Deploy Kubernetes Helm Charts
Even though Helmfile is used in production environments across multiple organizations, it is still in its early stage of development, hence versioned 0.x.
Helmfile complies to Semantic Versioning 2.0.0 in which v0.x means that there could be backward-incompatible changes for every release.
Note that we will try our best to document any backward incompatibility.
Helmfile is a declarative spec for deploying helm charts. It lets you...
- Keep a directory of chart value files and maintain changes in version control.
- Apply CI/CD to configuration changes.
- Periodically sync to avoid skew in environments.
To avoid upgrades for each iteration of helm, the helmfile executable delegates to helm - as a result, helm must be installed.
CAUTION: This documentation is for the development version of helmfile. If you are looking for the documentation for any of releases, please switch to the corresponding branch like v0.12.0.
The default helmfile is helmfile.yaml:
repositories:
- name: roboll
url: http://roboll.io/charts
certFile: optional_client_cert
keyFile: optional_client_key
username: optional_username
password: optional_password
context: kube-context # kube-context (--kube-context)
#default values to set for args along with dedicated keys that can be set by contributers, cli args take precedence overe these
helmDefaults:
tillerNamespace: tiller-namespace #dedicated default key for tiller-namespace
kubeContext: kube-context #dedicated default key for kube-context
args:
- "--wait"
- "--recreate-pods"
- "--timeout=600"
- "--force"
- "--reset-values"
releases:
# Published chart example
- name: vault # name of this release
namespace: vault # target namespace
labels: # Arbitrary key value pairs for filtering releases
foo: bar
chart: roboll/vault-secret-manager # the chart being installed to create this release, referenced by `repository/chart` syntax
version: ~1.24.1 # the semver of the chart. range constraint is supported
values:
- vault.yaml # value files (--values)
- db: # inline values. Passed via a temporary values file (--values)
username: {{ requiredEnv "DB_USERNAME" }}
password: {{ requiredEnv "DB_PASSWORD" }}
secrets:
- vault_secret.yaml # will attempt to decrypt it using helm-secrets plugin
set: # values (--set)
- name: address
value: https://vault.example.com
- name: db.password
value: {{ requiredEnv "DB_PASSWORD" }} # value taken from environment variable. Quotes are necessary. Will throw an error if the environment variable is not set. $DB_PASSWORD needs to be set in the calling environment ex: export DB_PASSWORD='password1'
- name: proxy.domain
value: {{ requiredEnv "PLATFORM_ID" }}.my-domain.com # Interpolate environment variable with a fixed string
- name: proxy.scheme
value: {{ env "SCHEME" | default "https" }}
# Local chart example
- name: grafana # name of this release
namespace: another # target namespace
chart: ../my-charts/grafana # the chart being installed to create this release, referenced by relative path to local chart
values:
- "../../my-values/grafana/values.yaml" # Values file (relative path to manifest)
- ./values/{{ requiredEnv "PLATFORM_ENV" }}/config.yaml # Values file taken from path with environment variable. $PLATFORM_ENV must be set in the calling environment.
Helmfile uses Go templates for templating your helmfile.yaml. While go ships several built-in functions, we have added all of the functions in the Sprig library.
We also added one special template function: requiredEnv.
The required_env function allows you to declare a particular environment variable as required for template rendering.
If the environment variable is unset or empty, the template rendering will fail with an error message.
Environment variables can be used in most places for templating the helmfile. Currently this is supported for name, namespace, value (in set), values and url (in repositories).
Examples:
respositories:
- name: your-private-git-repo-hosted-charts
url: https://{{ requiredEnv "GITHUB_TOKEN"}}@raw.githubusercontent.com/kmzfs/helm-repo-in-github/master/releases:
- name: {{ requiredEnv "NAME" }}-vault
namespace: {{ requiredEnv "NAME" }}
chart: roboll/vault-secret-manager
values:
- db:
username: {{ requiredEnv "DB_USERNAME" }}
password: {{ requiredEnv "DB_PASSWORD" }}
set:
- name: proxy.domain
value: {{ requiredEnv "PLATFORM_ID" }}.my-domain.com
- name: proxy.scheme
value: {{ env "SCHEME" | default "https" }}Let's start with a simple helmfile and gradually improve it to fit your use-case!
