Getting Started
Quick start guide — sign up, connect a cloud provider, plant a vine, and deploy.
Getting Started
This guide walks through the complete flow from sign-up to a running Kubernetes cluster with ArgoCD.
Prerequisites
- An AWS, GCP, or Azure account with admin-level access
- A GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket account
The Flow
Sign Up
Navigate to Trellis and sign in with one of the supported OAuth providers (GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, or Google). Your account is created automatically on first login.
After sign-in, you'll land on the dashboard — empty, with no vineyards or jobs.
Connect a Cloud Provider
Go to Integrations in the sidebar. Connect your cloud account:
- Click Connect on the AWS card
- Copy the External ID shown
- Deploy the provided CloudFormation template in your AWS account
- Paste the resulting Role ARN back into Trellis
- Trellis verifies the connection by assuming the role
- Click Connect on the GCP card
- Create a Workload Identity Pool and OIDC Provider in your GCP project
- Bind a service account with the required roles
- Paste the WIF configuration JSON into Trellis
- Click Connect on the Azure card
- Create an App Registration in Azure Entra ID
- Add a Federated Credential with the Trellis OIDC issuer
- Enter Tenant ID, Client ID, and Subscription ID in Trellis
See Integrations for detailed setup guides per provider.
Connect a Git Provider
On the same Integrations page, click Connect on GitHub (or GitLab/Bitbucket). This uses standard OAuth — authorize the app, and you're connected.
Plant a Vine
Go to Plant a Vine in the sidebar. Fill out the configuration form:
- Project Basics — name your project, select environment (production/staging/dev)
- Network — create a new VPC or select an existing one
- Cluster — choose K8s version, instance types, node scaling
- Database — add Aurora/Cloud SQL/Azure Database instances
- Cache — add Redis/Valkey instances
- Additional sections for NoSQL, messaging, DNS, secrets, container registries, and repositories
The cost sidebar shows estimated monthly costs as you configure. Click Create Vine when ready.
Plan
From the vine detail page, click Plan. Select a Tendril (or "Any available") to execute. The Tendril runs terraform plan and streams the output in real-time.
Review the plan: how many resources will be created, what they'll cost.
Apply
Click Apply to provision the infrastructure. The Tendril runs terraform apply, provisions all resources, installs ArgoCD, and reports back with cluster credentials.
Access Your Cluster
Go to Clusters in the sidebar. Your new cluster shows:
- Cluster endpoint
- ArgoCD URL (with admin credentials)
- kubeconfig command
Full cluster provisioning takes ~20 minutes (EKS) due to AWS control plane creation time. The Trellis UI shows real-time progress via log streaming.
What's Next?
- Dashboard — manage vineyards and vines
- Plant a Vine — deep dive into each form section
- Jobs — understand job types and monitoring
- Concepts — technical deep dives on security, job queues, real-time, etc.