Argo Rollouts Demo

A complete local environment for demonstrating Argo Rollouts with Nginx Ingress Controller and Prometheus monitoring.

Overview

This project provides a development environment to showcase progressive delivery capabilities with Argo Rollouts:

• Local Kubernetes environment (kind, minikube, or k3d)
• Nginx Ingress Controller for traffic management
• Prometheus and Grafana for metrics and visualization
• Example applications demonstrating various deployment strategies

Prerequisites

• Kubernetes cluster (minikube, kind, or k3d)
• kubectl
• Helm
• Argo Rollouts kubectl plugin

Setup

1. Start Local Kubernetes Cluster

# Using kind
kind create cluster --name argo-rollouts-demo

# OR with minikube
minikube start --cpus 4 --memory 8192

2. Install ArgoCD

kubectl apply -k argocd

3. Install kube-prometheus-stack, Nginx Ingress Controller and Argo Rollouts using ArgoCD

kubectl apply -k apps/argo-rollouts
kubectl apply -k apps/kube-prometheus-stack
kubectl apply -k apps/nginx-ingress-controller

4. Deploy Demo Applications

kubectl apply -f ./apps/rollouts-demo

Usage

Accessing Demo Applications

Set Up Ingress Host

export INGRESS_HOST=$(kubectl get svc -n ingress-nginx ingress-nginx-controller -o jsonpath='{.status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].ip}')

# If using minikube, run in a separate terminal:
# minikube tunnel

Access Example Application

# Get host and IP
kubectl get ingress rollouts-demo -o jsonpath='{.spec.rules[0].host}'
kubectl get ingress rollouts-demo -o jsonpath='{.status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].ip}'

# Add to /etc/hosts for local testing
# Example: echo '198.19.249.2 rollouts-demo.example.com' >> /etc/hosts

# Then open http://rollouts-demo.example.com in your browser

Access Argo Rollouts Dashboard

kubectl argo rollouts dashboard
# Open http://localhost:3100/rollouts

Access Grafana

# Port-forward Grafana service
kubectl port-forward svc/prometheus-grafana -n monitoring 3000:80

# Access Grafana at http://localhost:3000
# Default credentials: admin / prom-operator

# Import Nginx dashboard:
# https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes/ingress-nginx/main/deploy/grafana/dashboards/nginx.json

# Import Argo dashboard by ID: 14584

Managing Rollouts

Trigger a Rollout

# Update application image to trigger rollout
kubectl argo rollouts set image rollouts-demo rollouts-demo=argoproj/rollouts-demo:blue

# Watch rollout progress
kubectl argo rollouts get rollout rollouts-demo --watch

Promote a Rollout

# After verification, promote the rollout
kubectl argo rollouts promote rollouts-demo

Deployment Strategies

1. Canary Deployment: Gradually shifts traffic from stable to new version
2. Blue/Green Deployment: Deploys new version alongside old version, then switches traffic
3. Analysis with Prometheus: Uses metrics to automatically validate deployments

Project Structure

.
├── README.md
├── apps/                       # Application manifests
│   ├── argo-rollouts/          # Argo Rollouts components
│   ├── ingress-nginx/          # Ingress controller
│   ├── kube-prometheus-stack/  # Prometheus and Grafana
│   └── rollouts-demo/          # Demo application
└── screenshots/                # Demo screenshots

Troubleshooting

• kube-prometheus-stack failed to sync on ArgoCD: Select the out-of-sync application and click on the "Sync" button with "Replace" strategy.
• Metrics not showing in Prometheus: Verify ServiceMonitor resources are correctly configured

Resources

• Argo Rollouts Documentation
• Nginx Ingress Controller
• Prometheus Documentation