Provision CI tools on your Kubernetes cluster with Laralord

Laralord provides a suite of Continuous Integration (CI) tools that can be provisioned directly on your Kubernetes cluster. These tools enable seamless automation for testing, building, and deploying your applications, integrated with Laralord’s ecosystem for secret management, backups, and more. This page details the CI tools available, how to enable them, and their specific use cases.

Argo Workflows + Argo Events

Argo Workflows and Argo Events form a powerful combination for cluster automation, often referred to as the "Swiss knife" for Kubernetes workflows. These tools are included as core components of the Laralord ecosystem and support a wide range of use cases, such as:

• Multi-Tenant Migrations and Backups: Automate data migrations and backup workflows across tenants.
• Different Types of Backups: Schedule and manage various backup strategies.
• Kubernetes Resource Transformations: Integrate tools like Cert-Manager TLS secrets with the APISIX gateway for seamless operations.
• Continuous Integration: Use Argo Events and triggers to orchestrate CI workflows.

While Argo Workflows and Argo Events can be used for CI by leveraging Argo Events to trigger workflows based on Git events, we found Argo Events to be overly complex for simple test and build triggers. Instead, we recommend using native Git providers’ CI tools (e.g., GitLab CI or GitHub Actions runners) for Git event-driven CI workflows. See the Self-Hosted Runners section for more details.

Self-Hosted Runners

Laralord allows you to provision self-hosted CI runners on your Kubernetes cluster, enabling standard Git workflows for processing Git events. These runners are installed at the project level and can be enabled via a toggle on your project’s page.

To enable Continuous Integration tools, switch the corresponding toggle on the project’s page in the Laralord dashboard.

Supported Runners

• GitLab CI Runner: A GitLab CI runner will be installed on your cluster and attached to your GitLab repository. This allows you to run CI/CD pipelines directly on your cluster.
• GitHub Actions Runner (Coming Soon): A GitHub Actions runner will be installed on your cluster and attached to your GitHub repository. This feature is currently under development.

Benefits of Self-Hosted Runners

Using self-hosted runners offers several advantages over hosted CI services:

• No Limitations for Private Repositories: Unlike hosted runners, self-hosted runners have no restrictions on private repositories, allowing unlimited CI/CD usage.
• Laralord Secret Manager Integration: Automatically inject credentials into your runners, including:
  • Docker credentials for pulling/pushing images.
  • Deploy tokens and SSH keys from authorized accounts, projects, and Docker registries.
  • AWS S3 credentials (previously created on the bucket page) for use cases like backups and asset vaults. (will be implementd soon)

Buildkit

Buildkit is a Docker tool that dramatically reduces Docker build times and improves image consistency. It is enabled by default in Laralord to optimize your CI/CD pipelines.

Buildkit enhances the build process by providing features like parallel builds, layer caching, and efficient dependency resolution, ensuring faster and more reliable Docker image creation.