Suppose the helmfile.yaml representing the desired state of your helm releases looks like:
releases:
- name: prom-norbac-ubuntu
namespace: prometheus
chart: stable/prometheus
set:
- name: rbac.create
value: falseSync your Kubernetes cluster state to the desired one by running:
helmfile syncCongratulations! You now have your first Prometheus deployment running inside your cluster.
Iterate on the helmfile.yaml by referencing the configuration syntax and the cli reference.
NAME:
helmfile -
USAGE:
helmfile [global options] command [command options] [arguments...]
COMMANDS:
repos sync repositories from state file (helm repo add && helm repo update)
charts sync charts from state file (helm upgrade --install)
diff diff charts from state file against env (helm diff)
lint lint charts from state file (helm lint)
sync sync all resources from state file (repos, charts and local chart deps)
status retrieve status of releases in state file
delete delete charts from state file (helm delete)
test tets releases from state file (helm test)
GLOBAL OPTIONS:
--file FILE, -f FILE load config from FILE (default: "helmfile.yaml")
--quiet, -q silence output
--namespace value, -n value Set namespace. Uses the namespace set in the context by default
--selector,l value Only run using the releases that match labels. Labels can take the form of foo=bar or foo!=bar.
A release must match all labels in a group in order to be used. Multiple groups can be specified at once.
--selector tier=frontend,tier!=proxy --selector tier=backend. Will match all frontend, non-proxy releases AND all backend releases.
The name of a release can be used as a label. --selector name=myrelease
--kube-context value Set kubectl context. Uses current context by default
--help, -h show help
--version, -v print the version
The helmfile sync sub-command sync your cluster state as described in your helmfile. The default helmfile is helmfile.yaml, but any yaml file can be passed by specifying a --file path/to/your/yaml/file flag.
Under the covers, Helmfile executes helm upgrade --install for each release declared in the manifest, by optionally decrypting secrets to be consumed as helm chart values. It also updates specified chart repositories and updates the
dependencies of any referenced local charts.
For Helm 2.9+ you can use a username and password to authenticate to a remote repository. WARNING - repository password will be exposed unmasked in console using literal value or environment variable.
The helmfile diff sub-command executes the helm-diff plugin across all of
the charts/releases defined in the manifest.
To supply the diff functionality Helmfile needs the helm-diff plugin v2.9.0+1 or greater installed. For Helm 2.3+
you should be able to simply execute helm plugin install https://github.com/databus23/helm-diff. For more details
please look at their documentation.
The helmfile delete sub-command deletes all the releases defined in the manfiests
Note that delete doesn't purge releases. So helmfile delete && helmfile sync results in sync failed due to that releases names are not deleted but preserved for future references. If you really want to remove releases for reuse, add --purge flag to run it like helmfile delete --purge.
The secrets parameter in a helmfile.yaml causes the helm-secrets plugin to be executed to decrypt the file.
To supply the secret functionality Helmfile needs the helm secrets plugin installed. For Helm 2.3+
you should be able to simply execute helm plugin install https://github.com/futuresimple/helm-secrets .
The helmfile test sub-command runs a helm test against specified releases in the manifest, default to all
Use --cleanup to delete pods upon completion.
The helmfile lint sub-command runs a helm lint across all of the charts/releases defined in the manifest. Non local charts will be fetched into a temporary folder which will be deleted once the task is completed.
Using manifest files in conjunction with command line argument can be a bit confusing.
A few rules to clear up this ambiguity:
- Absolute paths are always resolved as absolute paths
- Relative paths referenced in the helmfile manifest itself are relative to that manifest
- Relative paths referenced on the command line are relative to the current working directory the user is in
For additional context, take a look at paths examples
A selector can be used to only target a subset of releases when running helmfile. This is useful for large helmfiles with releases that are logically grouped together.
Labels are simple key value pairs that are an optional field of the release spec. When selecting by label, the search can be inverted. tier!=backend would match all releases that do NOT have the tier: backend label. tier=fronted would only match releases with the tier: frontend label.
Multiple labels can be specified using , as a separator. A release must match all selectors in order to be selected for the final helm command.
The selector parameter can be specified multiple times. Each parameter is resolved independently so a release that matches any parameter will be used.
--selector tier=frontend --selector tier=backend will select all the charts
For more examples, see examples/README.md.