badhouseplants-net-old/content/posts/argocd-vs-helmfile-applicationset/index.md

title	date	draft	cover	ShowToc
ArgoCD vs Helmfile: ApplicationSet	2023-02-15T10:14:09+01:00	false	image caption relative responsiveImages /posts/argocd-vs-helmfile/cover-applicationset.png ArgoCD false false	true

This is a second post about "argocding" your infrastructure. [First can be found here]({{< ref "argocd-vs-helmfile-application" >}}).

There I've tried using Applications for deploying. Here I will try to show an example with ApplicationSets. As in the previous article, I will be installing VPA and Goldilocks

So let's prepare a base. We have 3 clusters:

• cluster-1
• cluster-2
• cluster-3

With ApplicationSets you have an incredible amount of ways to deploy stuff. So what I'm doing may look super-different from what you would do

I'm creating 3 manifests, one for each cluster.

apiVersion: argoproj.io/v1alpha1
kind: ApplicationSet
metadata:
  name: helm-releases
  namespace: argo-system
spec:
  syncPolicy:
    preserveResourcesOnDeletion: true
  generators:
    - git:
        repoURL: https://git.badhouseplants.net/allanger/helmfile-vs-argo.git
        revision: argo-applicationset-main
        files:
          - path: "cluster2/*"
    - git:
        repoURL: https://git.badhouseplants.net/allanger/helmfile-vs-argo.git
        revision: argo-applicationset-main
        files:
          - path: "common/*"
  template:
    metadata:
      name: "{{ argo.application }}"
      namespace: argo-system
    spec:
      project: "{{ argo.project }}"
      source:
        helm:
          valueFiles:
            - values.yaml
          values: |-
            {{ values }}            
        repoURL: "{{ chart.repo }}"
        targetRevision: "{{ chart.version }}"
        chart: "{{ chart.name }}"
      destination:
        server: "{{ argo.cluster }}"
        namespace: "{{ argo.namespace }}"

Manifests with a setup like this have only one values that is really different, so we could create just one manifest that would look like that:

apiVersion: argoproj.io/v1alpha1
kind: ApplicationSet
metadata:
  name: helm-releases
  namespace: argo-system
spec:
  syncPolicy:
    preserveResourcesOnDeletion: true
  generators:
    - git:
        repoURL: https://git.badhouseplants.net/allanger/helmfile-vs-argo.git
        revision: argo-applicationset-main
        files:
          - path: "$CLUSTER/*"
    - git:
        repoURL: https://git.badhouseplants.net/allanger/helmfile-vs-argo.git
        revision: argo-applicationset-main
        files:
          - path: "common/*"
  template:
    metadata:
      name: "{{ argo.application }}"
      namespace: argo-system
    spec:
      project: "{{ argo.project }}"
      source:
        helm:
          valueFiles:
            - values.yaml
          values: |-
            {{ values }}            
        repoURL: "{{ chart.repo }}"
        targetRevision: "{{ chart.version }}"
        chart: "{{ chart.name }}"
      destination:
        server: "{{ argo.cluster }}"
        namespace: "{{ argo.namespace }}"

And add a step in the CI pipeline, where we're substituting a correct value instead of the variable. But since I'm not really implementing a CI, I will create 3 manifests.

Then I need to add generators in the feature branch:

#/common/vpa.yaml
---
argo:
  cluster: https://kubernetes.default.svc
  application: vpa
  project: default
  namespace: vpa-system
chart:
  version: 1.6.0
  name: vpa
  repo: https://charts.fairwinds.com/stable
values: |
  updater:
    enabled: false  

#/cluster2/goldilocks.yaml
---
argo:
  cluster: https://kubernetes.default.svc
  application: goldilocks
  project: default
  namespace: vpa-system
chart:
  version: 6.5.0
  name: goldilocks
  repo: https://charts.fairwinds.com/stable
values: |

And the main problem here is that values are passed as a string. So you can't separate them into different files, use secrets or share common values. That can be solved with multi-source apps that came with ArgoCD 2.6, but I can't say that they are production-ready yet. Also, I've read that ApplicationSets can be used to separate values and charts, but it seemed a way too complicated to me back then, and I think that with ArgoCD 2.7 this problem will be completely solved, so I'm not sure that it makes sense to check that approach now.

