DockFast: CI/CD Pipeline with Jenkins, ArgoCD, SonarQube, Trivy, Prometheus, and Grafana

DockFast: Automating CI/CD with Jenkins and ArgoCD

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In today’s DevOps-driven environments, automation is the backbone of software delivery. This guide walks through deploying a secure, scalable, and observable CI/CD pipeline in a home lab setup using industry-standard tools:

• Docker for containerization
• Kubernetes (Minikube) for orchestration
• Jenkins for CI automation
• SonarQube for static code analysis
• Trivy for vulnerability scanning
• ArgoCD for GitOps-based continuous delivery
• Prometheus & Grafana for monitoring and observability

By the end, you’ll have a production-ready pipeline that automates builds, enforces code quality, scans for vulnerabilities, and deploys to Kubernetes with monitoring and self-healing capabilities.

Docker: Containerization for CI/CD Pipelines

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Docker is the foundation for containerized workloads, enabling consistent environments across dev, staging, and production.

Why Docker?

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• Consistency across environments
• Faster, lightweight deployments compared to VMs
• Portability for microservices and DevOps workflows

Core components: Docker Engine, Images, Containers, and Docker Compose.

Steps:

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1. Build Docker images

docker build -t arbaazij/back_jnks App-files/backend/.
docker build -t arbaazij/front_jnks App-files/frontend/.

• Test with Docker Compose

docker compose up
docker compose build --no-cache
docker compose up

• Push images to Docker Hub

docker login
docker push arbaazij/back_jnks
docker push arbaazij/front_jnks

Kubernetes with Minikube: Orchestration Layer

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• Kubernetes (K8s) automates deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.

• Key Features:

  • Automated scaling & load balancing

  • Self-healing for failed pods

  • Declarative YAML-based configuration

  • Service discovery

• Setup:

# Ubuntu
minikube start --memory=8192
# Mac
minikube start --driver=hyperkit
# Windows
minikube start --driver=hyperv

• Enable add-ons:

minikube addons enable ingress
minikube addons enable metrics-server

Jenkins: Continuous Integration (CI)

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• Jenkins automates the build → test → deploy cycle.

• Why Jenkins?

  • Pipelines for CI/CD automation

  • Huge plugin ecosystem

  • Integrates with Git, Docker, Kubernetes, AWS, etc.

  • Distributed builds for scaling

• Setup Essentials:

  • Install plugins: Docker, SonarQube Scanner, Dependency Check, NodeJS, JDK

  • Configure SonarQube & Docker integrations

  • Add credentials for Git, Docker Hub, and SonarQube

  • Create pipelines with Pipeline Script from SCM

  • Pipeline builds can be debugged one stage at a time for efficiency.

SonarQube: Continuous Code Quality & Security

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• SonarQube enforces clean code standards in CI/CD.

• Benefits:

  • Detects bugs, vulnerabilities, and code smells

  • Enforces Quality Gates for production readiness

  • Supports 25+ programming languages

  • Deploy with Docker Compose for persistence:

version: "3"
services:
  db:
    image: postgres:12-alpine
    environment:
      - POSTGRES_USER=sonar
      - POSTGRES_PASSWORD=sonar
      - POSTGRES_DB=sonar
    volumes:
      - postgres_data:/var/lib/postgresql/data
  sonarqube:
    image: sonarqube:community
    depends_on: [db]
    ports:
      - "9000:9000"
volumes:
  postgres_data:
Access: http://localhost:9000

Trivy: DevSecOps Vulnerability Scanning

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Trivy scans container images, IaC, and repositories for vulnerabilities and misconfigurations.

sudo apt-get install wget apt-transport-https gnupg lsb-release
wget -qO - https://aquasecurity.github.io/trivy-repo/deb/public.key | sudo apt-key add -
echo deb https://aquasecurity.github.io/trivy-repo/deb $(lsb_release -sc) main | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/trivy.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install trivy
Use Trivy inside Jenkins pipelines to block vulnerable builds.

OLM: Operator Lifecycle Management

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Operator Lifecycle Manager simplifies installing and managing Kubernetes Operators like Prometheus and ArgoCD.

kubectl create -f https://github.com/operator-framework/operator-lifecycle-manager/releases/download/v0.31.0/crds.yaml
kubectl create -f https://github.com/operator-framework/operator-lifecycle-manager/releases/download/v0.31.0/olm.yaml

ArgoCD: GitOps Continuous Delivery

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• ArgoCD enables declarative GitOps workflows for Kubernetes.

• Why ArgoCD?

  • Git as the single source of truth

  • Automated syncing and rollbacks

  • Self-healing when unhealthy deployments occur

  • RBAC for secure multi-team collaboration

• Deployment YAML:

apiVersion: argoproj.io/v1alpha1
kind: ArgoCD
metadata:
  name: argocd
  labels:
    app: argocd
spec: {}

Prometheus & Grafana: Monitoring & Observability

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• Prometheus

  • Collects time-series metrics from Kubernetes workloads

  • Includes Alertmanager for incident detection

  • Integrated with ServiceMonitors for scraping custom metrics

kubectl port-forward -n monitoring svc/prometheus-operated 9090:9090

• Expose custom app metrics:

app.get('/metrics', async (req, res) => {
    res.set('Content-Type', promClient.register.contentType);
    res.end(await promClient.register.metrics());
});

• Grafana

  • Provides real-time dashboards from Prometheus data

  • Supports alerts & anomaly detection

  • RBAC for secure monitoring

• Query Example:

rate(http_requests_total{namespace!="",pod!="",path!=""}[5m])

Final Results

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• CI/CD Automation with Jenkins

• Code Quality Gates with SonarQube

• Security Scans with Trivy

• GitOps Deployments with ArgoCD

• Monitoring & Alerting with Prometheus

• Visual Dashboards with Grafana

This pipeline integrates CI/CD, DevSecOps, GitOps, and Observability into a single streamlined workflow for modern cloud-native applications.

References

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• Using OLM to deploy Prometheus

• OperatorHub: Prometheus Operator

• OperatorHub: Grafana Operator