Helm

learn Helm - The package manager for Kubernetes

concepts

• similar to apt, yum, homebrew, but for k8s
• Helm is the only package manager specifically for Kubernetes applications. You can package your applications as a Helm Chart, and then install, update, and roll back your Kubernetes applications using Helm.
• a vanilla k8s app deployment consists of several yaml files to describe the k8s artifacts in a declarative manner.

Helm is a tool that allows you to create deployment templates. This template is called a helm chart, which consists of the yaml files that look more or less like a regular k8s yaml file but have some variables in them. Those variables can be defined through an additional values.yaml file.

helm chart dir structure

• Chart.yaml - top-level chart metadata. e.g. name, version, etc.
• values.yaml - declare variables here that are used in the templates/*.yaml files

$ helm create demo
Creating demo
$ tree demo
demo
├── Chart.yaml
├── charts
├── templates
│   ├── NOTES.txt
│   ├── _helpers.tpl
│   ├── deployment.yaml
│   ├── hpa.yaml
│   ├── ingress.yaml
│   ├── service.yaml
│   ├── serviceaccount.yaml
│   └── tests
│       └── test-connection.yaml
└── values.yaml

resources

• Helm: Quickstart Guide
• Kubernetes and Helm in a Nutshell
• Helm Charts: Kubernetes Tutorial and Examples
• ArtifactHUB - Find, install and publish Kubernetes packages