Amazon EKS — CI/CD & GitOps
Deploying applications to EKS at scale requires automated pipelines. Push-based CI/CD (GitHub Actions, CodePipeline) builds images and triggers deployments. Pull-based GitOps (ArgoCD, Flux) watches Git repositories and reconciles cluster state.
Topics Covered
| # | Topic | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | ECR & Image Management | Container registry, scanning, lifecycle |
| 2 | GitHub Actions for EKS | OIDC auth, build & deploy workflows |
| 3 | AWS CodePipeline | Native AWS CI/CD for EKS |
| 4 | ArgoCD on EKS | GitOps with ArgoCD |
| 5 | Flux on EKS | GitOps with Flux |
| 6 | Hands-On Lab | End-to-end CI/CD pipeline |
| 7 | Practice Questions | Test your CI/CD knowledge |
CI/CD vs GitOps
| Aspect | Push-Based CI/CD | Pull-Based GitOps |
|---|---|---|
| Model | Pipeline pushes changes to cluster | Agent in cluster pulls from Git |
| Source of truth | Pipeline configuration | Git repository |
| Drift detection | None (point-in-time) | Continuous reconciliation |
| Rollback | Re-run pipeline | git revert |
| Credentials | Pipeline has kubectl access | No external cluster access needed |
| Examples | GitHub Actions, CodePipeline | ArgoCD, Flux |
| Best for | Simple setups, small teams | Multi-cluster, regulated environments |
Production recommendation: Use CI for building and testing, GitOps for deploying.
