Argo CD Integration Strategies for Kubernetes Environments

In recent years, utilizing cloud-native technology has basically become mandatory; hence, every business that aspires to do this effectively should know how to properly utilize and manage Kubernetes.

If that’s something that you’d like to successfully overcome, then you should consider implementing Argo CD, which represents a Kubernetes-native continuous deployment solution.

Unlike external CD programs that only allow push-based deployments, this one is capable of pulling updated code from Git repositories and distributing it straight to Kubernetes resources. Now, in order to have safe and reliable deployments with it, you must be deliberate about templating tools, repository layout, policy enforcement, secret handling, etc.

There are a plethora of strategies that you can resort to, to accomplish this, and below, some of them are going to be unveiled.

Choose A Git Repo Layout That’s Suitable For Your Team

There are two models at your disposal, as far as this goes. The first one is a monorepo (which represents a single repo for multiple environments and apps), and a polyrepo (this one refers to one repo per one team or app).

Monorepos are great at streamlining discoverability; however, they can often be too hard to scale. The more the team grows, the more challenging it becomes. On the flip side, polyrepos boost access control and blast-radius isolation, but require tooling to effectively manage various repositories.

The Argo CD community and docs best practices suggest dividing application configuration from application source code and selecting the layout that will accommodate your operational model.

Consider Consulting Experts For These Purposes

If you’re puzzled by all of this, due to lack of experience, don’t worry, you’re not the only one. It’s much better to join forces with someone who is seasoned when it comes to this than to waste your time trying to figure out something that’s too confusing for you.

In these instances, many people turn to Argo CD consultants. That’s because these professionals are familiar (and have used in the past) some of the Argo CD best practices and are here to offer you some guidance that’s going to help you establish and maintain a multi-cluster environment, and, at the same time, speed up time-to-market. Since these experts are very knowledgeable, they will also provide you with advice that’s going to help you simplify and accelerate the adoption of different Argo CD’s features, making sure your business quickly accomplishes its goals.

Be Smart With Templates

In case you didn’t know, Argo CD actually supports numerous templating methods. For instance, Kustomize is supported for overlays, while Helm is normally employed as a templating engine. What you’ll ultimately pick should depend on the current needs and goals of your organization.

1. Kustomize is intended for environment overlays and patching YAML
2. Helm is perfect for reusable charts and parameterization
3. Jsonnet is designed for those who are looking for something that’s rather simple and who do not need parameterization

You Should Consider Argo Rollouts

What can be said about it? Namely, it can be described as a purpose-built controller that allows blue/green and canary approaches, traffic shifting, and automated analysis. If you merge it with Argo CD, you’ll end up with Git-driven, yet stable, secure, and progressive deployments.

Declare a Rollout in Git, allow Argo CD to sync it, and just allow Rollouts to manage traffic, shifting the right way. This mixture provides you with GitOps safety with fantastic release control.

You Do Not Need To Do It All At Once

Starting out and managing Argo CD represents quite a big challenge for most companies (referring to those that haven’t worked with it before), because they are faced with a lot of different concepts that are unknown to them, like YAML, CRDs, etc.

Even though it’s completely understandable if you want to fully get a grasp of all of this, the truth is that it’s not mandatory to do it all at once. Take your time to master it. Most teams start by pointing Argo CD at a single Git repo with maybe one or two applications just to get a glimpse of how the syncing functions.

Starting Simple Is Frequently The Best Thing You Can Do

Since you’re new to all of this, the best thing that you can do for starters is to start simple, meaning that you shouldn’t over-engineer. Argo CD is able to tackle multi-region setups with a plethora of apps, but that’s something that you do not need to do right from the start.

Argo CD is capable of streamlining Kubernetes delivery when merged with sensible repository structures, secret management, templating methods, and identity systems. The strategies that were suggested today are going to help you end up with reproducible deployments and secure release practices across clusters.