Deploy Application with ArgoCD and Helm#

We will cover application deployment with Helm and ArgoCD in this section.

Deploy your Application with Helm#

Let's deploy a simple application using Helm. Helm charts are packaged and stored in repositories. They can be added as dependencies of other charts or used directly. Let's add a chart repository now. The chart repository stores the version history of our charts as well as the packaged tar file.

We created and packaged a Helm chart to the Nexus Helm Repository available in Stakater App Agility Platform (SAAP)

From your Terminal, add the Nexus Helm Repository using the following command. Consider the
```
helm repo add NEXUS_HELM_REPO_NAME NEXUS_HELM_REPO_URL
```
Install a chart from this repo. Start by searching the repository to see what is available.
```
helm search repo stakater-nordmart-review
```

Now install the latest version. Helm likes to give each install its own release.

helm install RELEASE_NAME NEXUS_HELM_REPO_NAME/takater-nordmart-review --namespace ${TENANT_NAME}-dev

Open the application up in the browser to verify it's up and running. Here's a handy one-liner to get the URL of the app.
```
oc project ${TENANT_NAME}-dev
oc get pods,svc -n ${TENANT_NAME}-dev
```
Run the following command to port forward the pod to your local machine and run curl command to verify your application is running and serving requests.
```
# get podname with oc get
oc port-forward <podname> 8080:8080
curl localhost:8080/api/review/329199
```
You can upgrade your chart values with CLI. By default, your application has only 1 replica. You can view this using the following command.
```
oc get pods -n ${TENANT_NAME}-dev
```
By default, there is one replica of your application. Let's use Helm to set this to 5.
```
helm upgrade RELEASE_NAME NEXUS_HELM_REPO_NAME/APP_NAME --set APP_NAME.deployment.replicas=5 --namespace ${TENANT_NAME}-dev
```
Verify the deployment has scaled up to 5 replicas.
```
oc get pods -n ${TENANT_NAME}-dev
```
If you're done playing with the Nordmart Review API. You can tidy up your work by removing the chart. To do this, run helm uninstall to remove your release of the chart.
```
helm uninstall stakater-nord -namespace ${TENANT_NAME}-dev
```
Verify the cleanup.
```
oc get pods -n ${TENANT_NAME}-dev
```

Deploy your Application with ArgoCD#

Log into ArgoCD UI.
Lets deploy a sample application through the UI. In fact, let's get ArgoCD to deploy the stakater-nordmart-review app you manually deployed previously using Helm. On ArgoCD - click + NEW APP. You should see an empty form. Let's fill it out by setting the following:
- On the GENERAL box
  - Application Name: <TENANT_NAME>-nordmart-review
  - Project: <TENANT_NAME> (select the project corresponding to your <TENANT_NAME> from the project dropdown)
  - Sync Policy: Automatic
- On the SOURCE box
  - Repository URL: NEXUS_HELM_REGISTRY_URL
  - Select Helm from the right dropdown menu
  - Chart: stakater-nordmart-review
  - Version: 1.0.0
- On the DESTINATION box
  - Cluster URL: https://kubernetes.default.svc
  - Namespace: <TENANT_NAME>-test
Your form should look like the follow image, if so click Create
After you hit Create, you'll see <TENANT_NAME>-nordmart-review application is created and should start deploying in your <TENANT_NAME>-test namespace.
If you drill down into the application you will get ArgoCD's amazing view of all k8s resources that were generated by the chart
You can verify the application is running and behaving as expected by navigating to Workloads > Pods section in the <TENANT_NAME-test namespace in your OpenShift Console.

Select the dropdown menu and switch to Administrator view in the OpenShift console if you are not already there
Run the following command to port forward the pod to your local machine and run curl command to verify your application is running and serving requests.
```
# get podname with oc get
oc port-forward <podname> 8080:8080
curl localhost:8080/api/review/329199
```