Automation introduction post

posts/automation/automation-intro.md

@@ -5,15 +5,47 @@ menu_order: 1
 post_status: publish
 post_excerpt: If you are interested in cool technologies for DevOps and automation like Ansible, Tekton, or ArgoCD, check out this introduction to our project.
 featured_image: _images/automation.jpg
-author: jstejskal
+author: dkornel
 taxonomy:
     category:
         - automation
 
 ---
 
-## Automation introduction
-This is initial blogpost about automation site of the project
+## What is the automation-hub
+Simplified answer is that [automation-hub](https://github.com/skodjob/automation-hub) is a collection of [ansible](https://www.ansible.com/) automation scrips, [kubernetes](https://kubernetes.io/)
+deployment and configuration files, [Tekton](https://tekton.dev/) pipelines an [ArgoCD](https://argo-cd.readthedocs.io/en/stable/) applications and application-sets. Let's talk about used technologies,
+why and how we use it for our work.
 
-* Testing automatic update v1
-* Testing automatic update v2
+### Kubernetes
+Kubernetes is known as the best way to orchestrate containerized applications. It provides scalability, reliability and many more features for applications running on top of the kubernetes.
+In our case we use enterprise implementation of kubernetes called [Openshift](https://www.redhat.com/en/technologies/cloud-computing/openshift/container-platform). That was just brief explanation
+that kubernetes is the platform for running containerized applications, and now the question "Why we use it"? Answer is simple
+"We use kubernetes, because we work as **QA** and applications which we put under test are targeted to kubernetes."
+
+### Ansible
+Do you know the situations when you have many automation scripts written in bash or powershell and you start loosing mind
+in a bunch of `$` or `sed` expressions? We know how frustrating can be debugging shell script or running them on the remote machine.
+But there is a better way which is `Ansible`. Ansible is a declarative way how to write automation scrips in yaml format, which also allows you to use
+libraries with already implemented automation for many components, so you do not need re-invent the wheel. Because initial installation path
+of our environment requires a lot of steps, Ansible it the correct way to deduplicate steps, create a templates in `jinja` and drive
+execution based on tags. We are able to run Ansible playbook on provided kubernetes cluster, and it deploys the whole
+testing infrastructure including multi-cluster environment with all needed operators and tools (we will talk about all of these stuff in upcoming posts). 
+
+### Tekton
+There are many ways where to run CI/CD pipelines. You surely know systems like Gitlab-CI, Jenkins or TeamCity. Tekton is also CI/CD system,
+but it has an advantage which is really important for us, it is `cloud-native`. That means it is implemented to run on top of kubernetes, and it is driven by resources written in yaml.
+Tekton pipeline resource allows you to split steps you want to run into different container images, it can save you
+resources needed for running pipeline, and also you do not need to build large container image with all required tools installed. Let me
+present it on simple example. Imagine pipeline, which does api request using `curl` and then run `maven`, the first step can be done in a
+simple small container just with curl installed and the maven one step can run in different container with java and maven installed.
+
+We use Tekton CI/CD mainly for continuous check of deployed environment and system under test, also for trigger kubernetes cluster updates and many more
+day to day operational stuff.
+
+### ArgoCD
+All previous technologies were mostly about platform and DevOps practices, but now let's move to another buzzword `GitOps`.
+ArgoCD is GitOps tool for deployment kubernetes applications from declarations stored in SCM. Basically if someone put changes
+of application configuration into git repository, ArgoCD gets this changes and apply them to target kubernetes cluster. All our
+systems under tests are stored in [deployment-hub](https://github.com/skodjob/deployment-hub) repository and ArgoCD takes care about distributing
+them to multi-cluster environment.