Next thing is that Git generators are pointed to a specific branch, so I have two problems. How to test changes on the cluster-test and how to view diffs.

Test changes

This problem is solvable, I will show on a cluster-2 example, because I don't have 3 clusters running locally, but this logic should apply to the test cluster.

After you add new generators files, you need to deploy them to the test cluster, and you also need not override what's being tested by other team-members. So the best option that I currently see, is to get an ApplicationSet manifest that is already deployed to k8s and add new generators to it. So it looks like this:

apiVersion: argoproj.io/v1alpha1
kind: ApplicationSet
metadata:
  name: helm-releases
  namespace: argo-system
spec:
  syncPolicy:
    preserveResourcesOnDeletion: true
  generators:
    - git:
        repoURL: https://git.badhouseplants.net/allanger/helmfile-vs-argo.git
        revision: argo-applicationset-main
        files:
          - path: "cluster2/*"
    - git:
        repoURL: https://git.badhouseplants.net/allanger/helmfile-vs-argo.git
        revision: argo-applicationset-main
        files:
          - path: "common/*"
    # This should be added within CI and removed once a the branch is merged
    - git:
        repoURL: https://git.badhouseplants.net/allanger/helmfile-vs-argo.git
        revision: argo-applicationset-updated
        files:
          - path: "common/*"
    - git:
        repoURL: https://git.badhouseplants.net/allanger/helmfile-vs-argo.git
        revision: argo-applicationset-updated
        files:
          - path: "cluster2/*"
  template:
    metadata:
      name: "{{ argo.application }}"
      namespace: argo-system
    spec:
      project: "{{ argo.project }}"
      source:
        helm:
          valueFiles:
            - values.yaml
          values: |-
            {{ values }}            
        repoURL: "{{ chart.repo }}"
        targetRevision: "{{ chart.version }}"
        chart: "{{ chart.name }}"
      destination:
        server: "{{ argo.cluster }}"
        namespace: "{{ argo.namespace }}"

After applying this change, this what I've got

Those applications should be deployed automatically within a pipeline. So steps in your pipeline would look like that:

• Get current ApplicationSet manifest from Kubernetes
• Add new generators
• Sync applications with argocd cli

But I'm not sure what going to happen if you have two different pipelines at the same time. Probably, changes will be overwritten but the pipeline that is a little bit slower. But I think that it can be solved without a lot of additional problems. And also I don't think that it's a situation that you will have to face very often, so you can just rerun your pipeline after all.

Diffs

Diffs are not supported for ApplicationSets at the moment, and I'm not sure when they will be: https://github.com/argoproj/argo-cd/issues/10895

And with the diffing situation from the previous article, I think that they will not work the way I'd like them to work.

But I think that the easiest way to deal with them right now, would be adding git generators not only to a test cluster, but to all clusters, add to those applications an additional label (e.g. test: true), and sync only those applications that don't have this label. So the whole pipeline for branch would look like:

Feature branch

• Get current ApplicationSet manifests from Kubernetes (each cluster)
• Add new generators (each cluster)
• Sync applications with argocd cli (only test cluster) Main branch (merged)
• Get current ApplicationSet manifests from Kubernetes (each cluster)
• Remove obsolete generators (each cluster)
• Sync applications with argocd cli (each cluster and filter by label not to sync those, that are not merged yet)

But I'm not sure exactly how to manage these test labels. They can be added manually to generators files, but then you can't be sure that one won't forget to do it, so I think that, if possible, they should be added to generators inside an ApplicationSet manifest, or added to applications right after they were created by an ApplicationSet, but the second way is not the best, because if the main pipeline is faster than feature's one, you will have it installed in a production cluster.

Conclusion

I like this way a way more than simple Applications, especially with multi-source applications. I think that the main problem with this approach are complicated CI/CD pipelines. And I don't like that for diffing you need to have something added to prod clusters. Diff must be safe, and if you add 1000 generator files and push them, you will have 1000 new applications in you ArgoCD. I'm not sure how it's going to handle it. And since ArgoCD is something that is managing your whole infrastructure, I bet, you want it to work like a charm, you don't want to doubt how it's going to survive situations like this.

Amount of changes is not big, pretty close to helmfile, I'd say. And the more common stuff you have, the less you need to copy-paste. You can see the PR here: https://git.badhouseplants.net/allanger/helmfile-vs-argo/pulls/3

Thanks,

Oi!