argocd-and-helm.md

Exercise: Deploying helm charts with Bitnami

Learning Goals

• Deploy Jenkins using Helm with custom values.
• Modify Helm values for customization.
• Put helm values in a values file utilizing multi-source.

Introduction

Multi-source deployment in ArgoCD

💡 Example

apiVersion: argoproj.io/v1alpha1
kind: Application
metadata:
  name: student-0-jenkins
  namespace: argocd
spec:
  # Reference to the project name.
  project: default

  # Define the destination cluster for this application.
  destination:
    # The namespace the application should be deployed to.
    namespace: student-X
    # Specify the name of the destination cluster, either name or server url.
    name: in-cluster

  # Define the synchronization policy for the Application.
  syncPolicy:
    automated: {}

  # Define where the application will fetch its source from.
  sources:
    # Specify the repository URL for the Helm chart.
    - repoURL: 'https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami'
      # Specify the target revision of the helm repository.
      targetRevision: 12.4.0
      # Specify the name of the Helm chart as "Jenkins".
      chart: jenkins
      helm:
        # Reference the values file for the Helm chart in another repository.
        valueFiles:
          # Include a values file from a location specified by a variable "$values".
          - $values/jenkins/values.yaml

      # Specify the second source; URL for the Git repository.
    - repoURL: 'https://github.com/<YOUR GIT REPO>/argocd-katas'
      # Specify the branch of the Git repository.
      targetRevision: main
      # name this source "values" for reference in the above source.
      ref: values

Exercise

Overview

In this exercise, you will:

• Deploy Jenkins in the ArgoCD UI using Bitnami Helm chart.
• Change the source of the deployment file.
• Write a multi-source deployment file.
• Change the values in the deployment file for automatic changes to the Jenkins app.

Step by Step Instructions

More Details

Tasks

Deploying Jenkins with Bitnami Helm

• Look into the repository site to see that a repository called bitnami with the URL https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami is there.
• Click on Applications in the navigation bar.
• Click on New App to create a new application.
• Fill in the following details:
  • Application Name: <your name>-jenkins
  • Project Name: default
  • Sync Policy: Automatic
  • Repository Type: Helm
  • Repository URL: https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami (or select from the dropdown)
  • Chart: Jenkins
  • Version: 12.4.0
  • Cluster: in-cluster or https://kubernetes.default.svc
  • Namespace: <your namespace>

Under the helm parameters, you can see that there are a lot of parameters that can be customized. We will be customizing one of them.

• Find service.type and change it to NodePort.

• Find persistence.enabled and change it to false.

• Find jenkinsPassword and change it to student.

• Click on Create.

• Click on the application to see the details.

• Find the http nodeport by clicking on the studentx-jenkins service.

• Access the Jenkins site by going to http://<node-ip>:<nodeport>. You can find the external node IP by running kubectl get nodes -o wide.

Customizing the Jenkins deployment with a values file We will change the values of the Jenkins deployment by using a values file. This is useful when you want to keep your values in a separate file and not in the ArgoCD UI.

• Look at the values.yaml file in the jenkins directory. You can see that the service.type is set to NodePort, and two other values.
• Now find the manifest in the ArgoCD UI by clicking on app details.
• Change your manifest in ArgoCD in to use the values.yaml file by changing source to sources like the following:

project: default
destination:
  namespace: student-X
  name: in-cluster
syncPolicy:
  automated: {}
sources:
  - repoURL: 'https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami'
    targetRevision: 12.4.0
    helm:
      valueFiles:
        - $values/jenkins/values.yaml
    chart: jenkins
  - repoURL: 'https://github.com/<YOUR GIT REPO>/argocd-katas'
    targetRevision: main
    ref: values

💡 Remember to add your own repo to the file as well, as seen on the bottom. Pay attention to formatting.

• Click save.

💡 Argo UI may break when you click save. This is because the multi source feature is still in beta. If this happens, you can just refresh the page and it should be fine.

💡 It might also be that the application has a hard time syncing the new pod. You can try to delete the replica set and see if it works. If not, you can delete the application and try again.

• Try to change something in the values.yaml file, push it up, and see that the application is synced automatically. If you lack inspiration, you can change the service.type to ClusterIP and see that the service is now a ClusterIP service.