bitnamicharts/argo-cd repository overview

⁠Bitnami Secure Images Helm chart for Argo CD

Argo CD is a continuous delivery tool for Kubernetes based on GitOps.

Overview of Argo CD⁠

Trademarks: This software listing is packaged by Bitnami. The respective trademarks mentioned in the offering are owned by the respective companies, and use of them does not imply any affiliation or endorsement.

⁠TL;DR

helm install my-release oci://registry-1.docker.io/bitnamicharts/argo-cd

⁠Why use Bitnami Secure Images?

Those are hardened, minimal CVE images built and maintained by Bitnami. Bitnami Secure Images are based on the cloud-optimized, security-hardened enterprise OS Photon Linux⁠. Why choose BSI images?

• Hardened secure images of popular open source software with Near-Zero Vulnerabilities
• Vulnerability Triage & Prioritization with VEX Statements, KEV and EPSS Scores
• Compliance focus with FIPS, STIG, and air-gap options, including secure bill of materials (SBOM)
• Software supply chain provenance attestation through in-toto
• First class support for the internet’s favorite Helm charts

Each image comes with valuable security metadata. You can view the metadata in our public catalog here⁠. Note: Some data is only available with commercial subscriptions to BSI⁠.

If you are looking for our previous generation of images based on Debian Linux, please see the Bitnami Legacy registry⁠.

⁠Introduction

This chart bootstraps an Argo CD deployment on a Kubernetes cluster using the Helm package manager.

⁠Prerequisites

• Kubernetes 1.23+
• Helm 3.8.0+
• PV provisioner support in the underlying infrastructure
• ReadWriteMany volumes for deployment scaling

⁠Installing the Chart

To install the chart with the release name my-release:

helm install my-release oci://REGISTRY_NAME/REPOSITORY_NAME/argo-cd

The command deploys argo-cd on the Kubernetes cluster in the default configuration. The Parameters⁠ section lists the parameters that can be configured during installation.

⁠Configuration and installation details

⁠Resource requests and limits

Bitnami charts allow setting resource requests and limits for all containers inside the chart deployment. These are inside the resources value (check parameter table). Setting requests is essential for production workloads and these should be adapted to your specific use case.

To make this process easier, the chart contains the resourcesPreset values, which automatically sets the resources section according to different presets. Check these presets in the bitnami/common chart⁠. However, in production workloads using resourcesPreset is discouraged as it may not fully adapt to your specific needs. Find more information on container resource management in the official Kubernetes documentation⁠.

⁠Rolling VS Immutable tags⁠

It is strongly recommended to use immutable tags in a production environment. This ensures your deployment does not change automatically if the same tag is updated with a different image.

Bitnami will release a new chart updating its containers if a new version of the main container, significant changes, or critical vulnerabilities exist.

⁠Prometheus metrics

This chart can be integrated with Prometheus by setting *.metrics.enabled (under the repoServer, controller, applicationSet, server, notification and dex sections) to true. This will expose the Argo CD native Prometheus ports, as well as create a special metrics service, which can be configured under the metrics.service section. This metrics service will have the necessary annotations to be automatically scraped by Prometheus.

⁠Prometheus requirements

It is necessary to have a working installation of Prometheus or Prometheus Operator for the integration to work. Install the Bitnami Prometheus helm chart⁠ or the Bitnami Kube Prometheus helm chart⁠ to easily have a working Prometheus in your cluster.

⁠Integration with Prometheus Operator

The chart can deploy ServiceMonitor objects for integration with Prometheus Operator installations. To do so, set the value *.metrics.serviceMonitor.enabled=true (under the repoServer, controller, applicationSet, server, notifications and dex sections). Ensure that the Prometheus Operator CustomResourceDefinitions are installed in the cluster or it will fail with the following error:

no matches for kind "ServiceMonitor" in version "monitoring.coreos.com/v1"

Install the Bitnami Kube Prometheus helm chart⁠ for having the necessary CRDs and the Prometheus Operator.

⁠Backup and restore

To back up and restore Helm chart deployments on Kubernetes, you need to back up the persistent volumes from the source deployment and attach them to a new deployment using Velero⁠, a Kubernetes backup/restore tool. Find the instructions for using Velero in this guide⁠.

⁠Ingress

This chart provides support for Ingress resources. If you have an ingress controller installed on your cluster, such as nginx-ingress-controller⁠ or contour⁠ you can utilize the ingress controller to serve your application.To enable Ingress integration, set server.ingress.enabled to true for the http ingress or server.grpcIngress.enabled to true for the gRPC ingress.

