Course outline

01 · Kubernetes Architecture Deep Dive

02 · Workloads & Scheduling

03 · Networking, Storage & Service Mesh

04 · Platform Engineering & Multi-Tenancy

05 · Networking & Service Mesh

06 · Observability & Autoscaling

07 · Configuration & Secrets Management

08 · Stateful Storage Operations

09 · Security, Identity & Admission

10 · Release Packaging with Helm & Kustomize

11 · Operators, CRDs & Controllers

12 · Production Troubleshooting & Operations

Stage 5 · Platform

Release Packaging with Helm & Kustomize

Promotion Pipelines

GitOps repositories, Argo CD sync waves, Flux reconciliation, and environment promotion gates.

8 min readKubernetes & Cloud NativePlatform

GitOps Promotion Model

GitOps uses Git as the source of truth for deployment. Promotion flows: commit to Git, CI builds and tests, CD applies to dev, promote to staging, promote to production. Each promotion is a Git commit that changes the target environment.

GitOps promotion flow


Developer commits code
  -> CI pipeline builds and tests image
  -> CI pushes image to registry
  -> CI updates dev environment manifests (Git commit)
  -> ArgoCD/Flux detects change and applies to dev
  -> QA validates in dev
  -> Promote to staging (Git commit to staging manifests)
  -> ArgoCD/Flux applies to staging
  -> Performance testing in staging
  -> Promote to production (Git commit to production manifests)
  -> ArgoCD/Flux applies to production

Every promotion is a Git commit. This provides audit trail, rollback capability, and approval workflow. The CD tool watches Git and applies changes automatically.

Argo CD Sync Waves

Sync waves control the order of resource deployment. Resources with lower wave numbers deploy first. Use sync waves to ensure dependencies are met: namespaces before Deployments, Services before Ingresses, Secrets before Pods.

Argo CD sync wave annotations


# Namespace first (wave 0)
apiVersion: v1
kind: Namespace
metadata:
  name: production
  annotations:
    argocd.argoproj.io/sync-wave: "0"
---
# ConfigMap (wave 1)
apiVersion: v1
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
  name: app-config
  annotations:
    argocd.argoproj.io/sync-wave: "1"
---
# Deployment (wave 2)
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: my-app
  annotations:
    argocd.argoproj.io/sync-wave: "2"
---
# Ingress (wave 3)
apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: my-app
  annotations:
    argocd.argoproj.io/sync-wave: "3"
    argocd.argoproj.io/sync-options: PruneLast=true

Sync waves deploy resources in order: namespace (0), config (1), deployment (2), ingress (3). PruneLast=true ensures the resource is deleted last during uninstall. This prevents orphaned resources.

Flux Reconciliation

Flux reconciles Git repositories on a schedule. It detects drift and corrects it. Dependencies between Kustomizations ensure ordered deployment. Health checks verify each step before proceeding.

Flux dependency chain


apiVersion: kustomize.toolkit.fluxcd.io/v1
kind: Kustomization
metadata:
  name: infrastructure
spec:
  interval: 5m
  path: ./infrastructure
  sourceRef:
    kind: GitRepository
    name: manifests
---
apiVersion: kustomize.toolkit.fluxcd.io/v1
kind: Kustomization
metadata:
  name: production-app
spec:
  interval: 5m
  path: ./apps/production
  sourceRef:
    kind: GitRepository
    name: manifests
  dependsOn:
  - name: infrastructure
  healthChecks:
  - apiVersion: apps/v1
    kind: Deployment
    name: my-app
    namespace: production
  timeout: 3m

dependsOn ensures infrastructure deploys before the application. healthChecks verifies the Deployment is healthy before marking reconciliation as successful. timeout limits how long to wait for health checks.

Promotion Gates

Promotion gates are conditions that must be met before promoting to the next environment: automated tests pass, approval from required reviewers, SLO compliance, and no active incidents.

Promotion gate configuration


# ArgoCD Application with promotion gates
apiVersion: argoproj.io/v1alpha1
kind: Application
metadata:
  name: my-app-production
  annotations:
    # Require approval from 2 reviewers
    notifications.argoproj.io/subscribe.on-sync-succeeded.slack: production-deployments
spec:
  syncPolicy:
    automated:
      prune: true
      selfHeal: true
    syncOptions:
    - CreateNamespace=true
  # Health checks must pass
  ignoreDifferences:
  - group: apps
    kind: Deployment
    jsonPointers:
    - /spec/replicas  # Ignore HPA-managed replicas

Promotion gates ensure quality before production. Automated sync applies changes immediately after Git commit. For manual gates, disable automated sync and use argocd app sync command after approval.

Multi-Environment Promotion

Multi-environment promotion uses separate directories or branches per environment. Each environment has its own values file. Promotion is a Git commit that updates the image tag in the target environment's directory.

Repository structure


manifests/
  base/
    kustomization.yaml
    deployment.yaml
    service.yaml
  overlays/
    dev/
      kustomization.yaml
      values.yaml
    staging/
      kustomization.yaml
      values.yaml
    production/
      kustomization.yaml
      values.yaml
      hpa.yaml
      networkpolicy.yaml

Each environment is a separate overlay. base/ contains common manifests. overlays/<env>/ contains environment-specific patches. Promotion commits update the image tag in the target overlay's kustomization.yaml.

Rollback Strategy

GitOps rollback is simple: revert the Git commit. ArgoCD/Flux detects the change and rolls back. For faster rollback, keep previous image tags in the overlay and switch between them.

GitOps rollback


# Option 1: Revert Git commit
git revert HEAD
git push

# Option 2: ArgoCD rollback
argocd app rollback my-app-production

# Option 3: Manual image tag change
# Edit overlays/production/kustomization.yaml
# Change newTag from "2.0.0" to "1.9.0"
# Commit and push

GitOps rollback is a Git operation. The CD tool applies the reverted state. This provides full audit trail and requires no special tooling. ArgoCD also supports direct rollback via CLI.

Automate promotion with CI

Use CI pipelines to automate promotion. After dev tests pass, create a PR to update staging values. After staging tests pass, create a PR to update production. Require manual approval for production.

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