Helm: Tapping into the global knowledge of deploying and operating containerized software

Item: Helm
Rating: 10
Author: Cristian Klein

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Helm is the go-to tool to deploy large, complex containerized applications on Kubernetes clusters. It features a large ecosystem of ready-to-use charts, such as Gitlab, MySQL, NGINX, etc., which can be deployed with a one-liner. We also use Helm to package the customer's containerized applications and help them with adopting DevOps or GitOps.

Pros and Cons

Deploying containerized applications in Kubernetes
DevOps

concurrent deployments
templating values files

Return on Investment

developer velocity
uptime

Alternatives Considered

Kubernetes and Docker

When deploying Kubernetes Manifests, one has a few choice:

Vanilla Kubernetes (e.g., kubectl apply), but this requires to do all templating by hand and does not deal with removing Kubernetes objects.
Docker compose: Works perfectly (and we love to use it) on a single Docker node, but not for multi-node clusters.
Kustomize complements (but does not completely replace) Helm.

Furthermore, none of the above solutions allows one to tap into the vast ecosystem of Helm Charts that encapsulate existing knowledge on how to deploy and operate containerized applications.

Support Rating

We didn't really need support, but the open-source community seemed responsive and informative when it came to issues. Many cloud native consultancy companies (including ourselves) offer support for Helm.

Key Insights

Do you think Helm delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Helm's feature set?

Yes

Did Helm live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Helm go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Helm again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Elasticsearch, Kubernetes, GitHub, Gitlab, Prometheus, NGINX

Likelihood to Recommend

Helm is very well suited for setting up GitOps or DevOps pipelines, as well as quickly setting up large, complex applications, such as Gitlab, Elasticsearch/Kibana, Prometheus/Kibana or MySQL. We also use it intensely to deploy and configure smaller building blocks in the Cloud Native / Kubernetes area, such as Ingress Controller, Cert Manager, External DNS, OpenPolicyAgent, Falco, Fluentd, to name a few.