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Table of Contents
TestOps and GitOps TL;DR
TL;DR
TestOps and GitOps for Platform Engineering
1
TestOps handles the operational aspects of testing in automated pipelines - including test storage, execution, environment provisioning, scaling, and reporting - while GitOps uses Git as the source of truth for application infrastructure state.
2
Key intersection points: Both use version-controlled automation, integrate with CI/CD pipelines, enable declarative configuration testing, and create feedback loops for continuous validation and automated rollbacks.
3
Platform Engineering benefits: The combination enables self-service infrastructure with built-in testing, standardized pipelines with continuous feedback, and automated incident management through rollbacks.
4
Implementation challenge: While GitOps tooling is standardized (ArgoCD, Flux), TestOps tooling is fragmented, leading teams to cobble together various testing tools.
5
Testkube solution: Provides a unified TestOps control plane that integrates with any testing tool and GitOps solution, offering centralized test execution, troubleshooting, and reporting in a single interface.
As Platform Engineering teams strive to build self-service platforms for their teams, GitOps and TestOps are two common cornerstones for these initiatives. Let’s see what these are and how they intersect in a Platform Engineering context, to help you understand how to combine them for maximum efficiency.
Understanding TestOps for Platform Engineering
TestOps designates the operational aspects of testing-related activities in modern and often automated software delivery pipelines and workflows. TestOps can be broken down into many parts, including:
Using an SCM like Git for storing test definitions to allow for automation and version control
Defining how to execute your tests from an operational aspect
Provisioning (ephemeral) environments for running tests
Triggering your test executions from your CI/CD pipelines and workflows
Scaling your test executions both vertically and horizontally
Facilitating troubleshooting of failed tests by automatically collecting logs, artifacts, metrics, etc.
Automated reporting and feedback, including integrations with tooling for collaboration, defect tracking, etc.
Although the actual requirements for TestOps will vary across teams, they are usually put forward by Dev/QA who are responsible for testing at a higher level. The actual people setting up these operations are traditionally DevOps and/or Platform Engineering teams, and while a CI/CD tool might be at the heart of a TestOps approach, many adjacent tools are needed to bring all the above pieces together.
Implementing GitOps for Platform Engineering
While TestOps could be seen as a somewhat vague term when it comes to actual implementation, GitOps has a more clear designation; using Git as the source of truth for the state of your application infrastructure. While not entirely new, the adoption of GitOps has been accelerated by the declarative approach embraced by Kubernetes. Using Git (or any other SCM) as the source of truth brings for your infrastructure several benefits:
Collaboration - Git providers like GitHub and GitLab provide an extensive collaborative platform.
Auditability - Changes in Git are easily auditable, making it easy to link the impact of specific updates on
Resilience - recreating infrastructure is
Scale - reusing
Thanks to open-source tools like ArgoCD and Flux, Platform and DevOps teams can manage complex infrastructures with Git at the center of the continuous deployment pipelines..
What do TestOps and GitOps have in common?
At a higher level, the intersection of GitOps and TestOps lies in their shared goal of improving the reliability, scalability, and automation of the software delivery process.
Version-Controlled Automation: In both TestOps and GitOps, testing and delivery pipelines are version-controlled (Git), allowing for auditable, reproducible tests and deployments.
CI/CD Integration: TestOps facilitates the integration of testing activities directly into GitOps pipelines by embedding automated tests at critical stages of GitOps reconciliation processes.
Declarative Configuration and Infrastructure Testing: Using TestOps practices, teams can automate testing of infrastructure configurations applied by GitOps reconciliation, providing a layer of validation before and after infrastructure changes are applied.
Feedback Loops and Monitoring: By combining GitOps and TestOps, teams can use testing results as feedback loops in deployment pipelines. For instance, if post-deployment tests fail, a Git-based rollback can be triggered in the corresponding GitOps platform.
