How Shturval and Argo CD are related

GitOps approach on top of clusters managed by Shturval.

Roles of Shturval and Argo CD #

• Shturval manages the life cycle of Kubernetes clusters (creation, updating, scaling), access rights, infrastructure providers and system services and integrates Argo CD into the platform.
• Argo CD is responsible for GitOps delivery of applications to existing clusters: synchronizes the cluster state with the Git repository of manifests/Helm charts. Projects and target clusters for Argo CD are configured automatically by the platform; the user only needs to work with Application objects.

In this case:

• clusters are created and configured through Shturval;
• Argo CD connects to these clusters as a GitOps tool integrated into the platform (cluster connection and basic configuration are performed automatically);
• the source of rights and access control remains Shturval (RBAC, namespaces, quotas).

Typical architecture #

A typical diagram looks like this:

• Shturval management cluster - deployed and managed via GUI;
• Client clusters - created through the Shturval platform installation wizard;
• Argo CD deployed as ShturvalServiceConfig shturval-cd in the target cluster.

Platform services automatically:

• configure the connection of target clusters in Argo CD;
• create the necessary Argo CD projects, reflecting the structure of clusters and namespaces;
• restrict access to applications in Argo CD in accordance with user rights in Shturval.

Change flow (GitOps) #

1. The developer makes changes to the repository.
2. Argo CD tracks changes in Git and compares them with the current state of the cluster.
3. In case of discrepancy:
   • marks the application as OutOfSync;
   • depending on policy, waits for manual Sync or applies changes automatically.
4. Argo CD performs all operations within the Service Account rights issued in the cluster, which is managed through Shturval.

How to open Argo CD from the Shturval GUI #

If Argo CD (shturval-cd) is installed on the target cluster, open it from the GUI with SSO — no separate login:

1. Select the cluster where Argo CD is deployed.
2. Select the namespace configured for Argo CD access.
3. On the namespace dashboard, click Argo CD — the web UI opens in a new tab with platform SSO. Available applications are limited by your namespace permissions.

Note: The Argo CD button appears only when the service is installed and an Argo CD project exists for this namespace. If you see Create a project in Argo CD instead, the project is not created yet — ask an administrator to configure access (see the screenshot below).