CI/CD with GitOps – Part 2: Hands-On Implementation

Hello tech enthusiasts!

In Part 1, we explored the theory behind CI/CD with GitOps. Today, we’re making it real – a full hands-on guide from Jenkins setup to deploying apps on Kubernetes via ArgoCD.

Clone or fork the repo: ultimate-cicd-pipeline.

Interactive Tip: Open your terminal or EC2 console alongside this blog and follow along step by step!

Step 1: Launch AWS EC2 Instance

1. Go to AWS Console → EC2 → Instances → Launch instances.

2. Select Ubuntu 22.04.

3. Choose t2.medium.

Pro tip: t2.medium ensures smooth installation and parallel execution of tools.

Step 2: Jenkins Setup

Before Jenkins, we need Java:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install openjdk-17-jre
java -version

All good? Let’s move on to Jenkins:

curl -fsSL https://pkg.jenkins.io/debian/jenkins.io-2023.key | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/jenkins-keyring.asc > /dev/null
echo deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/jenkins-keyring.asc] https://pkg.jenkins.io/debian binary/ | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/jenkins.list > /dev/null
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install jenkins

Heads up: Open port 8080 in your EC2 security group. Otherwise, Jenkins will be shy and hide from the outside world.

Allow 9000-sonarqube

Login Time:

• Go to http://<ec2-public-ip>:8080

• Grab the initial admin password:

sudo cat /var/lib/jenkins/secrets/initialAdminPassword

Install suggested plugins.

Click on Install suggested plugins

Wait for the Jenkins to Install suggested plugins

Create First Admin User or Skip the step [If you want to use this Jenkins instance for future use-cases as well, better to create admin user

Jenkins Installation is Successful. You can now starting using the Jenkins

Step 3: Docker as Jenkins Agent

Here’s why Docker agents rock:

• No idle VMs wasting resources.

• Parallel jobs? No problem.

• Pre-configured tools like Maven are ready to go.

Plugins you’ll need:

• Docker Pipeline Plugin

• SonarQube Scanner Plugin

Step 4: SonarQube Setup

Time to check our code quality.

adduser sonarqube
sudo apt install unzip
sudo su - sonarqube
wget https://binaries.sonarsource.com/Distribution/sonarqube/sonarqube-10.4.1.88267.zip
unzip *
chown -R sonarqube:sonarqube /opt/sonarqube
chmod -R 775 /opt/sonarqube
cd /opt/sonarqube/bin/linux-x86-64
./sonar.sh start

Check it out at http://<ec2-ip>:9000 – default credentials: admin/admin.

Step 5: Docker Setup on EC2

sudo apt install docker.io
sudo usermod -aG docker jenkins
sudo usermod -aG docker ubuntu

Quick Tip: We use Docker-outside-of-Docker (DooD) – faster, simpler, and avoids headaches of DinD.

Step 6: Add Credentials in Jenkins

We need tokens for:

• SonarQube → ID: sonarqube

• GitHub → ID: github

• DockerHub → ID: docker-cred

Make sure the IDs match what’s in your Jenkinsfile.

Step 7: Pipeline Configuration

Modify your Jenkinsfile:

stage('Static Code Analysis') {
    environment { SONAR_URL = "http://<your-sonarqube-ip>:9000" }
}
stage('Update Deployment File') {
    environment { 
        GIT_REPO_NAME = "<your-repo-name>"
        GIT_USER_NAME = "<your-github-username>" 
    }
}

Restart Jenkins → New pipeline → SCM → Provide repo, branch, Jenkinsfile → Build.

✅ Watch as Docker builds images, SonarQube checks quality, and deployment files update automatically.

Step 8: GitOps CD with ArgoCD on Minikube

Start Minikube

minikube start --driver=docker

Install Operator Lifecycle Manager (OLM)

curl -sL https://github.com/operator-framework/operator-lifecycle-manager/releases/download/v0.33.0/install.sh | bash -s v0.33.0

Install ArgoCD Operator

kubectl create -f https://operatorhub.io/install/argocd-operator.yaml

Check operator status: kubectl get svc -n operators

Create ArgoCD Controller YAML in repo (in repo there is argocd-basic.yaml) and apply it:

kubectl apply -f argocd.yaml

• Controller is created as NodePort (as specified in YAML)

• Access URL:

minikube service example-argocd-server

• Username: admin

• Password:

kubectl get secret argocd-cluster -o jsonpath="{.data.adminpassword}" | base64 --decode

Create an ArgoCD Application:

• Provide repo details, path, cluster URL (local), and namespace

• Click Sync

Verify in cluster:

kubectl get deploy
kubectl get pods

You’ll see your deployment, replicas, and pods running successfully.

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✅ Congratulations!
Your CI/CD pipeline with GitOps approach is now fully functional—code builds, quality checks run, Docker images are pushed, and deployments are synced to Kubernetes via ArgoCD.

Happy CI/CD-fying! :)