Lab: Building a Complete CI/CD Pipeline

Goal

Build a continuous integration pipeline using GitHub Actions that builds a Docker image, scans it for vulnerabilities, and updates a deployment manifest. Then, configure ArgoCD to automatically deploy the new version.

Prerequisites

• A GitHub account
• A Docker Hub account
• A running Kubernetes cluster (e.g., Minikube, kind)
• kubectl installed

Environment Setup

1. Fork the sample application repository provided in the course materials.
2. Generate a Docker Hub access token and store it as a GitHub Secret (DOCKER_USERNAME, DOCKER_PASSWORD).

Step-by-step instructions

Step 1: Create the CI Pipeline

1. In your repository, create .github/workflows/ci.yaml.
2. Configure it to run on pushes to the main branch.
3. Add a step to build the Docker image and tag it with the commit SHA.
4. Add a step to push the image to Docker Hub.
5. Add a step to update the deployment.yaml file in your repository with the new image tag.

Step 2: Install ArgoCD

1. Install ArgoCD in your Kubernetes cluster:

   kubectl create namespace argocd
   kubectl apply -n argocd -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/argoproj/argo-cd/stable/manifests/install.yaml

Step 3: Configure ArgoCD Application

1. Forward the ArgoCD UI port to access it locally.
2. Login using the initial admin password.
3. Create a new Application pointing to your Git repository’s manifest folder.
4. Set the sync policy to Automated.

Verification

Push a code change to your application. Watch the GitHub Action run. Once complete, observe ArgoCD detecting the new manifest version and syncing the changes to the cluster.

Cleanup

Delete the ArgoCD namespace and the application namespace.