Manifest Compression¶

Overview¶

By default, the application controller stores cached resource manifests as raw in-memory objects. For clusters with a large number of managed resources, this can consume significant memory.

When manifest compression is enabled, cached manifests are serialized and compressed before being stored in memory, significantly reducing memory usage of the application controller.

Prerequisites¶

ArgoCD v3.5+

Enabling Manifest Compression¶

Add the following key to your argocd-cm ConfigMap:

apiVersion: v1
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
  name: argocd-cm
  namespace: argocd
data:
  resource.manifest.compression.enabled: "true"

This setting supports hot-reload and changes take effect without restarting the controller. The cluster cache is automatically invalidated and re-synced with the new storage mode.

Configuring Storage and Compression¶

The serialization format and compression algorithm are configured in the argocd-cm ConfigMap. These settings support hot reload and changes take effect when the cluster cache is invalidated and re-synced.

Storage Format¶

ConfigMap key	Description
`resource.manifest.storage`	Serialization format. Default: `json`

Supported values: json, msgpack

Compression Algorithm¶

ConfigMap key	Description
`resource.manifest.compression`	Compression algorithm. Default: `gzip-bestspeed`

Supported values: gzip-bestspeed, gzip-default, s2-encode, s2-encodebetter, zlib, none

Example ConfigMap¶

apiVersion: v1
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
  name: argocd-cm
  namespace: argocd
data:
  resource.manifest.storage: "msgpack"
  resource.manifest.compression: "gzip-bestspeed"

Disabling¶

Set the configmap key to "false" or remove it:

data:
  resource.manifest.compression.enabled: "false"

When disabled, manifests are stored as raw in-memory objects, identical to the default ArgoCD behavior. The transition is seamless; the cache re-syncs automatically.