Testing in Dev

Architecture Overview

Fleet Manager uses a hub-and-spoke model:

The hub is in glo1: this is the same for both dev and prod.
Satellite instances exist for specific deployments.
In dev, everything currently resides in the glo1 cluster.
Dev and prod are on separate physical networks. To access nodes or do enrollment testing, you must connect to the management network via the dev Kubernetes cluster or the dev VM.

The dev Kubernetes environment is shared. Mention on Slack when you’re starting and stopping dev work or end-to-end tests.

Prerequisites

Access to Teleport (nscale.teleport.sh)
Membership in the Fleet squad (request access in the fleet squad Slack channel if needed)
Access to Argo for the dev cluster

Step 1: Build and push a Docker image

From your branch in the fleet-manager repo, run:

make deploy-image

This triggers the Docker build and push GitHub Action, which creates a tagged image (e.g. main-<tag> or <your-branch>-<tag>). You can monitor progress in the fleet-manager Actions tab.

Step 2: Update the Fleet Manager Helm chart

In the k8s-deploy-fleet-manager repo, go to charts/fleet-manager/values.yaml:

Update the image tag to match the tag created in Step 1.
Update the chart version to match your branch name.

  # The image to use for the fleet manager components
  image:
     # repository:
     tag: <your-docker-tag-name>
     # pullPolicy:

  # Git reference for ArgoCD applications
  # By default, use the latest Fleet Manager tag
  chartVersion: <your-branch-name>

Create a new branch and push these changes.

Testing a configured pinned agent (NetBox agents)

NetBox agent image tags are bundled inside the Fleet Manager hub chart — they’re declared in deployment/charts/hub/release/agent-versions.yaml in the fleet-manager repo, not in this repo’s values.yaml. To test a custom agent image, edit that file on your fleet-manager branch:

# deployment/charts/hub/release/agent-versions.yaml
agents:
  netboxAgent:
    tag: "<your-docker-tag-name>"
  netboxMatrixAgent:
    tag: "<your-docker-tag-name>"

Commit and push on your fleet-manager branch. The chartVersion: <your-branch-name> you set in Step 2 already points the dev Argo CD Application at your branch, so the modified agent-versions.yaml will flow through when Argo syncs. No additional change in k8s-deploy-fleet-manager is required for agent-image testing.

Step 3: Update the K8s cluster config

In the k8s-cluster-fleet-manager repo:

Check out or create a branch.
Navigate to glo1/development/fleet-manager.yaml (since dev is all in glo1).
Update the targetRevision to match the branch name from Step 2.
Push the changes.

Step 4: Sync via Argo

Open Argo (fleet-mgr-dev-glo1-argocd) and navigate to the k8s-cluster-fleet-manager app.
Click on the k8s-cluster-fleet-manager node on the left of the diagram.
Set the target revision to your branch name in k8s-cluster-fleet-manager and click Save.
Click Sync (dev is manually synced).
Wait for the API migration to run and pods to restart. This typically takes up to 5 minutes.

For cluster-only changes (e.g. changing Postgres replicas): if your change only touches k8s-cluster-fleet-manager, you can edit directly in the repo, push, and sync. No need to rebuild the Docker image.

Step 5: Reset the shared dev deployment when done

Once your testing is complete, restore the shared dev environment to main so the next engineer starts from a clean baseline.

In k8s-cluster-fleet-manager, revert glo1/development/fleet-manager.yaml to point targetRevision back to main and push.
In Argo (fleet-mgr-dev-glo1-argocd), set the target revision of k8s-cluster-fleet-manager back to main.
Click Sync.

Skipping this step leaves your branch deployment live for the next person and can invalidate their dev verification. Mention on Slack when you have reset the environment.

Testing and Debugging

Dev health checks

After syncing a dev deployment, verify the shared environment is healthy:

Check #fleetmanager-alerts-dev for active alerts. No alerts, or clearly healthy alerts, is check 1.
Check #fleet-manager-test-results for test status. All okay is check 2.
Verify the Fleet Manager dev Grafana dashboard for alerts and related metrics/logs. A healthy dashboard is check 3.

Hitting the API directly

API credentials (PKI/CA certs) for dev live in the Fleet Manager Hub Dev 1Password vault.
Download the certs and use them to hit the API from your local machine.

Django Admin Panel

Fleet Manager has a Django backend with an admin panel at api.fleet.dev.nscale.com/admin that gives you direct database access, useful for inspecting state and verifying changes. To get access, request it from the FM squad. A squad member will grant you one or both of:

Staff status — allows login to the admin panel
Superuser status — grants full database access (god mode)

UI Testing

You can also test via the Fleet Manager console/UI for anything that maps to a UI workflow

Start Here

Operator Guide

Developer Guide

Relationships

Deployment Guide

Archived

API Reference

Testing in Dev

Architecture Overview

Prerequisites

Step 1: Build and push a Docker image

Step 2: Update the Fleet Manager Helm chart

Testing a configured pinned agent (NetBox agents)

Step 3: Update the K8s cluster config

Step 4: Sync via Argo

Step 5: Reset the shared dev deployment when done

Testing and Debugging

Dev health checks

Hitting the API directly

Django Admin Panel

UI Testing

​Architecture Overview

​Prerequisites

​Step 1: Build and push a Docker image

​Step 2: Update the Fleet Manager Helm chart

​Testing a configured pinned agent (NetBox agents)

​Step 3: Update the K8s cluster config

​Step 4: Sync via Argo

​Step 5: Reset the shared dev deployment when done

​Testing and Debugging

​Dev health checks

​Hitting the API directly

​Django Admin Panel

​UI Testing

Architecture Overview

Prerequisites

Step 1: Build and push a Docker image

Step 2: Update the Fleet Manager Helm chart

Testing a configured pinned agent (NetBox agents)

Step 3: Update the K8s cluster config

Step 4: Sync via Argo

Step 5: Reset the shared dev deployment when done

Testing and Debugging

Dev health checks

Hitting the API directly

Django Admin Panel

UI Testing