The most common scenario is to have one host name mapped to the deployment. In this case, the xxx.ingress.hostname property can be used to set the host name. The xxx.ingress.tls parameter can be used to add the TLS configuration for this host.

However, it is also possible to have more than one host. To facilitate this, the xxx.ingress.extraHosts parameter (if available) can be set with the host names specified as an array. The xxx.ingress.extraTLS parameter (if available) can also be used to add the TLS configuration for extra hosts.

Adding the TLS parameter (where available) will cause the chart to generate HTTPS URLs, and the application will be available on port 443. The actual TLS secrets do not have to be generated by this chart. However, if TLS is enabled, the Ingress record will not work until the TLS secret exists.

Learn more about Ingress controllers⁠.

⁠Securing traffic using TLS

This chart facilitates the creation of TLS secrets for use with the Ingress controller (although this is not mandatory). Apart from the Ingress TLS certificates, Argo CD repo server will auto-generate a secret named argocd-repo-server-tls. This secret contains the TLS configuration for the Argo CD components. The secret will be created only if it does not exist, so if you want to add custom TLS configuration you can create a secret with that name before installing the chart. There are several common use cases for the TLS secrets generation:

• Generate certificate secrets based on chart parameters.
• Enable externally generated certificates.
• Manage application certificates via an external service (like cert-manager⁠).
• Create self-signed certificates within the chart (if supported).

In the first two cases, a certificate and a key are needed. Files are expected in .pem format.

Here is an example of a certificate file:

-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
MIID6TCCAtGgAwIBAgIJAIaCwivkeB5EMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBCwUAMFYxCzAJBgNV
...
jScrvkiBO65F46KioCL9h5tDvomdU1aqpI/CBzhvZn1c0ZTf87tGQR8NK7v7
-----END CERTIFICATE-----

Here is an example of a certificate key:

-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
MIIEogIBAAKCAQEAvLYcyu8f3skuRyUgeeNpeDvYBCDcgq+LsWap6zbX5f8oLqp4
...
wrj2wDbCDCFmfqnSJ+dKI3vFLlEz44sAV8jX/kd4Y6ZTQhlLbYc=
-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----

• If using Helm to manage the certificates based on the parameters, copy these values into the certificate and key values for a given *.ingress.secrets entry.
• If managing TLS secrets separately, it is necessary to create a TLS secret with name INGRESS_HOSTNAME-tls (where INGRESS_HOSTNAME is a placeholder to be replaced with the hostname you set using the *.ingress.hostname parameter).
• If your cluster has a cert-manager⁠ add-on to automate the management and issuance of TLS certificates, add to *.ingress.annotations the corresponding ones⁠ for cert-manager.
• If using self-signed certificates created by Helm, set both *.ingress.tls and *.ingress.selfSigned to true.

⁠Default config maps and secrets

The chart has hardcoded names for some ConfigMaps and Secrets like argocd-ssh-known-hosts-cm, argocd-repo-server-tls or argocd-ssh-known-hosts-cm. Argo CD will search for those specific names when the chart installed, so installing the chart twice in the same namespaces is not possible due to this restriction. For more information about each configmap or secret check the references at the corresponding YAML files.

⁠Using SSO

In order to use SSO you need to enable Dex by setting dex.enabled=true. You can follow this guide⁠ to configure your Argo CD deployment into your identity provider. After that, you need to configure Argo CD like described here⁠. You can set the Dex configuration at server.config.dex\.config that will populate the argocd-cm config map.

⁠Installing a Config Management Plugin

In order to install a Config Management Plugin as described in the official documentation⁠, it's recommended to run a sidecar container & mount the plugin configuration from a ConfigMap. You can achieve so by using repoServer.extraVolumes, repoServer.sidecars and extraDeploy parameters as shown in the example below:

repoServer:
  extraVolumes:
    - name: plugin-config
      configMap:
        name: my-plugin-config
    - name: plugins
      emptyDir: {}
    - name: plugin-tmp
      emptyDir: {}
    - name: var-files
      emptyDir: {}
  sidecars:
    - name: plugin-sidecar
      command: [argocd-cmp-server, --config-dir-path, /app/config]
      image: "{{ include \"argocd.image\" . }}"
      env:
        - name: ARGOCD_PLUGINSOCKFILEPATH
          value: /app/plugins
      securityContext:
        runAsNonRoot: true
        runAsUser: 1001
      volumeMounts:
        - mountPath: /app/plugins
          name: plugins
        - mountPath: /tmp
          name: plugin-tmp
        - mountPath: /var/run/argocd
          name: var-files
        # Insert plugin configuration
        - mountPath: /app/config/plugin.yaml
          subPath: plugin.yaml
          name: plugin-config
extraDeploy:
- apiVersion: v1
  kind: ConfigMap
  metadata:
    name: my-plugin-config
  data:
    plugin.yaml: |
      apiVersion: argoproj.io/v1alpha1
      kind: ConfigManagementPlugin
      metadata:
        name: my-plugin
      spec:
        version: v1.0
        (...)

