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GitOps (short for Git Operations) describes a declarative way of managing applications in cloud-native environments using the Git workflow. This means, application configurations are stored and updated via Git repositories. To track and synchronize the Git repositories with Kubernetes, a GitOps engine is used on the clusters. mogenius comes with a native GitOps integration that allows you to easily implement GitOps in your teams, or to integrate the mogenius platform with your existing GitOps stack. This way, you can easily deploy workloads and resources to Kubernetes using the UI with mogenius Workspaces (see Deploying Applications). Then, you can add GitOps as a layer of stability and control. Here’s how you can use that in your teams:
  • Deploy containers to Kubernetes using the mogenius UI, without requiring deep Kubernetes knowledge. Then, add them to GitOps for deploying them to production-grade deployments.
  • Configure your applications once and then deploy them to additional environments for a staged development workflow. See Multi-Environment Deployments for a practical guide.
  • Backup all your manifests to recover your cluster state in case of an incident.

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How the GitOps workflow works in mogenius

The GitOps workflow in mogenius follows a UI-first approach. You don’t need to write Kubernetes manifests manually — mogenius generates them for you. Here’s the end-to-end flow:
  1. Deploy via the UI: Use the mogenius UI to deploy applications through container images, pipeline starters, Helm charts, or Kubernetes manifests.
  2. Enable GitOps on your cluster (see setup below).
  3. Create a GitOps application that includes your deployments.
  4. Manifests are auto-generated: mogenius automatically creates the Kubernetes manifests (application.yaml) for all selected resources and commits them to your Git repository. You do not need to write these manifests yourself.
  5. Changes sync through Git: When you modify configurations in the mogenius UI (environment variables, health checks, scaling, etc.), the changes are committed to Git. ArgoCD then syncs the updated manifests to your cluster.
This means you get the speed and simplicity of UI-based deployments combined with the reliability and auditability of Git-based infrastructure management.

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GitOps setup

You can configure GitOps for each cluster. Navigate to Clusters in your organization and open the tab GitOps. Click the button to enable GitOps and open the configuration page.
1

Set up ArgoCD and Sealed Secrets

mogenius comes with a pre-configured stack for enabling GitOps consisting of two main applications:
  1. ArgoCD: mogenius relies on the open-source project ArgoCD as the GitOps engine.
  2. Sealed Secrets: To securely synchronize secrets with Git, mogenius uses Sealed Secrets to encrypt secrets when transferring them to Git.
The setup form uses defaults that should work out of the box. You can overwrite them to customize the installation.
Already have ArgoCD and/or Sealed Secrets installed on your cluster? If possible, mogenius detects existing installations and updates the settings in the setup form. Check the default values and adjust them if they don’t match your installation.
2

Connect a GitHub repository

Your applications on a cluster will be synced with a repository on GitHub.
To set it up, first go to Github.com and perform the following steps:
  • Create a new repository and make sure it has a branch.
  • Create a Personal Access Token. It requires at least read/write permissions on Contents. This way mogenius can commit changes on applications to the repository. If you want to use pull requests instead, make sure that the access token has read/write permissions for Pull Requests as well. Make sure to copy the PAT to a safe location.
You can use the same repository for multiple clusters. Your applications will be managed using the following structure for folders and files:
your-repository/mogenius/CLUSTER/APPLICATION/application.yaml
Now, in your GitOps settings in mogenius, click Connect repository and follow the steps:
  • Enter a name for the repository.
  • Enter the Personal Access Token.
  • Your username and a dropdown to select your repository will load. In the dropdown, search for your GitOps repository and select it.
  • Set the commit behavior: By default, mogenius will commit changes directly on the branch of your application. Activate the toggle to create pull requests instead.
  • Save your settings to connect the repository.
3

GitOps is now enabled for your cluster 🎉

You can proceed with creating applications.

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Applications

Your workloads and resources in Kubernetes are tracked in GitOps as applications. Each application consists of one or more resources. Typical examples for how applications can be defined:
  • A deployment for your container, plus Ingress, Service, and Secrets that are used by the deployment.
  • A platform deployment consisting of several microservices.
You can create applications in your cluster settings as an admin, or within Workspaces. In your cluster, scroll to the bottom of your GitOps page. In a Workspace, navigate to the page GitOps applications. Click the button Create application to configure a new application.
Here’s how it works:
  • Enter a name for your application. This is how it will be displayed in mogenius and it will be added as a folder to your Git repository.
  • From the list of namespaces on your cluster, select the resources that you want to include in your application. You can select one namespace per application. Inside a namespace you can select all resources, or a selected list of resources.
  • Confirm to create your application.
Your application is now added to the list, and mogenius automatically generates the Kubernetes manifests for all selected resources and stores them as application.yaml in your Git repository. It can take a few minutes until ArgoCD has synchronized it, and you’ll see a loading animation in the meantime. Once it is synced, you’ll see the status of your application and all included resources.

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Working with GitOps in mogenius

When workloads or resources in your Workspaces are part of an application (i.e. managed via GitOps), a status object Application will be shown. This indicates the sync status of the directory and the application. If an error occurs, you can hover over the status to view the error message.

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Updating workloads

You can continue using the mogenius UI to change configurations such as environment variables, resource limits, health checks, or YAML manifests on any resource. When saving changes, mogenius detects that GitOps is enabled for the resource and will update the corresponding application.yaml in Git. This follows the commit behavior defined in your cluster settings (direct commit or pull request). Changes are not applied directly to the cluster but will be synced by ArgoCD within a few minutes. You can monitor this sync using the Application status.

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GitOps log

You can track the history and changes of your application.yaml using the GitOps log. It is available on any resource managed by a GitOps application and shows commits and pull requests.

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CI/CD integration with GitHub Actions

For teams that want to combine CI/CD builds with GitOps-based deployment, mogenius provides GitHub Actions workflow templates in the mogenius build-workflows repository. These templates automate the process of building your container image and triggering the mogenius operator to update the deployment, which is then tracked and synced by GitOps. You can use these templates in two ways:
  • Through Pipeline Starters: The easiest approach — mogenius sets up the GitHub Actions workflow for you directly from the UI. See Pipeline Starters for details.
  • Custom integration: Use the workflow templates directly in your own CI/CD pipelines for more control over the build and deployment process.