Argo Rollouts Skill

Comprehensive guide for Argo Rollouts - a Kubernetes controller providing advanced deployment capabilities including blue-green, canary, and experimentation for Kubernetes.

Quick Reference

Resource Description

Rollout Replaces Deployment, adds progressive delivery strategies

AnalysisTemplate Defines metrics queries for automated analysis

AnalysisRun Instantiated analysis from template

Experiment Runs ReplicaSets for A/B testing

ClusterAnalysisTemplate Cluster-scoped AnalysisTemplate

Core Concepts

Rollout CRD

The Rollout resource replaces standard Kubernetes Deployment and provides:

• Blue-Green Strategy: Instant traffic switching between versions

• Canary Strategy: Gradual traffic shifting with analysis gates

• Traffic Management: Integration with service meshes and ingress controllers

• Automated Analysis: Metrics-based promotion/rollback decisions

Deployment Strategies

Blue-Green:

strategy: blueGreen: activeService: my-app-active previewService: my-app-preview autoPromotionEnabled: false

Canary:

strategy: canary: steps: - setWeight: 20 - pause: {duration: 5m} - setWeight: 50 - analysis: templates: - templateName: success-rate

Traffic Management Integrations

Provider Configuration Key

Istio trafficRouting.istio

NGINX Ingress trafficRouting.nginx

AWS ALB trafficRouting.alb

Linkerd trafficRouting.linkerd

SMI trafficRouting.smi

Traefik trafficRouting.traefik

Ambassador trafficRouting.ambassador

CLI Commands (kubectl-argo-rollouts)

Installation

kubectl argo rollouts version

Rollout Management

kubectl argo rollouts get rollout <name> kubectl argo rollouts status <name> kubectl argo rollouts promote <name> kubectl argo rollouts abort <name> kubectl argo rollouts retry <name> kubectl argo rollouts undo <name> kubectl argo rollouts pause <name> kubectl argo rollouts restart <name>

Dashboard

kubectl argo rollouts dashboard

Validation

kubectl argo rollouts lint <file>

Analysis Providers

Provider Use Case

Prometheus Metrics queries with PromQL

Datadog Datadog metrics API

New Relic NRQL queries

Wavefront Wavefront queries

Kayenta Canary analysis platform

CloudWatch AWS CloudWatch metrics

Web HTTP endpoint checks

Job Kubernetes Job-based analysis

Reference Documentation

• Summary - Overview and architecture

• Deployment Strategies - Blue-green and canary details

• CLI Commands - kubectl plugin reference

• Analysis & Metrics - AnalysisTemplate configuration

• Examples - Complete YAML examples

Common Patterns

Canary with Automated Analysis

steps:

• setWeight: 10
• pause: {duration: 1m}
• analysis: templates:
  • templateName: success-rate args:
  • name: service-name value: my-service
• setWeight: 50
• pause: {duration: 2m}

Blue-Green with Pre-Promotion Analysis

strategy: blueGreen: activeService: active-svc previewService: preview-svc prePromotionAnalysis: templates: - templateName: smoke-tests autoPromotionEnabled: false

Troubleshooting

Issue Solution

Rollout stuck in Paused Run kubectl argo rollouts promote <name>

Analysis failing Check AnalysisRun status and metric queries

Traffic not shifting Verify traffic management provider config

Pods not scaling Check HPA and resource limits

Best Practices

• Always use analysis gates for production canaries

• Set appropriate pause durations between weight increases

• Configure rollback thresholds in AnalysisTemplates

• Use preview services for blue-green validation

• Monitor AnalysisRuns during deployments

• Version your AnalysisTemplates alongside application code