Today at GitOps Summit, The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), which builds sustainable ecosystems for cloud native software, and Continuous Delivery Foundation (CDF), the open-source software foundation that seeks to improve the world's capacity to deliver software with security and speed, have announced the immediate availability of two new, online training courses focused on GitOps, or operation by pull request, a powerful developer workflow that enables organizations to unlock the promise of cloud native continuous delivery. 

Cloud native technologies enable organizations to scale rapidly and deliver software faster than ever before. GitOps is the set of practices that enable developers to carry out tasks that traditionally fell to operations personnel. As development practices evolve, GitOps is becoming an essential skill for many job roles. These two new online, self-paced training courses are designed to teach the skills necessary to begin implementing GitOps practices:

Introduction to GitOps (LFS169)

LFS169 is a free introductory course providing foundational knowledge about key GitOps principles, tools and practices, to help build an operational framework for cloud native applications primarily running on Kubernetes. The course explains how to set up and automate a continuous delivery pipeline to Kubernetes, leading to increased productivity and efficiency for tech roles.

This course walks through a series of demonstrations with a fully functional GitOps environment, which explains the true power of GitOps and how it can help build infrastructures, deploy applications, and even do progressive releases, all via pull requests and git-based workflows. By the end of this course, participants will be familiar with the need for GitOps, and understand the different reconciliation patterns and implementation options available, helping them make the right technological choices for their particular needs.

GitOps: Continuous Delivery on Kubernetes with Flux (LFS269)

LFS269 will benefit software developers interested in learning how to deploy their cloud native applications using familiar GitHub-based workflows and GitOps practices; quality assurance engineers interested in setting up continuous delivery pipelines, and implementing canary analysis, A/B testing, etc. on Kubernetes; site reliability engineers interested in automating deployment workflows and setting up multi-tenant, multi-cluster GitOps-based Continuous Delivery workflows and incorporating them with existing Continuous Integration and monitoring setups; and anyone looking to understand the landscape of GitOps and learn how to choose and implement the right tools.

This course provides a deep dive into GitOps principles and practices, and how to implement them using Flux CD, a CNCF project. Flux CD uses a reconciliation approach to keep Kubernetes clusters in sync using Git repositories as the source of truth. This course helps build essential Git and Kubernetes knowledge for a GitOps practitioner by setting up Flux v2 on an existing Kubernetes cluster, automating the deployment of Kubernetes manifests with Flux, and incorporating Kustomize and Helm to create customizable deployments. It explains how to set up notifications and monitoring with Prometheus, Grafana and Slack, integrate Flux with Tekton-based workflows to set up CI/CD pipelines, build release strategies, including canary, A/B testing, and blue/green, deploying to multi-cluster and multi-tenant environments, integrate GitOps with service meshes such as Linkerd, and Istio, securing GitOps workflows with Flux, and much more.

"GitOps is an essential methodology for shifting left and using cloud native effectively. We are already seeing the demand for it with the adoption of CNCF projects like Argo and Flux," said Priyanka Sharma, General Manager of the Cloud Native Computing foundation. "I am thrilled that we now offer two GitOps courses so developers of all levels can build a foundation and learn how to integrate GitOps with Kubernetes. I encourage every practitioner to check it out!"

"Our partnership with Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) has resulted in the creation of this high quality course for software developers who want a better understanding of the GitOps landscape. It includes information on integrating Flux CD with Tekton-based workflows, a great example of CNCF and CDF projects closely working together. By taking the course, you will be able to evaluate and implement GitOps to meet your development needs," said Tracy Miranda, Executive Director of the Continuous Delivery Foundation. "The launch of these courses is a result of the strong increase in demand for cloud-native applications. This program will directly benefit those interested in expanding their Git and Kubernetes knowledge and following best practices for GitOps techniques."

Introduction to GitOps consists of 3-4 hours of course material including video lessons. It is available at no cost for up to a year.

GitOps: Continuous Delivery on Kubernetes with Flux consists of 30-40 hours of course material, including video lessons, hands-on labs, and more. The $299 course fee includes a full year of access to all materials.