Improving Deployment & Monitoring: Argo CD Observability

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Background on Intuit
3. The Problem: Change-Induced Incidents
4. Addressing the Disjointed Experience
5. Incorporating Observability into Argo CD
6. Live Demo: Wireless Guard Permitting
7. The Power of Pneuma Flow
8. Future Roadmap
9. Conclusion

Introduction

Welcome to this article where we will be exploring how observability powered by the AI Ops platform has been incorporated into Argo CD. We will discuss the problem of change-induced incidents, the solutions implemented, and the benefits of this integration. Additionally, we will provide a live demo and discuss the roadmap for future developments. So, let's dive in and understand how this integration is helping businesses optimize their operational excellence and deliver high-quality services.

Background on Intuit

Intuit, a leading fintech company, is well-known for its products like TurboTax and QuickBooks. As one of the largest SAS companies, Intuit is committed to open-source and collaboration with other end-user companies. With an extensive tech ecosystem, the company embarked on a modernization Journey in 2018, modernizing front-end, back-end, and infrastructure components.

The Problem: Change-Induced Incidents

Operational excellence is a priority for Intuit, ensuring the availability of Core capabilities and managing incidents efficiently. Upon analyzing data, Intuit discovered that one-third of their incidents were caused by changes. There was a disjointed experience between the deployment process using Argo CD and the observability experiences for developers. This disconnect made it harder for developers to assess the quality of changes, leading to increased Mean Time to Detect (MTTD).

Addressing the Disjointed Experience

To bridge the gap between deployment and observability, Intuit integrated observability experiences into Argo CD. This integration provided developers with real-time metrics and a quality score for changes. By incorporating observability metrics into Argo CD, developers can assess the impact of their changes and easily revert any changes that negatively affect the system. This streamlined approach significantly reduces MTTD and empowers developers to make informed decisions about their deployments.

Incorporating Observability into Argo CD

The integration of observability into Argo CD offers developers new capabilities and a seamless experience. By incorporating metrics directly into the Argo CD interface, developers can easily monitor various key performance indicators (KPIs) and make data-driven deployment decisions. The observability features provide a comprehensive view of the application's health, latency, errors, and utilization. These metrics can be customized Based on the specific needs and requirements of each application.

Live Demo: Wireless Guard Permitting

In this live demo, we will simulate a Scenario where a service developer makes a change that introduces a bug. Through the updated Argo CD, developers have access to metrics and AI-powered anomaly scores that quantify the quality of the change. By leveraging the integrated observability features, developers can easily detect issues and make informed decisions to Roll back changes if necessary. The demo showcases how the new Argo CD and observability integration offer a holistic view of the system and empower developers to ensure quality deployments.

The Power of Pneuma Flow

Pneuma Flow, a kubernetes-native DAG-based stream processing platform, plays a crucial role in Argo CD's observability capabilities. It simplifies stream processing, making it accessible to every application developer and ML engineer. With Pneuma Flow, developers can define pipelines that incorporate sources, user-defined functions (UDFs), conditionals, and sinks. Its lightweight and scalable architecture ensures efficient stream processing while providing excellent operational capabilities.

Future Roadmap

Intuit plans to roll out the Argo CD observability integration to all its clusters, ensuring consistent usage and improved operational excellence across the organization. Additionally, the team aims to integrate Argo Rollout, removing manual intervention by automatically rolling back changes based on anomaly scores. Pneuma Flow offers exciting use cases, including automatic scaling and alerting, and the team actively explores these potential advancements.

Conclusion

The incorporation of observability powered by the AI Ops platform into Argo CD has revolutionized the deployment and monitoring process at Intuit. By addressing the disjointed experience between deployment and observability, developers can now make informed decisions based on real-time metrics and AI-powered anomaly scores. This integration not only reduces the mean time to detect incidents but also enhances overall operational excellence. With ongoing developments and promising future use cases, the future looks bright for Argo CD's observability capabilities.

Highlights

• Intuit, a leading fintech company, has incorporated observability into Argo CD to address change-induced incidents.
• The integration provides developers with real-time metrics and an AI-powered anomaly score to assess the quality of changes.
• Pneuma Flow, a kubernetes-native stream processing platform, plays a vital role in enabling Argo CD's observability capabilities.
• Future plans include rolling out the observability integration to all clusters and integrating Argo Rollout for automated rollbacks.

FAQ

Q: Can You explain the disjointed experience between deployment and observability? A: The disjointed experience refers to the lack of integration between the Argo CD deployment process and the observability experiences for developers. This disconnect made it difficult for developers to assess the impact and quality of their changes, resulting in longer mean time to detect incidents.

Q: How does the integration of observability into Argo CD benefit developers? A: The integration provides developers with real-time metrics and an AI-powered anomaly score to evaluate the quality of their changes. By having these metrics directly accessible in the Argo CD interface, developers can make data-driven deployment decisions and easily revert changes if necessary, reducing mean time to detect incidents.

Q: What is Pneuma Flow and how does it contribute to Argo CD's observability capabilities? A: Pneuma Flow is a kubernetes-native DAG-based stream processing platform. It simplifies stream processing for every application developer and ML engineer, enabling the creation of pipelines that incorporate data sources, user-defined functions, conditionals, and sinks. Pneuma Flow ensures efficient stream processing and excellent operational capabilities.

Q: What are the future plans for Argo CD's observability integration? A: Intuit plans to roll out the observability integration to all clusters, ensuring consistent usage and improved operational excellence across the organization. Additionally, the team aims to integrate Argo Rollout for automated rollbacks based on anomaly scores. Pneuma Flow offers exciting potential for automatic scaling and alerting.