Logo of Helm.

Recent and official announcements here: Helm 3.0.0 has been released!, here: Helm 3: Simpler and more secure or here: Helm Reaches Version 3.

Yep, Tiller is gone, but that’s not just that! Here is an exhaustive list of all the major changes from Helm 2 to Helm 3.

Let’s go through our first Hello, World! scenario with Helm 3.

First you need to install Helm 3. In my case I will leverage throughout this blog article the Azure Cloud Shell. But as we speak, it just has Helm version 2.15.2, so here is my custom script to install my own Helm 3 version:

helmFile='helm-v3.0.0-linux-amd64.tar.gz'
curl https://get.helm.sh/$helmFile --output $helmFile
tar -xvf $helmFile
mkdir ~/tools
mv linux-amd64/helm ~/tools/helm3
rm $helmFile
rm -r linux-amd64
echo 'export PATH=$PATH:~/tools' >> ~/.bashrc && source ~/.bashrc
helm3 version

From here I have both helm and helm3 commands to keep/use both in parallel for now. So I will use helm3 command from here.

Then let’s create our first Helm chart:

chart=hello-world  
helm3 create $chart
ls ./$chart
# Should return: charts  Chart.yaml  templates values.yaml
ls ./$chart/templates
# Should return: deployment.yaml  helpers.tpl  ingress.yaml  NOTES.txt  serviceaccount.yaml  service.yaml
helm3 lint ./$chart

Now let’s deploy this chart in a Kubernetes cluster (so you need one somewhere locally, on Azure, etc.):

ns=hello-world
release=hello-world
kubectl create ns $ns
helm3 upgrade --install -n $ns $release ./$chart
helm3 list -n $ns
helm3 test $release -n $ns
kubectl get all -n $ns

Now let’s leverage Azure Container Registry (ACR) as an Helm chart repository:

acr=<your-acr-name>
acrLogin=<your-acr-login>
acrPassword=<your-acr-password>

# First, let's package and push our Helm chart
helm3 package ./$chart
az acr helm push -n $acr -u $acrLogin -p $acrPassword $(ls $chart-*.tgz)
az acr helm list -n $acr -u $acrLogin -p $acrPassword -o table
az acr helm show $chart -n $acr

# Second, let's pull and deploy our Helm chart
helm3 repo add $acr https://$acr.azurecr.io/helm/v1/repo --username $acrLogin --password $acrPassword
helm3 upgrade --install -n $ns $release $acr/$chart
helm3 list -n $ns
kubectl get all -n $ns

Another approach could be to use instead the new OCI Artifact support by Helm 3 by still leveraging ACR:

export HELM_EXPERIMENTAL_OCI=1

# First, let's package and push our Helm chart
helm3 chart save ./$chart $acr.azurecr.io/charts/$chart:v1
helm3 chart list

echo $acrPassword | helm registry login $acr.azurecr.io -u $acrLogin --password-stdin

helm chart push $acr.azurecr.io/charts/$chart:v1
az acr repository show-tags -n $acr --repository charts/$chart
az acr repository show-manifests -n $acr --repository charts/$chart --detail

# Second, let's pull and deploy our Helm chart

helm3 chart remove $acr.azurecr.io/charts/$chart:v1
helm3 chart pull $acr.azurecr.io/charts/$chart:v1
rm -rf $chart
helm3 chart export $acr.azurecr.io/charts/$chart:v1
ls $chart

helm3 upgrade --install -n $ns $release ./$chart

helm3 list -n $ns

kubectl get all -n $ns

What about if you have existing Helm 2 charts? Actually you could read more about the Migration tool in place to migrate both configurations and releases from Helm2 to Helm3. But you could also keep your existing Helm 2 charts as-is and deploy them with the Helm 3 client, let’s take an example for the latter option:

git clone https://github.com/azure/phippyandfriends
cd parrot/charts/parrot
kubectl create ns parrot
helm3 upgrade \
    --install \
    --set image.repository=mabenoit/parrot \
    --set image.tag=latest \
    --set ingress.enabled=false \
    -n parrot parrot \
    .

helm3 list -n $ns

kubectl get all -n $ns

Note: I took the opportunity to open PR#35 in the associated azure/phippyandfriends GitHub repository to leverage the Helm 3 client.

Here we are! We have seen how to install Helm 3 in Azure Cloud Shell, we have created and deployed our first Helm 3 chart, then we pushed it in ACR via 2 different ways and finally we also showed how to continue using Helm 2 charts with the Helm 3 client. Hope you enjoyed this!

Complementary resources I invite you to leverage too:

Happy Helming! Happy Sailing!

Cheers!