Deploy Go Application on EKS Cluster using GitHub Actions, Terraform, Helm, and ArgoCD

Introduction

To streamline the software development life cycle and ensure efficient and effective deployment, DevOps practices have become indispensable in today’s fast-paced technology world. To this end, as a DevOps engineer, you must create a strong portfolio demonstrating your knowledge and skills.| On how to build an impressive DevOps portfolio using powerful tools such as EKS, GitHub Actions, Terraform, and ArgoCD; we will look at this blog. At the end of this tutorial you will have a fully functional CI/CD pipeline for deploying a Go-based application to a private EKS cluster with code quality checks, Docker image management, Helm chart deployment, and Slack notifications It shall be a whole

Prerequisites

Before we dive into the details, ensure you have the following prerequisites in place:

1. AWS Account: Set up an AWS account for creating and managing EKS clusters.
2. GitHub Account: A GitHub account to host your repositories and configure GitHub Actions.
3. Terraform: Installed on your local machine for managing infrastructure as code.
4. Kubectl: Installed and configured to interact with your Kubernetes cluster.
5. Helm: Installed for managing Kubernetes applications.
6. AWS CLI: Installed and configured to manage AWS resources from the command line.
7. Slack Webhook URL: (Optional) Integrating Slack notifications into your CI/CD pipeline.

So, I have created three repositories for this project.

EKS-Terraform-GitHub-Actions- Contains terraform code for EKS cluster and other required services along with GitHub actions workflow to deploy the infrastructure throw GitHub actions

https://github.com/AmanPathak-DevOps/EKS-Terraform-GitHub-Actions/tree/master

go-portfolio-project- Contains source code along with GitHub actions workflow including code analysis, docker image creation, image scanning, image tag updation, etc.

https://github.com/AmanPathak-DevOps/go-portfolio-project

go-app-devops- Contains helm chart where the manifests are present to deploy it on the EKS Cluster.

https://github.com/AmanPathak-DevOps/go-app-devops

Deploy EKS using GitHub Actions

Repo- https://github.com/AmanPathak-DevOps/EKS-Terraform-GitHub-Actions

Click on Actions

Click on Terraform

Click on Run workflow and run the plan to validate what are we going to deploy

The Plan is successful and you can click on Terraform-Action to view the blueprint of action

Total of 37(repo update 38) AWS resources will be create

Now, we will run the apply

Go to Terraform workflow and click on Run Workflow

The Apply is successful and you can click on Terraform-Action to view the created resources list

Total of 37(update 38) aws resources have been created

You can validate whether the cluster has been created or not by going to the AWS console

Once you try to connect with your EKS cluster on your local it will add the context.

But while running kubectl commands like get nodes, pods, etc you will get an error

If you look at the snippet, you will observe your local is unable to connect to your server

The reason behind this is your EKS cluster is Private and to access the cluster your server needs to be in the same VPC as the EKS cluster.

I have created one more instance and attached the same VPC that is used in the EKS Cluster.

You can refer to the below snippet

Login to your server and do the following things mentioned below-

Install aws cli, kubectl

Configure aws cli by using the aws configure command and run the kubectl get nodes command

Install helm which is one of our prerequisites

sudo snap install helm — classic

Install the Nginx ingress controller by using the below command

kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes/ingress-nginx/controller-v1.11.1/deploy/static/provider/aws/deploy.yaml

Validate whether your ingress controller pods are running or not. It should be running

kubectl get all -n ingress-nginx

Now, we need to install argoCD as per our project-required tool

kubectl create namespace argocd
kubectl apply -n argocd -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/argoproj/argo-cd/v2.4.7/manifests/install.yaml

Validate whether argocd pods are running or not by using the below command

kubectl get pods -n argocd

Now, we need to expose our argocd service to the Loadbalancer type as we need to access it outside of our cluster

kubectl patch svc argocd-server -n argocd -p ‘{“spec”: {“type”: “LoadBalancer”}}’

Validate whether the load balancer has been created or not by going to the AWS console

Copy the DNS name of your argocd and hit on your favorite browser

Click on Advanced as SSL is not configured on argoCD

Here is your ArgoCD

Now, the username is admin but we don’t know the password.

To get the password, we need to run a few commands in the next steps

Now, we require a password to log in to the argoCD console.

The below command will list the secrets of argocd

kubectl get secrets -n argocd

Run the below command and copy the password

kubectl edit secret argocd-initial-admin-secret -n argocd

Run the below command to decode the password

echo <your-argocd-password> | base64 — decode

Now, log in to your argoCD console

We have set everything up to deploy our application

But there is one more thing that is connected to the repository in argoCD

Why are we doing that?

So, our helm chart or manifest file is always stored in a private repository. To clone that repo, we need to set up our repository in argoCD.

Click on the settings icon on the left and then, click on Repositories

For now, we are going to connect the repo using HTTPS which means we need a Personal Access token(PAT)

So, kindly generate the Personal Access token(PAT) of your GitHub account

Provide the information accordingly

Once you see the connection status it means the repository has been connected successfully

Create an application on argocd

Let’s create a workflow for our source code

Navigate to Repo’s Settings -> Security(on the left side) -> Secrets and variables and click on Actions

Create required secrets in which docker PAT, docker username, GitHub PAT, and slack webhook URL
Note: I am configuring Slack notification, if you want to do it the same then, refer to this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8Tr3unIdNw and add a Slack webhook URL as well. But if you don’t want to integrate Slack then, you don’t need to add the secret. Also, skip the last job in the workflow.

This is our workflow code and you can check it out by clicking on the repo link

https://github.com/AmanPathak-DevOps/go-portfolio-project/blob/master/.github/workflows/go-app.yaml

Now, we are set to run our workflow/pipeline

Workflow got successful

The image has been pushed

The image tag has been updated in values.yaml file

Now, we will create an application on argocd to deploy our application on Kubernetes.

Provide the application name, repo URL, etc as shown in the below snippet

As soon as you create the application, it will be deployed.

You can click on the application to view all the resources that have been created by argoCD

You can also validate from your jump server by running the below command.

kubectl get all -n go-app

Check the ingress address by using the below command

kubectl get ing -n go-app

Go to your AWS console, navigate to the Load balancer, and copy the DNS name

Go to your domain provider and add A type record.

I am using AWS Route53 to add the record

Once you add the record you can hit your domain on your favorite browser and see the magic

Now, I will make a few changes to my portfolio website which will trigger the workflow and the entire application will be deployed without any human intervention

The updated image has been pushed to the docker hub

Received the Slack notification

Our v1.1.0 of go-portfolio has been deployed without any human intervention which means we achieved complete automation of CICD

Conclusion

Congratulations! You’ve built a comprehensive DevOps portfolio that shows an end-to-end automated CI/CD pipeline for deploying a Go-based application on the EKS cluster. This case demonstrates your knowledge of Terraform, GitHub Actions, and ArgoCD. The presentation of this portfolio reveals not only your technical abilities but also the ability to automate complex workflows, which is a desired characteristic of any DevOps team. Keep adding new projects and tools to your portfolio and continue experimenting because DevOps is an evolving field.

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