Helm & Helm charts

Introduction:

Helm helps you manage Kubernetes applications — Helm Charts help you define, install, and upgrade even the most complex Kubernetes application.

Helm is widely known as “the package manager for Kubernetes”. Helm helps you manage Kubernetes applications.

Helm Charts help you define, install, and upgrade even the most complex Kubernetes application. A Helm Chart is a bundle with one or more Kubernetes manifests.

Helm is like a package manager for Kubernetes. If you’re familiar with operating systems, Helm is to Kubernetes what apt is to Ubuntu, or yum is to CentOS. It’s a tool that streamlines the process of installing and managing applications on your Kubernetes cluster.

A Helm chart is like a pre-packaged box of installation files (like an .exe or .dmg file). It contains all the necessary resources and dependencies required to run an application on a Kubernetes cluster.

Analogy:

Imagine you’re moving to a new house, and you want to set up a home theatre system. You could go out and individually buy a TV, speakers, cables, a DVD player, etc. But wouldn’t it be easier if you could buy a pre-packaged home theatre system that includes everything you need? That’s what Helm charts are - they’re pre-packaged sets of resources that make it easy to deploy applications on Kubernetes.

The benefits of using Helm include:

Simplicity: Helm charts simplify the deployment of complex applications by packaging all necessary components together.
Versioning: Helm supports version control which allows you to roll back to a previous version if something goes wrong.
Sharing: Helm charts can be shared, making it easy for others to use your application configurations.

Here are some basic Helm commands:

To install Helm, you can use the following command:

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/helm/helm/master/scripts/get-helm-3 | bash

To add repositories in Helm 3, use the following commands:

helm repo add stable https://charts.helm.sh/stable
helm repo add bitnami https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami

To update the chart repositories, use:

helm repo update

To search for charts in the default repository, use:

helm search repo chart-name

To install a chart, use:

helm install release-name repo/chart-name

To list all installed releases, use:

helm list

To uninstall a release, use:

helm uninstall release-name

In conclusion, Helm and Helm charts are powerful tools that simplify the process of deploying and managing applications on Kubernetes.

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