App of apps

ArgoCD GitOps managed app of apps for Kubernetes lab environments for experimentation and learning. This app of apps provide git source of desired resources to for deployment into a Kubernetes cluster of your choosing. The README below covers how to spin this up quickly on a local machine.

ArgoCD automatically applies updates to the resources in the git repository to the Kubernetes cluster.

Local k3d cluster

Install Docker, k3d, Helm and ArgoCD

Get started with a local Kubernetes cluster using k3d. First install and startup Docker. Then install k3d as described in the k3d documentation. For example with Homebrew:

brew install k3d

Create the cluster with the load balancer listening on port 433 for https access to the services.

k3d cluster create my-cluster -p "443:443@loadbalancer"

We'll use Helm to install ArgoCD in our cluster and use the argocd command line interface for convenience. For example, with Homebrew install with:

brew install helm argocd

Add the Helm repository for ArgoCD which hosts the Helm charts we need.

helm repo add argo https://argoproj.github.io/argo-helm
helm repo update

Install ArgoCD

helm install argocd argo/argo-cd --namespace argocd --create-namespace \
  --values boot/argocd-values.yaml

Apply an application from the env folder, for example:

kubectl apply -f env/base.yaml

Get the CA certificate

kubectl get secret -n cert-manager root-secret -o jsonpath="{.data.ca\.crt}" |
  base64 -d > /tmp/lab-cluster-ca.crt

And trust it

```sh
sudo security add-trusted-cert -d -r trustRoot \
  -k "/Library/KeyChains/System.keychain"      \
  /tmp/lab-cluster-ca.crt

For this local stack, we'll use local domain names for simplicity. Register these in /etc/hosts

127.0.0.1 argocd.local
127.0.0.1 grafana.local
127.0.0.1 prometheus.local
127.0.0.1 traefik.local

Now we're ready to log in to Argo CD. Get the password with,

argocd admin initial-password -n argocd

Log in to Argo CD CLI with username admin and password from above.

argocd login --username admin argocd.local

Change this initial admin password to something secret.

argocd account update-password

You can log in to the ArgoCD console at https://argocd.local

Prepare the configuration for the app of apps

Install direnv

brew install direnv

Set GRAFANA_ADMIN_PASSWORD in .envrc file

export GRAFANA_ADMIN_PASSWORD=super-secret

Set the Grafana secret

kubectl create -n monitoring secret generic grafana-password \
  --from-literal=admin-password=$GRAFANA_ADMIN_PASSWORD      \
  --from-literal=admin-user=admin

Install the app of apps

And install app of apps

argocd app create app-of-apps                            \
  --sync-policy automated --sync-option Prune=true       \
  --repo https://github.com/adaptivekind/app-of-apps.git \
  --path env/k3d                                         \
  --dest-server https://kubernetes.default.svc

All the apps should now spin up in the Kubernetes cluster. View the status and troubleshoot in the ArgoCD dashboard.

Accessing deployed services

Log in to Grafana at https://grafana.local/.

Clean up

Delete the app

argocd app delete app-of-apps
helm uninstall argo-cd -n argocd

or just delete the cluster

k3d cluster delete my-cluster