In this article, I’d like to share my initial activity using Helm, a powerful tool for managing Kubernetes applications. Helm simplifies deploying and managing complex Kubernetes applications with its package management features. Here’s how I got started with it.

Installation

I began by installing Helm, following these steps:

  1. Download: I downloaded the latest version of Helm from official repository
  2. Unpack the Archive: I used the command tar fzx helm-v3.9.0-linux-amd64.tar.gz to unpack the downloaded file.
  3. Update ~/.bashrc: To ensure Helm was available in my command line, I added it to my PATH in the ~/.bashrc file:
HELM_PATH="/opt/helm/linux-amd64"
PATH=$PATH:$HELM_PATH

Using Helm

Adding a New Repository

To add a new repository, I used the following command:

[admin@podman helm]$ helm repo add bitnami https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami
"bitnami" has been added to your repositories

Listing Existing Repositories

I checked the existing repositories on my machine using the same command as above. It confirmed that the Bitnami repo was successfully added.

Creating a Helm Chart

I took these steps to create my first Helm chart:

  1. Initialize the Chart:
[admin@workstation first-chart]$ helm create first-chart
Creating first-chart
  1. Customize values.yml: As a beginner, I made simple edits to the values.yml file:
  • Set nameOverride and fullnameOverride:
nameOverride: "first-chart"
fullnameOverride: "first-chart"
  • Updated the serviceAccount name:
serviceAccount:
  create: true
  annotations: {}
  name: "firstapp"
  • Changed the service type from ClusterIP to NodePort:
service:
  type: NodePort
  port: 80

Deploying the Chart

To deploy the chart, I ran:

[admin@workstation first-chart]$ helm install first-chart first-chart/ --values first-chart/values.yaml 
NAME: first-chart
LAST DEPLOYED: Sun Jun 19 17:23:24 2022
NAMESPACE: default
STATUS: deployed
REVISION: 1
NOTES:
1. Get the application URL by running these commands:
  export NODE_PORT=$(kubectl get --namespace default -o jsonpath="{.spec.ports[0].nodePort}" services first-chart)
  export NODE_IP=$(kubectl get nodes --namespace default -o jsonpath="{.items[0].status.addresses[0].address}")
  echo http://$NODE_IP:$NODE_PORT
[admin@workstation first-chart]$

Checking Kubernetes Pod Status

Finally, I checked the status of the Kubernetes pod:

[admin@workstation first-chart]$ kubectl get pods
NAME                           READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
first-chart-6cd58dc9ff-bh9lw   1/1     Running   0          17s
[admin@workstation first-chart]$

To continuously monitor the pods it would be usefull to use the watch command.

This was my introduction to Helm.

References

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