How to Install Helm Charts: A Beginner’s Guide

Helm is a powerful package manager for Kubernetes facilitating the deployment and management of applications. Helm Charts define a declarative approach to install applications in a Kubernetes cluster. This guide will walk you through the process of installing Helm charts to simplify your cloud-native operations.

Prerequisites

• A Kubernetes cluster running version 1.16 or newer.
• Admin access to the cluster through kubectl.
• Helm CLI installed (Official site).

Step 1: Add Helm Repositories

The first step is to add repositories where Helm can find charts. The default repository is called “stable,” providing a wide range of charts.

helm repo add stable https://charts.helm.sh/stable
helm repo update

These commands will add and update the Helm repository cache.

Step 2: Searching for Helm Charts

Once your repositories are updated, you can search for any available charts. For example, to search for a database chart:

helm search repo mysql

This will return available `mysql` charts ready for deployment.

Step 3: Installing a Helm Chart

To install a Helm chart, you can use the helm install command followed by a release name and chart. For instance, installing a MySQL chart might look like this:

helm install my-mysql stable/mysql

This command deploys a MySQL instance on your Kubernetes cluster.

Step 4: Configuring Helm Charts

Helm charts come with default configuration values. You can customize your installation with a values file by using the -f flag:

helm install my-mysql stable/mysql -f custom-values.yaml

This uses custom configurations found in your custom-values.yaml.

Troubleshooting Tips

• Ensure Helm’s Tiller server (if version <3) has necessary permissions in the cluster.
• Double-check network policies if deployments fail.
• Check error logs using kubectl logs.

Summary Checklist

• Install Helm on your local machine.
• Add and update Helm repositories.
• Search and verify availability of desired charts.
• Install and optionally customize charts.
• Troubleshoot issues with cluster and deployment logs.

For more information on Kubernetes, check out our guide on How to Expose Services in Kubernetes.