Automation especially test automation is vital to the success of any software development team to ensure repeatability, stability, consistency, and the utmost quality of software products. GitOps is on the rise as an Infrastructure-as-Code approach for driving operations based on manifests stored in a Git repository. Can we pair the two together and push the boundary of test automation? What are the benefits and challenges of this approach?

Our experience with integrating GitOps with ArgoCD for test artifact deployment has been transformative. We saw test setup times reduce significantly, moving from durations spanning days to just hours or minutes. This efficiency stems from our automation strategies. We’ve automated the installation of various operators, deployment of test applications, setup of their essential prerequisites like DB2 and MongoDB, and integration of stress tools such as JMeter using standardized containers. We hope you will be able to extract actionable insights and best practices from our journey.

Takeaways from the talk:

• Introduction to GitOps: What is GitOps and why is it important for your CI/CD?
• Real-World Benefits: Delve into the concrete advantages our team achieved through integrating GitOps, highlighting efficiency boosts and notably reduced setup durations.
• Challenges & Solutions: Navigate the challenges we faced during our GitOps journey and discover how tools like customize played a role in our solutions.