is known to be a dependency-aware tool. It generally waits for the resources to be created, updated, or deleted and furnishes live updates on the progress of actions.
Keel
Keel is an open-source tool used for automating deployment updates once new images are available. It acts as a Kubernetes operator to automate Helm, Daemon Set, Stateful Set, and deployment updates.
Container Builder and Google Container Engine help build images and run the workloads, but Keel bridges the gap in the case of new images. It updates the deployments when new images are available.
When Keel is deployed to the Kubernetes cluster, it tags the release in GitHub. Thereafter, Cloudbuild starts building an image. Finally, Keel receives the new image event and seeks impacted deployments marked with the Keel update policy. Post that, Keel starts rolling the update.
Special Features
It is a stateless, robust, and lightweight service.
It runs silently and does not require direct interactions/directions from the end-user.
No CLI/API is required. It runs as a single container where policies and trigger types are specified in your application deployment files or Helm charts.
It does not need a database.
It offers automatic Google Container Registry configuration. Keel automatically sets up a topic and subscriptions for your deployment images by periodically scanning your environment.
Argo CD
Argo CD acts as a declarative continuous deployment for Kubernetes. It is implemented as a Kubernetes controller that monitors the live state continuously and compares it with the desired state available in the Git repo. If there is any deviation from the target state, it is considered ‘OutOfSnyc’.
Argo CD, started by Intuit, provides fast, reliable continuous delivery services for deploying a large number of microservices across a fleet of Kubernetes clusters using Git as the source of truth for the application source code and deployment configurations.
It provides provisions to automatically or manually sync the live state to the desired target state. If the target state in the Git repo is modified, it gets reflected in the specified target environment.
Special Features
It automates the deployment of applications to the target environments specified in Git.
Support is extended to multiple config management/templating tools, such as Kustomize, Helm, Ksonnet, Jsonnet, and plain-YAML.
It provides a health analysis of the application’s resources and a real-time view of its activities.
It has the ability to manage and deploy multiple clusters
It allows you to roll back to any application configuration available in Git.
Conclusion
All the open-source tools in the market have contributed to making Kubernetes’ power services available to users in a simplified manner. In this cloud age, the open-source community has added greatly to the success of Kubernetes and the coming times will continue to see growth in its usage.
I hope you found this article insightful. Thank you for reading!