How to deploy an application with Argo CD using a Helm repository

In this blog post I will cover the topic, how to use an existing Helm Chart project and an existing Argo CD instance on OpenShift to deploy an example application.

The example application is a Node.js server application I used in several blog posts related to OpenShift.

This blog post is in the context of my last blog posts using IasCable and Software Everywhere to setup GitOps.

In this last blog post I showed how to setup Red Hat OpenShift and Argo CD and an initial GitOps repository on IBM Cloud and in this blog post we reuse the created environment with IasCable GitOps to create a new application inside Argo CD manually.

The blog post is structured in following sections:

Basic architectural overview
Setup steps
Some additional details
Summary

1. Basic architectural overview

The following diagram shows a simplified overview of the dependencies we are going to setup.

As you see, we have an IBM Cloud in Red Hat OpenShift cluster with Argo CD installed.
We have a GitHub project with a Helm Chart for the example application deployment in place.

2. Setup steps

Open your OpenShift cluster on IBM Cloud and follow the next steps.

Step 1: Get the admin credentials

Select in the Administrator perspective workloads/secrets
Insert in filter argocd-access
Open the secret and copy ARGO_CD_PASSWORD and ARGOCD_USER and save it for later usage.

Step 2: Open `Argo CD`

Step 3: Log on to `Argo CD` with the saved user and password values

Step 4: Connect to the GitHub repository with the `Helm Chart`

GitHub project link: https://github.com/thomassuedbroecker/vend-helm

Step 5: Create a project

Name: vend-helm

Step 6: Configure the project

Select as source repositories the newly created repository https://github.com/thomassuedbroecker/vend-helm

Configure destinations select https://kubernetes.default.svc

Configure the cluster resource allow list with wild cards

Configure the namespace resource allow list with wild cards

Step 7: Create a new application

General -> Name: vend-helm
General -> Project: vend-helm
General -> Sync policy: Manual
Source -> Repository URL: https://github.com/thomassuedbroecker/vend-helm
Source -> Revision: HEAD
Source -> Path: charts/vend-helm
Destination -> Cluster Name: in-cluster
Destination -> Namespace: vend

Helm : Just use the defaults

Press create

Step 8: Sync the application

Step 9: Verify the status

Step 10: Open the application

3. Some additional details

You can also configure Argo CD with yaml files and apply them to your cluster. Here is a small initial overview of created resources in the OpenShift cluster. You also find links to example initial Argo DC yaml files I put into the Helm GitHub project.

Argo CD repository to the public GitHub repository (this information will be saved in a secret) The image below shows the secret in OpenShift to connect to a GitHub repository.

ArgoCD project thats points to the Helm chart.

Argo CD application with will apply the Helm templates to create the application in OpenShift.

4. Summary

As we saw, it is very easy to create an example environment with IasCable and Software Everywhere to setup GitOps and we were easily able to add our own application to Argo CD.

Let’s see how we will automate the creation of our own application with IasCable and Software Everywhere in one of the next blog posts.

I hope this was useful to you and let’s see what’s next?

Greetings,

Thomas

#ibmcloud, #softwareeverywhere, #iascable, #argocd, #openshift, #helm

How to deploy an application with Argo CD using a Helm repository

1. Basic architectural overview