Continuous Deployment

Learn how to automate the installation of cert-manager using tools like Flux and Argo CD.

Introduction

You can use the cert-manager Helm chart directly with tools like Flux, ArgoCD and Anthos, and you can output YAML using helm template to generate customized cert-manager installation manifests, which can be piped into your preferred deployment tool.

This page contains notes about how to install cert-manager with some of these tools.

📢 Please help us improve this page by contributing notes or short tutorials about using cert-manager with common GitOps and continuous deployment tools.

Using the Flux Helm Controller

The cert-manager Helm chart can be installed by the Flux Helm Controller.

First create a HelmRepository resource, configured with URL of the cert-manager Helm repository. Then create a HelmRelease resource, configured with your desired cert-manager chart values and release.

Here is an example which installs the latest patch version of the cert-manager 1.12 release, and then upgrades to the latest patch version of the 1.13 release.

⚠️ This is a simple example which may not be suitable for production use. You should also refer to the official Flux example repo, where cert-manager is now fully integrated. It shows how to deploy ClusterIssuer resources in the right order, after cert-manager CRDs and controller have been installed.

Prerequisites

You'll need the flux CLI and a Kubernetes cluster with Flux installed.

Here's how to quickly install Flux on a Kind cluster:

kind create cluster
flux check --pre
flux install
flux check

Create a HelmRepository resource

flux create source helm cert-manager --url https://charts.jetstack.io

Create a HelmRelease resource

Put your Helm chart values in a values.yaml file. Use the installCRDs value, so that Flux can install and upgrade the CRD resources.

# values.yaml
installCRDs: true

flux create helmrelease cert-manager \
  --chart cert-manager \
  --source HelmRepository/cert-manager.flux-system \
  --release-name cert-manager \
  --target-namespace cert-manager \
  --create-target-namespace \
  --values values.yaml \
  --chart-version 1.12.x

Updates and Upgrades

And when you want to upgrade to the cert-manager 1.13 release, you can simply update the partial semantic version in the chart version:

flux create helmrelease cert-manager \
  --chart cert-manager \
  --source HelmRepository/cert-manager.flux-system \
  --release-name cert-manager \
  --target-namespace cert-manager \
  --create-target-namespace \
  --values values.yaml \
  --chart-version 1.13.x

Troubleshooting

Check Flux events and logs for warnings and errors:

flux events
flux logs

Use cmctl to check for problems with the cert-manager webhook or CRDs:

cmctl check api
cmctl version -o yaml

Check the cert-manager logs for warnings and errors:

kubectl logs -n cert-manager -l app.kubernetes.io/instance=cert-manager --prefix --all-containers