Install and Manage Argo CD with Ansible

Projects: c2platform/ansible, c2platform.core, c2platform.mw

This guide illustrates the installation of Argo CD within the C2 Platform development environment using C2 Platform’s Ansible collections. This automated process uses Vagrant , the Vagrant Ansible provisioner and, of course, Ansible.

Here’s an overview of the process orchestrated by Vagrant using Ansible as a provisioner:

1. Kubernetes Cluster Setup: Ansible configures a Kubernetes instance with the C2’s MicroK8s Ansible role c2platform.mw.microk8s  .
2. Kubernetes Configuration: Ansible further configures the Kubernetes cluster using the C2’s Kubernetes role c2platform.mw.kubernetes  .
3. Argo CD Installation: Argo CD is installed using the same Kubernetes role.
4. Argo Rollout Installation and Demo App Deployment: Argo Rollouts and the demo application are deployed using the same Kubernetes role.

After completing these steps, you can access the Argo CD UI at: https://argocd.c2platform.org

Prerequisites

Ensure the C2 Platform’s development environment is set up and the reverse and forward proxy c2d-rproxy1 is running.

c2
unset PLAY  # ensure all plays run
vagrant up c2d-rproxy1

For more information, refer to Setup a Development Environment on Ubuntu 22 .

Setup

Run the following command to create a Kubernetes instance and deploy Argo CD. The entire process takes about 7 minutes.

vagrant up c2d-argocd

The console output should be similar to provision.log .

Login using Argo CD CLI

SSH into the Vagrant LXD container c2d-argocd using the command:

vagrant ssh c2d-argocd

Inside c2d-argocd, the KUBECONFIG¹ environment variable is already configured, allowing the Argo CD CLI and Kubernetes tools like kubectl to connect to the cluster.

Log in to Argo CD with these commands:

export ARGOCD_ADMIN_INITIAL_PW="$(argocd admin initial-password -n argocd | head -1)"
argocd login argocd.c2platform.org --username admin --password $ARGOCD_ADMIN_INITIAL_PW

root@c2d-argocd:~# argocd login argocd.c2platform.org --username admin --password $ARGOCD_ADMIN_INITIAL_PW
'admin:login' logged in successfully
Context 'argocd.c2platform.org' updated
root@c2d-argocd:~#

Update admin password

For convenience, update to a simpler password, such as supersecret, ensuring it meets password requirements. Run the command:

argocd account update-password --account admin --current-password $ARGOCD_ADMIN_INITIAL_PW --new-password supersecret

Login to Argo CD UI

Launch Firefox using the configured Firefox profile (see Configure a FireFox Profile ). Navigate to https://argocd.c2platform.org , login as admin with the password supersecret. You should see the following:

Vagrant snapshot

After setup, create a snapshot (v0) for future reference:

vagrant snapshot save c2d-argocd v0

To restore, use:

vagrant snapshot restore c2d-argocd v0

Run vagrant --help for more information on Vagrant CLI commands.

Review

To gain an understanding of how this results was reached, let’s review the Ansible inventory project c2platform/ansible, To gain this understanding we have to look at the Ansible play that is involved, which is plays/mw/mk8s.yml and the Ansible configuration, which is stored in the group_vars/argocd folder.

Ansible Play

The Ansible play that is involved with the gsd-argocd node is plays/mw/mk8s.yml. There we can establish that three Ansible roles are involved:

1. c2platform.core.linux 
2. c2platform.mw.microk8s 
3. c2platform.mw.kubernetes 

To gain a better understanding of

Installation

Argo Rollouts installation involves two steps

1. Controller Installation: Create namespace argo-rollouts and then apply install.yaml . See group_vars/argocd/argo_rollouts.yml  .
2. Argo Rollouts Kubectl Plugin: Optional Download an installation of including optional bash completion.

Then a Argo Rollouts demo is installed, which consist of creating a Rollout and a Service resource.

Next Steps

With Argo CD installed, proceed to deploy the guestbook demo application, that will help you get a better understanding on how Argo CD works.

Additional Information

• Argo CD - Declarative GitOps CD for Kubernetes 
  • Getting Started 
    • Create An Application From A Git Repository 
  • User Guide 
    • Command Reference 
      • argocd_login 
      • argocd_account 
• Argo Rollouts - Kubernetes Progressive Delivery Controller 
  • Installation 
    • Kubectl Plugin Installation 
• Annotated Ingress resource - cert-manager Documentation 
• Welcome - Ingress-Nginx Controller