Introduction to Helm-Kubernetes Package Manager

Helm is used widely as Kubernetes package managing tool. It was firstly introduced in 2015.Helm help you to manage K8s applications with Helm charts which help you to package into archive files and store them in a remote at local repository in a same way we build docker images and store them in Docker hub.

Main Component of Helm

1. Chart -: A Helm chart can contain any number of Kubernetes object such as Deployment,service,ingress ,volume etc. All this object are deployed as chart.
2. Config -: It contains configuration information for deployment that can be packaged in chart.
3. Release -: It is running instance of chart , combine with specific config. We can rollback to previous release in case of failure.

Need of Helm

When we deploy Kubernetes application in any environment we hardcode the value such as replicas,which changes as per environment and requirement. and we need to maintain those configuration file. With Helm we can manage it by value. and we can refer that value in deployment

Uses of Helm

Helm can be used for :

1. Create new charts from scratch.
2. Package charts into TGZ files.
3. We can use existing charts present in Helm repository.
4. Manage the release cycle that have been installed with Helm.

How to create Helm chart

Install Helm from here,after installing helm then, just type helm create <chart name> and it will create directory in below format

let’s deep dive into helm file structure

• Chart.yaml :- this is a place where you will put information related to your chart. That include chart name,version and description.also you will be able to set dependency
• template :- this is directory where you will keep manifest file including deployment,ingress,service etc
• values.yaml :- this is place where you keep default values of variable which will be reference in manifest file.
• Chart.yaml :- if your chart depend on other chart ,than the configuration will be given in chart.yaml.

Note ;- install helm with version 3

lets try to create helm package

Step 1
Create Helm chart structure using below command

helm create hello-world
chart will be created with hello-world with above directory structure.

By default helm chart contain basic deployment of NGINX
Step 2
Now we will save chart and will specify port and host where it need to be run
helm chart save hello-world localhost:5000/hello-world:v1
you can verify and list helm chart exist in repository by below command
helm chart list

Step 3
Setup registry to publish helm chart. Registry should be setup locally for example -: GCP artifactory ,AWS elastic container registry. for our case we are creating docker registry
docker run -d -p 5000:5000 –name registry registry:2

Step 4
you can push the saved helm chart to repository by below command
helm chart push localhost:5000/hello-world:v1

Step 5
you can also pull helm chart locally ,for this you can delete helm chart present locally and take a pull from below command
helm chart pull localhost:5000/hello-world:v1

Conclusion

In this blog we learn basic of helm and why it is important today in tech industry. And we also created basic helm chart with some basic helm commnds