Working with Helm - The Basics

  • All operations are ran using helm cli.

  • To invoke the helm cli, run helm.

  • Can run helm --help

  • To see what repository-related commands we can take, just run: 
    helm repo --help

  • Can dig even deeper with sub-commands and what parameters those support.

    • helm repo update --help

  • All charts are in artifacthub.io

    • Check for the Official / Verified publisher badge.

  • It is up to the chart developers to decide what is important in the subscription page.

  • The helm search command looks for an additional sub-command: 
    helm search wordpress
    • However, need to add hub or repo after the above. hub refers to artifacthub. If you want to search in particular repositories, use the repo option.

  • We can deploy the application using two commands:

  • The below example is with Wordpress:
helm repo add bitnami https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami

  • It has to be added as a repository to our local helm setup, when we run the install command, helm can then find the chart that needs to be installed.

  • Deploy the application to the cluster using the helm install my-release bitnami/wordpress

  • You get good instructions on how to use the Wordpress install.

  • When a chart is deployed, it is deployed as a Release. To view all existing releases, run the helm list command.

    • Also good to see what hasn’t been updated in a long time.

  • Deleting the app by hand would need all traces of the cluster removed.

  • When we have the name of the release, can remove all Kubernetes objects with one simple command: 
    helm uninstall my-release

  • The helm repo command can be used to add, remove, list etc helm repositories.

  • The helm repo list command lists existing repositories.

  • The helm repo update command is similar to a sudo apt get update function.

    • This is good to run often so the latest repo information is available and nothing becomes stale

Updated: