--- title: Configuration management at Giant Swarm: a historical... description: Giant Swarm traces the evolution of their internal configuration management system across three eras. Starting in 2020 with static, manually deployed configs,... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/configuration-management-at-giant-swarm-a-historical-overview-arf23qm5g twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Configuration management at Giant Swarm: a historical overview | daily.dev og:description: Giant Swarm traces the evolution of their internal configuration management system across three eras. Starting in 2020 with static, manually deployed configs,... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/configuration-management-at-giant-swarm-a-historical-overview-arf23qm5g og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/arf23qM5g.png og:image:alt: Configuration management at Giant Swarm: a historical overview og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Configuration management at Giant Swarm: a historical overview **[Giant Swarm](https://daily.dev/sources/giantswarm)** · 13 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Giant Swarm traces the evolution of their internal configuration management system across three eras. Starting in 2020 with static, manually deployed configs, they built a 'vintage' release system using Go templates and a config-controller to generate ConfigMaps and Secrets from a structured Git repository. Alongside it ran a 'unique apps' system using draughtsman and architect, which suffered from hardcoded management cluster lists and manual update steps. Moving to GitOps with ArgoCD then Flux, they introduced konfigure as a KRM function plugin — solving the draughtsman problem but introducing opacity, swallowed errors, and a 'poison pill' issue where one bad config stalled all reconciliation. The current system rewrites konfigure internals around a schema-driven, general-purpose rendering engine exposed as a library, backed by konfigure-operator, which isolates errors per configuration and decouples config generation from App CRs entirely. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Configuration as Code is a liability for security](https://daily.dev/posts/configuration-as-code-is-a-liability-for-security-qxmgkapjh) · ITNEXT · 6 upvotes · 0 comments - [Live migrating hundreds of Kubernetes clusters to Cluster API](https://daily.dev/posts/live-migrating-hundreds-of-kubernetes-clusters-to-cluster-api-6aqqlkxqm) · Giant Swarm · 10 upvotes · 0 comments - [Tech Veterans’ New Approach To Eliminate ‘Configuration Hell’](https://daily.dev/posts/tech-veterans-new-approach-to-eliminate-configuration-hell--0j6xxahuq) · The New Stack · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Configuration as a Control Plane: Designing for Safety and Reliability at Scale](https://daily.dev/posts/configuration-as-a-control-plane-designing-for-safety-and-reliability-at-scale-bw3t7h8q2) · InfoQ · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [The future is modular: what a decade of running Kubernetes taught us about platforms](https://daily.dev/posts/the-future-is-modular-what-a-decade-of-running-kubernetes-taught-us-about-platforms-7e6lc6iue) · Giant Swarm · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#kubernetes](https://daily.dev/tags/kubernetes), [#gitops](https://daily.dev/tags/gitops), [#flux](https://daily.dev/tags/flux) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/configuration-management-at-giant-swarm-a-historical-overview-arf23qm5g) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Configuration management at Giant Swarm: a historical overview","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/configuration-management-at-giant-swarm-a-historical-overview-arf23qm5g","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/configuration-management-at-giant-swarm-a-historical-overview-arf23qm5g"},"datePublished":"2026-06-25T14:30:00.100Z","dateModified":"2026-06-25T14:53:32.971Z","description":"Giant Swarm traces the evolution of their internal configuration management system across three eras. 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