In essence, GitOps and TestOps converge on a DevOps pipeline that is entirely automated, observable, and continuously validated—driving faster, safer, and more reliable releases.
The following image attempts to illustrate the overlap - numbers corresponding to the items above:
Integrating TestOps and GitOps for Platform Engineering
Platform engineering aims to create a unified environment where teams can independently develop, test, and deploy code safely and consistently. In this context, the intersection of GitOps and TestOps facilitates the platform team's ability to deliver infrastructure and test-tooling as a service to their engineering teams. As discussed above, GitOps and TestOps enable this by introducing automated, reliable, and observable workflows for both infrastructure management and continuous testing.
Highlights of TestOps and GitOps in a Platform engineering context are:
Self-Service Infrastructure with Built-In Testing: Developers can request and deploy environments (like staging or testing) by committing changes to a repository, which triggers GitOps workflows. TestOps steps embedded in these workflows validate configurations and run automated tests before deploying infrastructure, ensuring consistent environments across teams.
Standardized Pipelines with Continuous Feedback: Platform engineers can set up CI/CD templates with GitOps for developers to use, including TestOps facets like test execution for automated quality checks, giving developers continuous feedback on their code’s readiness for production.
Automated Rollbacks and Incident Management: In a platform engineering setup, GitOps controllers continuously monitor for state drift or test failures. If a deployment fails due to a TestOps-automated quality check (e.g., failing performance or security tests), GitOps can trigger an automated rollback. This rapid rollback minimizes downtime and impacts, streamlining incident management.
Scalability and Observability: Platform engineers can set up dashboards that consolidate results from GitOps controllers and TestOps tools. These dashboards provide visibility into both deployment and testing related metrics and artifacts, making it easier to monitor the platform’s health and stability across teams.
In essence, the GitOps-TestOps intersection creates a foundation for a self-service, highly automated, and reliable platform that allows platform engineering teams to focus on building efficient workflows and maintaining infrastructure stability, while development teams benefit from streamlined, self-service environments with built-in quality checks. Check out our GitOps tutorial for setting up testing in GitOps using ArgoCD and Testkube.
Testkube as your TestOps Control Plane
While tooling for GitOps is abundant and standardized (ArgoCD, Flux, etc), tooling for TestOps has not been equally prevalent - and teams usually end up cobbling together a fragile mesh of various testing-related tools to solve for the above described workflows in a holistic manner. Testkube fills this gap - providing a single TestOps Control Plane for test execution, troubleshooting and reporting that is built from the ground up to fit in with modern GitOps pipelines and TestOps practices. In line with the above reasoning, Testkube
Is compatible with any Testing tool and CI/CD solution, including GitOps tools like ArgoCD
Provides a powerful test-execution engine that Integrates test triggering and execution into any modern CI/CD pipeline
Automatically aggregates all logs, results and artifacts into a single pane-of-glass for test troubleshooting and reporting
Top 5 GitOps and TestOps Platform Engineering FAQs
GitOps and TestOps Platform Engineering FAQs
Essential questions about modern DevOps practices in platform teams
GitOps and TestOps are complementary methodologies that serve different but interconnected purposes in platform engineering:
GitOps is a deployment and operations methodology where Git serves as the single source of truth for infrastructure and application configuration. Changes are made through Git commits, and automated systems continuously reconcile the desired state in Git with the actual state of your systems.
Declarative configuration: Infrastructure and applications defined as code in Git repositories
Automated synchronization: Tools like ArgoCD or Flux continuously deploy changes
Version control: All changes are tracked, auditable, and reversible
Pull-based delivery: Deployment agents pull changes rather than external systems pushing
TestOps focuses on integrating comprehensive testing practices throughout the development and deployment lifecycle, treating testing as a first-class operational concern.
Test automation: Automated execution of various test types (unit, integration, performance, security)
Test orchestration: Coordinated execution of test suites across environments
Quality gates: Automated decision-making based on test results
Test observability: Comprehensive monitoring and reporting of test execution and results
While GitOps handles the "how" of deployment, TestOps ensures the "what" being deployed meets quality standards.
