Argo CD v2.1 first release candidate is ready

Argo CD team is happy to announce the availability of a first candidate for the v2.1 release. The new release introduces several brand new features, bug fixes, and multiple enhancements of existing functionalities. Read on to learn more!

Argo CD Core

Argo CD is well known for its rich set of features that allows using it in a multi-tenant environment. Features like SSO, RBAC, built-in user management allow using the single Argo CD instance to serve the needs of multiple teams without compromising security.

However, not everyone needs multi-tenancy. What if you just want to use Argo CD yourself and just want to rely on built-in Kubernetes RBAC to protect access to your cluster? In this case, all features mentioned above are just standing in your way and introduce unnecessary complexity. The v2.1 introduces Argo CD Core - lightweight Argo CD distribution that packages only core GitOps features and relies on Kubernetes API/RBAC to power UI and CLI.

You can find more details about Core installation in Argo CD installation instructions or in community presentation recording but here is a quick overview to give you a taste of a feature:

• Install Argo CD Core using the following commands:

kubectl create namespace argocd
kubectl config set-context --current --namespace=argocd
kubectl apply -n argocd -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/argoproj/argo-cd/v2.1.0-rc1/manifests/core-install.yaml

• Configure argocd CLI to use Kubernetes API using argocd login --core and you are done! Run familiar CLI commands such as argocd app create as usual.
• Start web users interface locally using argocd admin dashboard and access UI via http://localhost:8080

Core Features

The Argo CD core features got better again. The release introduces stability and performance enhancements as well as new features.

Faster Synchronization

The synchronization process became much much faster and requires significantly less memory. The applications that manage a large number (50+) of resources are synchronizing up to 100 times faster. You would benefit from this enhancement even you have smaller applications. The improvement allows synchronizing multiple applications in parallel quicker and without memory usage spikes.

Fewer Git Requests

Argo CD needs to periodically request the Git provider to discover recently committed manifest changes. The resolved commit revisions are cached per Argo CD application. However, it was not enough and resulted in too many Git requests if the Git repository contains multiple applications. The v2.1 introduces an additional caching that ensures that each repository's target revisions are queried only once per reconciliation cycle. This dramatically reduces the number of Git requests. The picture below demonstrates the drop of Git requests after the upgrade to v2.1.0-rc1.

• Improved Diffing Customizations: use JQ path expressions to exclude required fields from the diffing.
• Health assessment support for new CRDs: introduced health assessment of CRDs from trident.netapp.io, elasticsearch.k8s.elastic.co, cluster.x-k8s.io, and minio.min.io API groups.

Easier Configuration

A set of changes had been implemented to simplify configuring Argo CD. Don’t worry about breaking your Argo CD instance after the upgrade. All changes are backward compatible and you have enough time to start using the new settings format.

Simplified Repository Registration

You no longer need to modify the argocd-cm ConfigMap to register a new Git or Helm repository. Just specify the repository credentials in a Kubernetes secret and it will be discovered by Argo CD:

Enhanced Resource Customizations

Argo CD allows customizing resources health checks and configuring custom actions using resource.customizations key in the argocd-cm ConfigMap. In the upcoming release, the resource.customizations key has been deprecated in favor of a separate ConfigMap key per resource. This allows to decompose the Argo CD configuration and makes it more convenient to use with config management tools such as Kustomize.

• Reference secret values from any Kubernetes secret: starting v2.1 you can use sensitive data stored in any Kubernetes secret to configure Argo CD.
• Simplify parametrization of Argo CD server processes: an additional optional ConfigMap argocd-cmd-params-cm has been introduced. The ConfigMap pulls together various settings that control the behavior of different Argo CD components.

The argocd-util is dead, long live argocd admin!

We’ve introduced argocd-util in v2.0 release in order to help Argo CD administrators to support and manage Argo CD instances. In order to simplify discovery the argocd-util functionality had been merged into the argocd CLI and now available under argocd admin subcommand.

With this change, you no longer need to download a separate CLI to get admin specific set of commands. Use argocd admin to validate Argo CD settings, generate declarative application/project definitions, and more!

Refreshed User Interface

Last but not least Argo CD UI got better! Changes include:

• Enhanced and more consistent filters on Applications List and Applications Details pages.
• Status bar on the Application List page.
• The redesigned search box on the Application List page and more.

Visit the Argo CD demo instance at https://cd.apps.argoproj.io/ and see it yourself!

Where Can I Get the New Release?

For more details and installation instructions, check the release notes, and upgrade instructions. Please try the release candidate and share your feedback. A big thanks to all Argo Community contributors and users for their contributions, feedback, and help testing the release!