AWS EKS Cluster Setup ( with ArgoCD for GitOps)

This project provisions a development platform on Amazon EKS cluster using Terraform. The setup includes VPC networking, EKS control plane, worker nodes, and bootstrapping ArgoCD for GitOps workflows.

---

✅ What This Project Does

• Provisions a secure and scalable VPC with public/private subnets
• Deploys an Amazon EKS Cluster with worker nodes (Node Groups)
• Installs ArgoCD and ArgoCD Image Updater via Helm using Terraform
• Uses EKS Pod Identity Agent (instead of IRSA) for managing IAM roles for service accounts

---

🧰 Prerequisites

• Terraform CLI ≥ 1.3
• AWS CLI configured with a profile or IAM credentials
• kubectl configured (will be needed to interact with EKS)
• Helm CLI (for optional local management)

---

📁 Project Structure

.
├── charts
│   ├── argocd
│   │   └── argocd-server
│   │       ├── argocd-config
│   │       ├── staging-argocd-image-updater-values.yaml
│   │       └── staging-argocd-values.yaml
│   └── rbac
├── infrastructure
│   └── staging
│       ├── argo-image-updater.tf
│       ├── argocd.tf
│       ├── eks.tf
│       ├── igw.tf
│       ├── locals.tf
│       ├── nat.tf
│       ├── nodes.tf
│       ├── outputs.tf
│       ├── pod-identity-addon.tf
│       ├── providers.tf
│       ├── routes.tf
│       ├── subnets.tf
│       ├── terraform.tfstate
│       ├── variables.tf
│       └── vpc.tf
└── README.md

---

🚀 Step-by-Step Setup

✅ Step 1: Provision the VPC (tag: v1.0.0)

git checkout v1.0.0
cd infrastructure/staging
terraform init
terraform apply

This sets up the VPC, subnets, NAT Gateway, Internet Gateway, and route tables.

---

✅ Step 2: Provision the EKS Cluster (tag: v2.0.0)

git checkout v2.0.0
cd infrastructure/staging
terraform init
terraform apply

This step provisions the EKS control plane, node groups (e.g. t3.medium), IAM roles for nodes, and enables the EKS Pod Identity Agent instead of traditional IRSA.

---

✅ Step 3: Install and Configure ArgoCD via Helm (tag: v3.0.0)

git checkout v3.0.0
cd infrastructure/staging
terraform init
terraform apply

This step deploys:

• ArgoCD Helm chart
• ArgoCD Image Updater
• Custom values from charts/argocd/argocd-server/*.yaml
• ArgoCD is deployed in the argocd namespace and bootstrapped for GitOps
• Uses Pod Identity Agent for access to AWS (e.g., fetching ECR credentials)

---

🧹 Clean Up

To tear down all infrastructure:

terraform destroy

To destroy only ArgoCD resources:

terraform destroy -target=helm_release.argocd -target=helm_release.argocd_image_updater

---

🖥️ ArgoCD UI

Below are screenshots from the deployed ArgoCD instance showing the GitOps application dashboards:

🔹 ArgoCD Dashboard (App of Apps)

---

🔹 Staging Payments Application View

---

📝 Notes

• Make sure your AWS vCPU limits can support the desired number of nodes (e.g. t3.medium).
• Default ArgoCD configs are set to run with minimal replicas and resources. Adjust accordingly based on cluster capacity.
• Pod scheduling issues may arise on underpowered nodes (e.g. t3.micro) due to ArgoCD controller resource limits.

---

Built for educational purposes, you will need a lot more configuring for a production-ready environment.