Installing the chart

Prerequisites

• Kubernetes 1.25+
• Helm 3.x

Installation steps

All examples in this guide use the public chart and images. If you've mirrored the repository for your own use (for example, to your Docker Hub namespace), update your commands to reference the mirrored chart instead of the public one.

For example:

• Public chart: dhi.io/<repository>:<tag>
• Mirrored chart: <your-namespace>/dhi-<repository>:<tag>

For more details about customizing the chart to reference other images, see the documentation⁠.

Step 1: Optional. Mirror the Helm chart and/or its images to your own registry

To optionally mirror a chart to your own third-party registry, you can follow the instructions in How to mirror an image ⁠ for either the chart, the image, or both.

The same regctl tool that is used for mirroring container images can also be used for mirroring Helm charts, as Helm charts are OCI artifacts.

For example:

 regctl image copy \
     "${SRC_CHART_REPO}:${TAG}" \
     "${DEST_REG}/${DEST_CHART_REPO}:${TAG}" \
     --referrers \
     --referrers-src "${SRC_ATT_REPO}" \
     --referrers-tgt "${DEST_REG}/${DEST_CHART_REPO}" \
     --force-recursive

Step 2: Create a Kubernetes secret for pulling images

The Docker Hardened Images that the chart uses require authentication. To allow your Kubernetes cluster to pull those images, you need to create a Kubernetes secret with your Docker Hub credentials or with the credentials for your own registry.

Follow the authentication instructions for DHI in Kubernetes⁠.

For example:

kubectl create secret docker-registry helm-pull-secret \
  --docker-server=dhi.io \
  --docker-username=<Docker username> \
  --docker-password=<Docker token> \
  --docker-email=<Docker email>

Step 3: Install the Helm chart

To install the chart, use helm install. Make sure you use helm login to log in before running helm install. Optionally, you can also use the --dry-run flag to test the installation without actually installing anything.

helm install my-argocd oci://dhi.io/argocd-chart --version <version> \
  --set "global.imagePullSecrets[0].name=helm-pull-secret" \

Replace <version> accordingly. If the chart is in your own registry or repository, replace dhi.io with your own registry and namespace. Replace helm-pull-secret with the name of the image pull secret you created earlier.

If you turn on Redis HA (redis-ha.enabled) and HAProxy (haproxy.enabled), this chart uses the dhi/redis-chart subchart as redis-ha and a separate dhi/haproxy-chart as HAProxy.

With the defaults, the redis-secret-init hook creates a Secret named argocd-redis with the password under the key auth. Argo CD’s own tooling uses that name and key; the chart sets redis-ha.auth.existingSecretPasswordKey to auth so the Redis chart reads the same field. If you turn off redisSecretInit and supply your own Secret, use the auth key or set existingSecretPasswordKey to whatever key you chose. The HAProxy pod loads the check password from haproxy.extraEnvs; point that at the same Secret name and key as redis-ha.auth. By default that is still argocd-redis / auth, which matches redis-secret-init and does not depend on the Helm release name. If you change the Secret or the key, update both the Redis auth settings and HAProxy’s extraEnvs so they stay in sync.

Step 4: Verify the installation

The deployment's pod should show up and running almost immediately:

$ kubectl get pods
NAME                                                        READY   STATUS      RESTARTS   AGE
pod/my-argocd-application-controller-0                      1/1     Running     0          26s
pod/my-argocd-applicationset-controller-877f88767-hkbk7     1/1     Running     0          26s
pod/my-argocd-dex-server-7478b58b56-t9lq4                   1/1     Running     0          26s
pod/my-argocd-notifications-controller-86996485f7-nw9q2     1/1     Running     0          26s
pod/my-argocd-redis-8f964c5cc-l2gmp                         2/2     Running     0          26s
pod/my-argocd-redis-secret-init-4cgx9                       0/1     Completed   0          30s
pod/my-argocd-repo-server-75d689bb78-cpwpz                  1/1     Running     0          26s
pod/my-argocd-server-6458db9b99-bm9mz                       1/1     Running     0          26s