Helm - Package and Publish Chart

Deploying Nginx using a Helm Chart Hosted on GitHub Pages

Helm is a powerful package manager for Kubernetes that allows you to define, package, and distribute applications as Helm charts.

Prerequisites

• A GitHub account
• A Kubernetes cluster (minikube, kind, or a cloud provider cluster)
• Helm
• kubectl installed and configured to access the cluster
• git and GitHub CLI (gh) installed

Steps to package and publish a helm chart

Step 1: Create the Nginx Helm Chart

helm create nginx-chart

cd nginx-chart

• This creates a directory structure like:

nginx-chart/
├── charts/
├── templates/
│   ├── deployment.yaml
│   ├── service.yaml
│   ├── _helpers.tpl
│   ├── hpa.yaml
│   ├── ingress.yaml
│   ├── NOTES.txt
├── Chart.yaml
├── values.yaml

• Modify values.yaml to customize the deployment:

replicaCount: 2
image:
  repository: nginx
  tag: latest
  pullPolicy: IfNotPresent
service:
  type: LoadBalancer
  port: 80

Step 2: Package the Helm Chart

helm package nginx-chart

• This generates a .tgz file, e.g., nginx-chart-0.1.0.tgz.

Step 3: Create a GitHub Repository for the Helm Chart

gh repo create helm-charts --public --description "Helm charts repository"

cd helm-charts

git init

git remote add origin https://github.com/<your-username>/helm-charts.git

• Move the .tgz package into this repository and create an index.yaml file:

helm repo index . --url https://<your-username>.github.io/helm-charts/

• Commit and push the changes:

git add .
git commit -m "Added Nginx Helm chart"
git push origin main

Step 4: Publish the Helm Chart to GitHub Pages

• Enable GitHub Pages in your repository:
  • Go to Settings → Pages.
  • Under “Branch”, select main and / (root).
  • Click “Save”.
• Your Helm chart will be available at:

https://<your-username>.github.io/helm-charts/index.yaml

Step 5: Add and Use the Remote Helm Chart

• Add your repository:

helm repo add myrepo https://<your-username>.github.io/helm-charts/

helm repo update

• Install Nginx using the chart:

helm install my-nginx myrepo/nginx-chart --namespace default --create-namespace

• Verify the installation:

kubectl get pods,svc,deploy,rs

Conclusion

You have successfully created an Nginx Helm chart, packaged it, published it to GitHub Pages, and used it to install Nginx on a Kubernetes cluster. This approach can be used for deploying other applications as well. Happy Helm charting!