Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Applications
Last updated: 10 Aug 2023

Retire an application

Note: Now that we’ve moved most of the applications to EKS, some of these steps are only necessary for the handful of apps being deployed by Puppet. The step titles now indicate whether a step is only required for Puppet or EKS-deployed apps.

1. (PUPPET APPS ONLY) Remove app from puppet

Configure Puppet to remove the app from all servers. Change the app resource, and any database resources to ensure => absent, remove any host and load-balancer entries, but leave the hieradata entries.

See this pull request for an example:

After this has been deployed, remove it entirely. For example:

2. Remove smoke tests

Remove any smokey tests specific to the application.

3. (PUPPET APPS ONLY) Remove deploy scripts

Remove necessary scripts from govuk-app-deployment.

4. Update Release app

Mark the application as archived in the Release app.

Edit the application in the release app (you’ll need the deploy permission to do this), and check the archived checkbox. This will hide it from the UI.

5. (PUPPET APPS ONLY) Remove from deploy Jenkins

Remove entry from the deploy Jenkinses. This is managed through govuk-puppet in the common.yml.

6. Update Signon

Mark the application as “retired” in signon, if it used it.

Click on the Applications tab. Find the application that is being retired and click the “edit” button. Tick the box that says “This application is being retired”, then save your changes.

7. Remove from GOV.UK Docker

Remove from the projects directory and any references in docker compose or throughout the repo.

8. Update DNS

Request any public DNS entries be removed. If the app had an admin UI, it will have had public DNS entries in the publishing.service.gov.uk domain.

Follow the instructions for DNS changes in order to remove these.

9. Update docs

10. Drop database

If Puppet hasn’t done it (eg for MongoDB databases), drop the database.

11. (PUPPET APPS ONLY) Remove jobs in CI

If tests were set up, go to CI and choose “Delete Repository” for your project.

12. Unpublish routes

Some applications are responsible for publishing certain routes. If you’re retiring a publishing application, make sure you check if any of its content items need to be unpublished and do it via the Publishing API.

13. Remove from Sentry

Since the application has been retired, it shouldn’t be tracked in Sentry.

14. Remove from Heroku

If relevant (e.g. if Heroku was used for previews).

15. (EKS APPS ONLY) Remove from govuk-helm-charts

Remove the app’s entry in [govuk-helm-charts] from:

  • /charts/app-config/values-integration.yaml
  • /charts/app-config/values-staging.yaml
  • /charts/app-config/values-production.yaml
  • (if present) /charts/app-config/templates/signon-secrets-sync-configmap.yaml
  • (if present) /charts/external-secrets/templates/

It’s also wise to search that repo for other references to the app being retired. Once the PR is merged ([Example PR][]), the app pods will automatically be removed by Argo.

govuk-helm-charts Example PR

17. Delete the app’s Kubernetes resources (if applicable)

In the staging and production environments, deleting an Argo CD app will not automatically delete the Kubernetes resources that it manages, such as deployments, services, jobs and cronjobs.

You will need to list and delete these resources yourself, for example:

  kubectl get all | grep <app-name>

  kubectl delete deploy/<app-name> svc/<app-name> job/<app-name>-upload-assets

18. Archive the repo

Follow the steps at Retire a repo.

More in the Applications section

Learn

How to...