ArgoCD helps to automate the deployment and management of Kubernetes applications using GitOps principles.

In this tutorial, we will learn how to automate the process of deploying and managing the Kubernetes cluster with ArgoCD.

Prerequisites

• Minikube local setup

• Github account

• YAML syntax

Steps

Git repository

Create a GitHub repository and place your Kubernetes configuration files in a directory.

For this demo, we will use a very simple deployment that uses mongodb and mongo-express images. All files are available here.

Install ArgoCD in K8s cluster

To install argocd in our K8s cluster, we need to create a namespace called argocd and apply configuration yaml file by using the following commands.

~ kubectl create namespace argocd

~ kubectl apply -n argocd -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/argoproj/argo-cd/stable/manifests/install.yaml

To access the ArgoCD UI use the following command

kubectl port-forward -n argocd svc/argocd-server 8080:443

Grab the URL and paste it into your browser.

Note:

Username : admin

password is auto-generated and saved in a secret calledargocd-initial-admin-secret . It can be accessed using the following command and it is in base64 so don't forget to decode it.

kubectl get secret argocd-initial-admin-secret -n argocd

Configure ArgoCD with Application CRD

Let's write a configuration file for argocd to connect it to the git repository where the configuration files are hosted.

YAML File:

apiVersion: argoproj.io/v1alpha1
kind: Application
metadata:
  name: myapp-argo-application
  namespace: argocd
spec:
  project: default

  source:
   repoURL: https://github.com/Sindhuinti/k8s-configuration/demo.git
   targetRevision: HEAD
   path: .
  destination: 
    server: https://kubernetes.default.svc
    namespace: default

  syncPolicy:
    syncOptions:
    - CreateNamespace=true

    automated:
      selfHeal: true
      prune: true

ArgoCD pulls Git repository every 3 minutes. If you don't want this delay, you can configure a Git webhook.

Now apply the configuration file.

kubectl apply -f argocd.yaml

Test our setup by updating configuration files

When you change the configuration files in a Git repository that ArgoCD is monitoring, ArgoCD will detect the changes and initiate a deployment process to update the application in the target Kubernetes cluster.

ArgoCD continuously monitors the Git repository for changes and can automatically synchronize the state of the deployed application with the latest version of the configuration files. When a change is detected, ArgoCD will fetch the new version of the configuration files from the Git repository and generate the appropriate Kubernetes manifests to deploy or update the application.

Congratulations on successfully configuring ArgoCD in your K8s cluster! 🎉

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