Title

AWS re:Invent 2022 - Secure and multi-tenant infrastructure as code with Crossplane & Argo (OPN309)

Summary

• Vikram Sethi from Adobe and AWS architects Nima and Gaurav presented their collaboration on enabling GitOps-based application and infrastructure provisioning using Crossplane and Argo.
• Adobe's previous infrastructure provisioning approach had pain points, including custom tooling, learning curves, and lack of visibility for the platform team.
• The new solution involves a hub and spoke model with a central hub cluster and multiple remote clusters, using Argo for deployment and Crossplane for infrastructure provisioning.
• The solution is designed to be Kubernetes-native, GitOps-friendly, multi-tenant, secure, multi-cloud capable, extensible, and aligned with industry standards.
• Adobe's internal developer platform supports various Adobe clouds and services, with the new solution focusing on infrastructure provisioning and orchestration, delivery and deployment, and workflow orchestration.
• Crossplane allows for the provisioning of cloud infrastructure resources and building higher-level abstractions.
• The solution addresses multi-tenancy and security requirements, including legitimate access, namespace isolation, secret management, and performance.
• The new developer experience is improved, with service teams able to track resources in a Kubernetes-native way and the platform team gaining standardization and observability.
• Challenges remain, including performance scaling, support for other cloud providers, technology maturity, tooling inertia, and community dependency.
• The collaboration between Adobe and AWS, along with contributions from the community, has been key to the project's success.

Insights

• The transition to a GitOps-based infrastructure provisioning model using Crossplane and Argo represents a significant shift towards a more standardized, Kubernetes-native approach for Adobe.
• The hub and spoke model centralizes the management of deployments and infrastructure provisioning, potentially simplifying operations but also raising questions about scalability and performance.
• The solution's design reflects a broader industry trend towards multi-cloud strategies and the need for extensibility to accommodate diverse and evolving requirements.
• The integration of Crossplane with Argo CD for GitOps workflows indicates a maturing ecosystem around Kubernetes and the growing importance of community-driven open-source projects in enterprise infrastructure.
• Adobe's focus on multi-tenancy and security highlights the critical need for fine-grained access control and secure secret management in modern cloud-native environments.
• The challenges mentioned, such as performance scaling and technology maturity, are common in the adoption of cutting-edge technologies and underscore the importance of close collaboration with the open-source community and cloud providers like AWS.
• The presentation demonstrates the potential benefits of adopting a GitOps and infrastructure-as-code approach, but also the necessity of careful planning, community engagement, and ongoing management to address the inherent complexities.