Learn Helm: Improve productivity, reduce complexity, and speed up cloud-native adoption with Helm for Kubernetes

Cover
Title page
Copyright
Credits
About Packt
Contributors
Table of Contents
Preface
Section 1: Introduction and Setup
Chapter 1: Understanding Kubernetes and Helm
	From monoliths to modern microservices
	What is Kubernetes?
		Container Orchestration
		High availability
		Scalability
		Active community
	Deploying a Kubernetes application
		Deployment
		Services
		PersistentVolumeClaim
	Approaches in resource management
		Imperative and declarative configuration
	Resource configuration challenges
		The many types of Kubernetes resources
		Keeping the live and local states in sync
		Application life cycles are hard to manage
		Resource files are static
	Helm to the rescue!
		Understanding package managers
		The Kubernetes package manager
	Summary
	Further reading
	Questions
Chapter 2: Preparing a Kubernetes and Helm Environment
	Technical requirements
	Preparing a local Kubernetes environment with Minikube
		Installing Minikube
		Installing VirtualBox
		Configuring VirtualBox as the designated hypervisor
		Configuring Minikube resource allocation
		Exploring the basic usage
	Setting up Kubectl
		Installing Kubectl
	Setting up Helm
		Installing Helm
	Configuring Helm
		Adding upstream repositories
		Adding plugins
		Environment variables
		Tab completion
		Authentication
		Authorization/RBAC
	Summary
	Further reading
	Questions
Chapter 3: Installing your First Helm Chart
	Technical requirements
	Understanding the WordPress application
	Finding a WordPress chart
		Searching for WordPress charts from the command line
		Viewing the WordPress chart in a browser
		Showing the WordPress chart information from the command line
	Creating a Kubernetes environment
	Installing the WordPress chart
		Creating a values file for configuration
		Running the installation
		Inspecting your release
	Additional installation notes
		The -n flag
		The HELM_NAMESPACE environment variable
		Choosing between --set and --values
	Accessing the WordPress application
	Upgrading the WordPress release
		Modifying the Helm values
		Running the upgrade
		Reusing and resetting values during an upgrade
	Rolling back the WordPress release
		Inspecting the WordPress history
		Running the rollback
	Uninstalling the WordPress release
	Cleaning up your environment
	Summary
	Further reading
	Questions
Section 2: Helm Chart Development
Chapter 4: Understanding Helm Charts
	Technical requirements
	Understanding the YAML format
		Defining key-value pairs
		Value types
	Understanding chart templates
		Go templating
	Understanding chart definitions
		Required fields
		Optional metadata
		Managing chart dependencies
		Downloading dependencies
		Conditional dependencies
		Overriding and referencing values from a child chart
		Importing values with import-values
	Life cycle management
		The basics of a Helm hook
		Hook execution
		Advanced hook concepts
	Documenting a Helm chart
		The README.md File
		The LICENSE file
		The templates/NOTES.txt file
	Packaging a Helm chart
	Summary
	Further reading
	Questions
Chapter 5: Building Your First Helm Chart
	Technical requirements
	Understanding the Guestbook application
	Setting up the environment
	Creating a Guestbook Helm chart
		Scaffolding the initial file structure
		Evaluating the chart definition
		Adding a Redis chart dependency
		Modifying the values.yaml file
		Installing the Guestbook chart
	Improving the Guestbook Helm chart
		Creating pre-upgrade and pre-rollback life cycle hooks
		Adding input validation
	Publishing the Guestbook chart to a chart repository
		Creating a chart repository
		Publishing the Guestbook Helm chart
		Adding your chart repository
	Cleaning up
	Summary
	Further reading
	Questions
Chapter 6: Testing Helm Charts
	Technical requirements
	Setting up your environment
	Verifying Helm templating
		Validating template generation locally with helm template
		Linting Helm charts and templates
	Testing in a live cluster
		Creating the chart tests
		Running the chart tests
	Improving chart tests with the chart testing project
		Introducing the chart testing project
		Installing the chart testing tools
	Cleaning up
	Summary
	Further reading
	Questions
Section 3: Adanced Deployment Patterns
Chapter 7: Automating Helm Processes Using CI/CD and GitOps
	Technical requirements
	Understanding CI/CD and GitOps
		CI/CD
		Taking CI/CD to the next level using GitOps
	Setting up our environment
	Creating a CI pipeline to build Helm charts
		Designing the pipeline
		Understanding Jenkins
		Installing Jenkins
		Understanding the pipeline
		Running the pipeline
	Creating a CD pipeline to deploy applications with Helm
		Designing the pipeline
		Updating the environments
		Understanding the pipeline
		Running the pipeline
	Cleaning up
	Summary
	Further reading
	Questions
Chapter 8: Using Helm with the Operator Framework
	Technical requirements
	Understanding Kubernetes Operators
	Creating a Helm operator
		Setting up the environment
		Scaffolding the operator file structure
		Building the operator and pushing it to Quay
		Deploying the Guestbook Operator
		Deploying the Guestbook application
	Using Helm to manage Operators and CRs
	Cleaning up your Kubernetes environment
	Summary
	Further reading
	Questions
Chapter 9: Helm Security Considerations
	Technical requirements
	Data provenance and integrity
		Creating a GPG keypair
		Verifying Helm downloads
	Signing and verifying Helm charts
	Developing secure Helm charts
		Using secure images
		Setting resource limits
		Handling secrets in Helm charts
	Configuring RBAC rules
	Accessing secure chart repositories
	Summary
	Further reading
	Questions
ASSESSMENTS
	Chapter 1: Understanding Kubernetes and Helm
	Chapter 2: Preparing a Kubernetes and Helm Environment
	Chapter 3: Installing Your First Helm Chart
	Chapter 4: Understanding Helm Charts
	Chapter 5: Building Your First Helm Chart
	Chapter 6: Testing Helm Charts
	Chapter 7: Automating Helm Processes Using CI/CD and GitOps
	Chapter 8: Using Helm with the Operator Framework
	Chapter 9: Helm Security Considerations
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