⁠Allowing multi namespace tendancy

In case you would like to allow applications / application sets in multiple namespaces, you can use the following to configure Argo-CD.

Upstream docs:

• Reconfigure Argo CD to allow certain namespaces for apps⁠
• Reconfigure Argo CD to allow certain namespaces for appset⁠

controller:
  # Default is true
  clusterAdminAccess: true
  extraArgs:
  # Refer to documentation to allow specific namespaces:
  # https://argo-cd.readthedocs.io/en/stable/operator-manual/app-any-namespace/#change-workload-startup-parameters
  - --application-namespaces=*
  # Refer to documentation if you are enabling notifications
  # https://argo-cd.readthedocs.io/en/stable/operator-manual/notifications/#namespace-based-configuration
  - --self-service-notification-enabled

server:
  # Default is true
  clusterAdminAccess: true
  # Refer to recommended documentation for config:
  # https://argo-cd.readthedocs.io/en/stable/operator-manual/app-any-namespace/#switch-resource-tracking-method
  config:
    application.resourceTrackingMethod: annotation

repoServer:
  # Default is false
  clusterAdminAccess: true

notifications:
  # Enable if you would like notifications to be used, default false
  enabled: true
  # Default is false
  clusterAdminAccess: true

applicationSet:
  # Enable if you would like applicationSets to be used, default false
  enabled: true
  # Default is false
  clusterAdminAccess: true

  # Refer to documentation for SCM providers:
  # https://argo-cd.readthedocs.io/en/stable/operator-manual/applicationset/Appset-Any-Namespace/#scm-providers-secrets-consideration
  extraEnv:
  - name: ARGOCD_APPLICATIONSET_CONTROLLER_ENABLE_SCM_PROVIDERS
    value: true
  - name: ARGOCD_APPLICATIONSET_CONTROLLER_ALLOWED_SCM_PROVIDERS
    value: https://git.mydomain.com/,https://gitlab.mydomain.com/

  # Refer to documentation to allow specific namespaces:
  # https://argo-cd.readthedocs.io/en/stable/operator-manual/applicationset/Appset-Any-Namespace/#change-workload-startup-parameters
  extraArgs:
  - --applicationset-namespaces=*

⁠Additional environment variables

In case you want to add extra environment variables (useful for advanced operations like custom init scripts), you can use the extraEnvVars property.

argo-cd:
  extraEnvVars:
    - name: LOG_LEVEL
      value: error

Alternatively, you can use a ConfigMap or a Secret with the environment variables. To do so, use the extraEnvVarsCM or the extraEnvVarsSecret values.

⁠Sidecars

If additional containers are needed in the same pod as Argo-CD (such as additional metrics or logging exporters), they can be defined using the sidecars parameter.

sidecars:
- name: your-image-name
  image: your-image
  imagePullPolicy: Always
  ports:
  - name: portname
    containerPort: 1234

If these sidecars export extra ports, extra port definitions can be added using the service.extraPorts parameter (where available), as shown in the example below:

service:
  extraPorts:
  - name: extraPort
    port: 11311
    targetPort: 11311

If additional init containers are needed in the same pod, they can be defined using the initContainers parameter. Here is an example:

initContainers:
  - name: your-image-name
    image: your-image
    imagePullPolicy: Always
    ports:
      - name: portname
        containerPort: 1234

Learn more about sidecar containers⁠ and init containers⁠.

⁠Pod affinity

This chart allows you to set your custom affinity using the affinity parameter. Find more information about Pod affinity in the kubernetes documentation⁠.

As an alternative, use one of the preset configurations for pod affinity, pod anti-affinity, and node affinity available at the bitnami/common⁠ chart. To do so, set the podAffinityPreset, podAntiAffinityPreset, or nodeAffinityPreset parameters.

⁠Parameters

⁠Global parameters

⁠Common parameters

⁠Argo CD image parameters

⁠Argo CD application controller parameters

Note: the README for this chart is longer than the DockerHub length limit of 25000, so it has been trimmed. The full README can be found at https://github.com/bitnami/charts/blob/main/bitnami/argo-cd/README.md⁠