Kustomize-based GitOps Repository Setup for SmoothGlue Run Deployments

SmoothGlue utilizes Argo CD to allow developers to declaratively create and update their application deployments using the GitOps paradigm. This guide will help developers create and manage a Git repository to store their application's deployment configuration for consumption by Argo CD.

GitOps facilitates continuous deployment of applications by allowing developers to declaratively write the expected state of their application deployments, which Argo CD then reads and executes. This guide focuses on defining the expected state using Kustomize, but if preferred, developers may also use Helm in their GitOps flow. See the Helm-based GitOps Repository Setup documentation for more details.

Example Repository

SmoothGlue recommends storing the deployment configuration for an application in a separate repository from that application's source code. SmoothGlue Cloud users may fork the Full Stack Ops GitLab repository into their own organization to act as a template; otherwise, users may create the directory structure manually.

base/
├── back-end/
    ├── deployment.yaml
    ├── kustomization.yaml
    ├── secret.yaml
    ├── service.yaml
    └── virtual-service.yaml
├── front-end/
    ├── deployment.yaml
    ├── kustomization.yaml
    ├── service.yaml
    └── virtual-service.yaml
├── resources/
    └── namespace.yaml
└── kustomization.yaml
dev/
├── kustomization.yaml
└── pull-credentials.json
├── secrets.yaml

See the Full Stack Example Manifests page for the contents of these files.

The aforementioned directory structure has two top-level directories: base and dev. The base directory contains the basic Kubernetes manifests necessary to deploy the application, and the dev directory extends the configuration defined in the base directory with the necessary configuration for the application to run in the dev environment. When you are ready to deploy to production, the structure can easily be extended to add in a production directory to store the production configuration.

Base Kustomization

The base directory contains three directories and a file:

• back-end/
  • This example assumes an application architecture with split back-end and front-end deployments. This directory contains the Kubernetes manifests necessary to deploy the application back-end.
• front-end/
  • This directory contains the Kubernetes manifests necessary to deploy the application back-end.
• resources/
  • This directory contains Kubernetes resources not associated with either the back-end or front-end specifically.
• kustomization.yaml
  • This file is the entrypoint for the base Kustomization and refers to all the other resources that need to be created.