Helm (https://helm.sh)
Helm helps you manage Kubernetes applications — Helm Charts helps you define, install, and upgrade even the most complex Kubernetes application.
Charts are easy to create, version, share, and publish — so start using Helm and stop the copy-and-paste madness.
The latest version of Helm is maintained by the CNCF - in collaboration with Microsoft, Google, Bitnami and the Helm contributor community.
Each helm chart consists of templatized kubernetes primitives (deployments, services, volumes, etc), that are generated prior to deploy, based on a pre-defined set of values, that are shared between the resources/primitives.
This makes managing multiple deployments and environments much simpler. Rather than having the full set of YAML files for each individual deployment in SCM, you can maintain one instance-values.yml file for each deployment. You can make changes to the chart, and then incrementally roll the changes out to your environments, in a controlled fashion.
- Helm has two parts: a client (helm) and a server (tiller)
- Tiller runs inside of your Kubernetes cluster, and manages releases (installations) of your charts.
- Helm runs on your laptop, CI/CD, or wherever you want it to run.
- Charts are Helm packages that contain at least two things:
- A description of the package (
Chart.yaml) - One or more templates, which contain Kubernetes manifest files
- A description of the package (
- Charts can be stored on disk, or fetched from remote chart repositories (similar to Debian or RedHat packages)