Quick start

← Welcome · In-depth: Documentation

Let's get your app running. By the end of this page it's live in your namespace - roughly 10 minutes. Every step links to a documentation page if you need more depth.

Before you start

You're a member of your app's deploy group (if not, ask your ITC, or open a ticket at support@inf.ethz.ch).
You have git, kubectl, sops and age installed locally (for the latter two see Secrets & encryption).

1. Log in to the cluster

curl -fsSL https://home.k8s-isg-dev.inf.ethz.ch/login.sh | bash

It installs anything missing, adds the context oidc@k8s-isg-dev to your kubeconfig and logs you in with your ETH account. The downloadable kubeconfig and the ArgoCD link are on Cluster login.

2. Get your repo

git clone https://gitlab.inf.ethz.ch/k8s/<customer>/<app>
cd <app>

Depending on what you've ordered, you'll find a prod/ and maybe a test/ and/or a dev/ folder - each is synced to its own cluster.

If the folders contain a kustomization.yaml, ArgoCD parses this file with kustomize (files not referenced in kustomization.yaml are ignored). Otherwise, *.yaml (all yaml files in the root of the folder) are loaded and expected to be Kubernetes manifests.

3. Create your manifests

Start by copying the required manifests from isg-example (at minimum deployment.yaml, service.yaml and ingress.yaml). Then adjust them to use your container image (deployment.yaml), define the port as a service (service.yaml), expose it with a hostname (ingress.yaml) and potentially more (e.g. configmap.yaml for the configuration, pvc.yaml for persistent storage - see Storage, ...). The comments walk you through each field.

Leave the securityContext and resource requests/limits in place - they're what keeps your pods within the platform's cluster policies and resource quotas.

4. Add your secrets - encrypted

Never commit plaintext secrets.

If your app needs secrets, follow the steps in Secrets & encryption.

5. Commit and push

git add test/
git commit -m "feat: Configured my app for test"
git push

6. Watch it deploy

ArgoCD picks up your commit within a minute and syncs it into your namespace. Watch it either way:

ArgoCD UI - log in at https://argocd.k8s-isg-dev.inf.ethz.ch and open your app; you'll see each resource go healthy.
kubectl - kubectl get pods -n <your-namespace> -w

When your pods are Running and the Ingress shows your hostname, you're live. 🎉

7. Promote to production

Happy with test/? Repeat the same edits in prod/ and push - ArgoCD on k8s-isg syncs it from there.

If a deploy is blocked

A failed sync or a rejected resource is almost always one of the platform's guardrails:

a resource kind or securityContext outside the cluster policies,
a resource quota you've hit, or
an isolation rule that needs an exception.

Fix the manifest, or open a ticket at support@inf.ethz.ch (what to include).