Argo CD 2.9: Enhanced GitOps and Progressive Delivery

Introduction

Argo CD 2.9, released on July 10, 2024, continues to advance GitOps practices with enhanced ApplicationSets, improved progressive delivery capabilities, and refined multi-cluster management. This release focuses on making GitOps more accessible and powerful for teams managing complex Kubernetes deployments.

Enhanced ApplicationSets

• Generator improvements provide more flexible ways to generate Applications across clusters, environments, and Git paths.
• Cluster discovery enhancements automatically discover and manage Applications across cluster fleets.
• Git directory scanning improvements enable better organization of multi-application repositories.
• Template customization allows fine-grained control over Application generation with advanced variable substitution.

Progressive Delivery Enhancements

1. Rollout strategies support canary, blue-green, and progressive rollouts with automated promotion and rollback.
2. Analysis templates enable automated verification of deployments using metrics, logs, and external tools.
3. Traffic splitting provides fine-grained control over traffic distribution during progressive rollouts.
4. Automated promotion enables hands-free progression through rollout stages based on success criteria.

Multi-Cluster Management

• Cluster health monitoring provides real-time visibility into cluster connectivity and resource availability.
• Centralized configuration enables consistent Application deployment across multiple clusters.
• Cluster templates allow reusable configurations for consistent cluster setup across environments.
• Fleet management simplifies operations across large numbers of clusters with unified policies.

User Experience Improvements

• Modern UI delivers improved navigation, resource visualization, and application health dashboards.
• Application comparison view highlights configuration drift between Git and cluster state with diff visualization.
• Resource tree visualization shows application dependencies, health status, and sync status.
• CLI enhancements provide better command-line experience with improved output formatting and new commands.

Performance & Scalability

• Reconciliation optimization reduces controller CPU usage and improves response times for large Application inventories.
• Caching improvements accelerate Git repository and Helm chart access with intelligent refresh strategies.
• Resource filtering enables efficient querying of Applications and resources across namespaces and clusters.
• Metrics expansion provides detailed observability into sync performance, resource counts, and controller health.

Getting Started

kubectl create namespace argocd
kubectl apply -n argocd -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/argoproj/argo-cd/v2.9.0/manifests/install.yaml

Create a progressive rollout Application:

apiVersion: argoproj.io/v1alpha1
kind: Application
metadata:
  name: myapp
  namespace: argocd
spec:
  project: default
  source:
    repoURL: https://github.com/org/app-config.git
    targetRevision: main
    path: apps/myapp
  destination:
    server: https://kubernetes.default.svc
    namespace: production
  syncPolicy:
    automated:
      prune: true
      selfHeal: true
    syncOptions:
    - CreateNamespace=true
  revisionHistoryLimit: 10

Summary

Argo CD 2.9 strengthens its position as the leading GitOps platform, providing teams with powerful tools for managing Kubernetes applications with confidence and efficiency.