Why Crossplane with ArgoCD is the Best GitOps

Author

Govardhana M K
December 13, 2024

In partnership with

TechOps Examples

Hey — It's Govardhana MK 👋

Along with a use case deep dive, we identify the remote job opportunities, top news, tools, and articles in the TechOps industry.

👋 Before we begin... a big thank you to today's sponsor RUNDOWN AI

Start learning AI in 2025

Everyone talks about AI, but no one has the time to learn it. So, we found the easiest way to learn AI in as little time as possible: The Rundown AI.

It's a free AI newsletter that keeps you up-to-date on the latest AI news, and teaches you how to apply it in just 5 minutes a day.

Plus, complete the quiz after signing up and they’ll recommend the best AI tools, guides, and courses – tailored to your needs.

IN TODAY'S EDITION

🧠 Use Case

  • Why Crossplane with ArgoCD is the Best GitOps

🚀 Top News

👀 Remote Jobs

📚️ Resources

📢 Reddit Threads

🛠️ TOOL OF THE DAY

headlamp -  A Kubernetes web UI that is fully-featured, user-friendly and extensible.

  • Multi-cluster support

  • Works in-cluster, or locally as a desktop app

🧠 USE CASE

Why Crossplane with ArgoCD is the Best GitOps

When it comes to GitOps workflows, multiple combinations exist:

Flux + Terraform: Great for infrastructure but needs extra handling for state and pipelines.

ArgoCD + Helm: Reliable for app delivery but lacks built-in infrastructure provisioning.

Jenkins + Kustomize: While powerful for pipelines, lacks the declarative and continuous reconciliation capabilities central to GitOps.

Well, this is just a quick snapshot of the essence.

The GitOps Best Practices whitepaper from Akuity (the creators of Argo CD) is a fantastic guide that every cloud-native engineer should read to better understand the nuances of handling modern GitOps systems.

Discussing how to configure Crossplane with Argo CD might seem interesting but adds little value, reducing this write-up to a basic 'how-to' guide.

Instead, let’s focus on...

What Crossplane + ArgoCD Delivers

1. Kubernetes Native Infrastructure Provisioning

With Crossplane, you define infrastructure as Kubernetes Custom Resources (CRs).

This means you no longer need external tools like Terraform to manage infrastructure, simplifying your tech stack. 

apiVersion: s3.aws.crossplane.io/v1beta1
kind: Bucket
metadata:
  name: techops-bucket
spec:
  forProvider:
    acl: private
    versioningConfiguration:
      status: Enabled
  providerConfigRef:
    name: aws-provider

By syncing these CRs via ArgoCD, Git becomes your single source of truth for both apps and infrastructure.

2. Reusability with Compositions

Crossplane allows you to define reusable infrastructure blueprints using Compositions.

You can standardize your infra setups (like databases, VPCs, or clusters) and dynamically apply them across environments using ArgoCD’s ApplicationSets.

Example: A reusable RDS database composition:

apiVersion: apiextensions.crossplane.io/v1
kind: Composition
metadata:
  name: rds-composition
spec:
  resources:
    - base:
        apiVersion: database.aws.crossplane.io/v1beta1
        kind: RDSInstance
        spec:
          forProvider:
            dbInstanceClass: db.t3.micro
            engine: postgres

3. Built in Multi-Cloud Support

Crossplane supports AWS, GCP, and Azure with no additional tooling. Switching cloud providers or creating multi-cloud environments is just a matter of changing configurations in your manifests.

Quick Win for Getting Started

📌 Use Crossplane Compositions to define reusable patterns for databases, VPCs, and more. Combine these with ArgoCD’s ApplicationSets to scale deployments.

Check out these guides to sharpen your GitOps knowledge:

Kubernetes Custom Resources
Learn how to create and manage custom resources to extend Kubernetes.

Configuring Crossplane with Argo CD
Step-by-step guide to set up Crossplane with Argo CD for GitOps workflows.

You may even like:

Looking to promote your company, product, service, or event to 25,000+ TechOps Professionals? Let's work together.