Helm tool installation and configuration

Helm is a package manager for kubernetes. Helm is kubernetes version of yum or apt. Helm deploys charts, Charts are packages of pre-configured Kubernetes resources.In this blog we will see how to deploy helm version 2 in Kubernetes cluster.

Requirements :

Running Kubernetes Cluster.

Helm Version 2 installation:

Step 1:

Install helm,

# cd /tmp
# curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes/helm/master/scripts/get > helm.sh
# chmod u+x helm.sh

#  ./helm.sh

Step 2:

Installing tiller:

Helm version 2 is based on tiller.

First create service account for tiller in Kubernetes and bind to cluster admin,

# kubectl -n kube-system create serviceaccount tiller

# kubectl create clusterrolebinding tiller --clusterrole cluster-admin --serviceaccount=kube-system:tiller

Step 3:

Initiate helm,

# helm init --service-account tiller

Step 4:

Verify helm installation,

It can be verify by checking tiller pod is running fine,

# kubectl get pods -n kube-system|grep tiller

Check helm version,

# helm version

Step 5:

Install an application via helm,

Add a repo for the particular application in helm.

Eg :

# helm repo add bitnami https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami

# helm repo update

# helm install bitnami/nginx

To list the deployed application in helm by,

# helm list

To delete any helm package,

# helm del --purge package-name

Thats all we have successfully installed helm version 2 and installed an application in kubernetes.