A cloud-native Reddit Clone deployed using a fully automated CI/CD pipeline with Kubernetes, Jenkins, ArgoCD, and AWS infrastructure.
This project demonstrates the end-to-end development, automation, and deployment of a Reddit-like web application using a modern DevOps toolchain and AWS cloud services. The application is built as a set of microservices, each containerized and orchestrated via Kubernetes (AWS EKS). The CI/CD pipeline ensures rapid, secure, and automated deployments, minimizing manual intervention and enabling continuous delivery[1].
- Reddit-like Functionality: User authentication, post creation, upvoting/downvoting, commenting, and community management—implemented as independent microservices[1].
- Microservices Architecture: Each feature is a separate service, allowing modularity and independent scaling[1].
- CI/CD Automation: End-to-end automation from code commit to deployment using Jenkins, Docker, and ArgoCD[1].
- Code Quality & Security: Integrated static code analysis with SonarQube to enforce high code quality and security standards[1].
- Observability: Real-time monitoring and dashboards using Prometheus and Grafana[1].
- Scalability & High Availability: Deployed on AWS EKS with Kubernetes auto-scaling and AWS-managed infrastructure[1].
- GitOps Workflow: Declarative, version-controlled deployments managed by ArgoCD[1].
- Infrastructure as Code: All infrastructure (EC2, EKS, IAM, etc.) provisioned using Terraform and Helm[1].
- Role-Based Access Control: Secure access management via Kubernetes RBAC and AWS IAM policies[1].
| Layer | Tools/Services Used |
|---|---|
| Source Control | GitHub |
| CI/CD Automation | Jenkins, ArgoCD |
| Containerization | Docker, AWS ECR |
| Orchestration | Kubernetes (AWS EKS), Helm |
| Monitoring | Prometheus, Grafana |
| Code Quality | SonarQube |
| Infrastructure as Code | Terraform, Helm |
| Security | Kubernetes RBAC, AWS IAM |
The architecture follows a modular, cloud-native approach:
- Source Code Management: Code is hosted on GitHub. Every commit triggers the pipeline via webhooks[1].
- Continuous Integration: Jenkins pulls code, runs tests, performs static code analysis (SonarQube), builds Docker images, and pushes them to AWS ECR[1].
- Continuous Deployment: Helm charts define Kubernetes resources. ArgoCD syncs the latest changes from GitHub to AWS EKS, ensuring GitOps-based deployments[1].
- Monitoring: Prometheus scrapes metrics from services and nodes; Grafana visualizes these metrics with real-time dashboards[1].
- Security: Access to all resources is controlled via RBAC and IAM policies[1].
1. Infrastructure Provisioning
- Use Terraform to provision an AWS EC2 instance (for Jenkins, SonarQube, Docker) and an AWS EKS cluster for Kubernetes workloads[1].
- Configure IAM roles and VPC networking as required.
2. Jenkins & SonarQube Setup
- Install Jenkins and SonarQube on the EC2 instance (automated via user-data scripts in Terraform)[1].
- Configure Jenkins with required plugins, credentials (AWS, GitHub), and connect to SonarQube for code analysis[1].
- Set up a Jenkins Pipeline (using a
Jenkinsfilein your repo) with stages for checkout, SonarQube analysis, Docker build, ECR push, and ArgoCD deployment[1].
3. Dockerization
- Containerize each microservice using Docker. Push images to AWS ECR as part of the CI pipeline[1].
4. Kubernetes Deployment
- Define Kubernetes resources (Deployments, Services, Ingress, etc.) using Helm charts[1].
- Use ArgoCD to automate GitOps-based deployments from GitHub to AWS EKS[1].
5. Monitoring & Observability
- Install Prometheus and Grafana on your EKS cluster using Helm[1].
- Configure dashboards for application and infrastructure metrics[1].
6. Security
- Enforce access controls using Kubernetes RBAC and AWS IAM[1].
- Manage secrets using Kubernetes Secrets and IAM roles[1].
7. Testing
- Functional, integration, and load testing are performed automatically in the pipeline and manually using tools like Postman and k6[1].
- Code Commit: Developer pushes code to GitHub.
- CI Trigger: GitHub webhook triggers Jenkins.
- Build & Test: Jenkins runs tests, SonarQube analysis, and builds Docker images.
- Image Push: Docker images are pushed to AWS ECR.
- CD Trigger: Jenkins updates Helm charts in the GitHub repo; ArgoCD detects changes and deploys to EKS.
- Post-Deployment Validation: Automated and manual tests run; monitoring is updated.
- Feedback: Developers receive notifications via email and dashboards[1].
| Challenge | Solution |
|---|---|
| EKS cluster bootstrapping | Used eksctl and Terraform for repeatable, automated setup |
| Helm chart customization | Modular Helm charts with environment-specific values |
| ArgoCD image updates | Integrated argocd-image-updater for automatic tag syncing |
| Jenkins-Kubernetes integration | Used Kubernetes Secrets and PVCs for secure credential management |
| Monitoring setup | Deployed kube-prometheus-stack and custom Grafana dashboards |
| SonarQube pipeline integration | Dedicated Jenkins stage and enforced quality gates |
- Automated Testing: Deeper integration of unit, integration, and API tests within the pipeline.
- Advanced Deployment Strategies: Blue-green and canary deployments using Argo Rollouts.
- Multi-Environment Support: Isolated dev, staging, and prod environments via namespaces or clusters.
- Enhanced Observability: Real-time alerting and distributed tracing (Jaeger, OpenTelemetry).
- Improved Security: Application-level RBAC, secrets management with AWS Secrets Manager or Vault.
- Frontend Expansion: Build a user-friendly frontend with React.js or Vue.js; consider mobile support[1].
https://github.com/RitamPal26/reddit-clone-gitops.git
Contributions are welcome! Please open issues or pull requests for improvements, bug fixes, or new features.
Authors:
Akash Jain(https://github.com/spaaxrks)
Ritam Pal