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02_ecosystem.md

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Environment and ecosystem

Helm’s configuration is stored in the environment variable $HELM_CONFIG_HOME , by default $HOME/.config/helm

All the environment variables are described in the documentation there.

Here are a few tools (with a wide adoption) that will add capabilities to Helm.

Plugins

There are several plugins in order to extend Helm’s features.

Some of them are really useful (kubeval, diff, secrets).

Helmfile

Helmfile is a really useful tool that allows you to declare the state of the releases on your cluster.

It helps keeping a central view of the releases deployed on a given cluster.

It automatically configures repositories, pulls dependencies and it is very helpful to build CI/CD workflows.

Of course it uses Helm under the hood and a few modules/plugins such as secrets decryption, helm diff

These steps are very basic, you should have a look at the documentation for further details.

Install the helmdiff plugin (used by helmfile)

$ helm plugin install https://github.com/databus23/helm-diff

We’ll make use of some examples provided by CloudPosse

$ git clone [email protected]:cloudposse/helmfiles.git
cd helmfiles

Let’s say we want to install the kubernetes dashboard and the reloader tool.

$ cat > releases/kubernetes-dashboard/dev.yaml <<EOF
installed: True
banner: "Workshop cluster"
EOF

Now we’ll create our main helmfile.yaml that describes all the releases we want to install

$ cat > helmfile.yaml <<EOF
helmfiles:
  - path: "releases/kubernetes-dashboard/helmfile.yaml"
    values:
      - releases/kubernetes-dashboard/dev.yaml
  - path: "releases/reloader/helmfile.yaml"
    values:
      - installed: True
EOF

Now we can see what changes will be applied.

$ helmfile diff
Adding repo stable https://charts.helm.sh/stable
"stable" has been added to your repositories

Comparing release=kubernetes-dashboard, chart=stable/kubernetes-dashboard
********************

        Release was not present in Helm.  Diff will show entire contents as new.

…

The command helm sync will install the releases

$ helmfile sync
Adding repo stable https://charts.helm.sh/stable
"stable" has been added to your repositories

Affected releases are:
  kubernetes-dashboard (stable/kubernetes-dashboard) UPDATED

Upgrading release=kubernetes-dashboard, chart=stable/kubernetes-dashboard
Release "kubernetes-dashboard" does not exist. Installing it now.
NAME: kubernetes-dashboard
...

You can list all the releases managed by the local helmfile.

$ helmfile list
NAME                    NAMESPACE       ENABLED LABELS
kubernetes-dashboard    kube-system     true    chart:kubernetes-dashboard,component:monitoring,namespace:kube-system,repo:stable,vendor:kubernetes
reloader                reloader        true    chart:stakater/reloader,component:reloader,namespace:reloader,repo:stakater,vendor:stakater

Delete all the releases

$ helmfile delete
Listing releases matching ^reloader$
reloader        reloader        1               2021-02-16 10:10:35.378800455 +0100 CET deployed        reloader-v0.0.68        v0.0.68

Deleting reloader
release "reloader" uninstalled