GitOps and TestOps create a powerful synergy in CI/CD pipelines by combining Git-driven automation with comprehensive quality assurance:
Pre-deployment validation: TestOps runs automated test suites before GitOps triggers deployment
Unit and integration tests validate code changes
Security scans check for vulnerabilities
Policy validation ensures compliance requirements
Git-triggered testing: Code commits and pull requests automatically trigger comprehensive test execution
Automated rollback triggers if tests fail post-deployment
Environment-specific testing: GitOps manages different environments while TestOps validates each stage
Development environment: Fast feedback loops with basic test suites
Staging environment: Comprehensive testing including performance and end-to-end tests
Production environment: Smoke tests and monitoring validation
Continuous validation: Ongoing testing in production ensures system health
Synthetic monitoring validates critical user journeys
Chaos engineering tests system resilience
Performance regression detection through continuous benchmarking
This integration ensures that every change deployed through GitOps has been thoroughly validated by TestOps, creating a reliable and auditable deployment pipeline.
TestOps becomes critically important in GitOps environments because of the automated, hands-off nature of GitOps deployments:
Jenkins X: Cloud-native CI/CD platform with built-in GitOps
Automated environment promotion
Preview environments for pull requests
Integrated security scanning
TestOps Tools:
Testkube: Kubernetes-native test orchestration platform
GitOps-friendly test execution
Multiple test framework support
Centralized test management and reporting
Tekton: Cloud-native CI/CD framework
Pipeline-as-code approach
Kubernetes-native execution
Reusable task libraries
Argo Workflows: Container-native workflow engine
Complex test workflow orchestration
Parallel and sequential test execution
Integration with GitOps workflows
Supporting Tools:
Monitoring: Prometheus, Grafana, Jaeger for observability
Security: Falco, OPA Gatekeeper for policy enforcement
Package Management: Helm, Kustomize for configuration management
Testkube serves as a bridge between GitOps and TestOps by providing Kubernetes-native test orchestration that integrates seamlessly with Git-driven workflows:
Git-driven test execution: Testkube automatically triggers tests based on Git events
Webhook integration with Git repositories
Branch-specific test configurations
Automatic test execution on commits, merges, and releases
Kubernetes-native architecture: Runs tests as Kubernetes resources for consistency with GitOps
Tests executed as Jobs or CronJobs
Resource limits and scheduling aligned with cluster policies
Integration with Kubernetes RBAC and security policies
Multi-framework support: Accommodates diverse testing needs in platform engineering
Unit testing: Jest, Go Test, JUnit
API testing: Postman, REST Assured, Newman
Performance testing: k6, JMeter, Artillery
End-to-end testing: Playwright, Cypress, Selenium
GitOps workflow integration: Seamlessly fits into existing GitOps pipelines
Pre-deployment validation gates
Post-deployment verification tests
Environment-specific test configurations managed through Git
Automated rollback triggers based on test results
Centralized test management: Provides visibility and control across the platform
Unified dashboard for all test execution
Historical test result tracking and analytics
Test artifact management and storage
Integration with monitoring and alerting systems
Developer experience: Simplifies test execution for development teams
CLI tools for local test execution
Test templates and reusable configurations
Real-time test execution feedback
Integration with popular IDEs and development workflows
By providing these capabilities, Testkube enables organizations to implement comprehensive TestOps practices within their GitOps workflows, ensuring that automated deployments are backed by thorough, automated validation.
Testkube is a test execution and orchestration framework for Kubernetes that works with any CI/CD system and testing tool you need. It empowers teams to deliver on the promise of agile, efficient, and comprehensive testing programs by leveraging all the capabilities of K8s to eliminate CI/CD bottlenecks, perfecting your testing workflow. Get started with Testkube's free trial today.
