(Day 39) Task : Understanding Basics Of Helm & Helm Charts:

What Do You Want to Talk About?

Day 39 of my #90DaysOfDevOps journey: Today, I explored Helm, often called the package manager for Kubernetes. Helm simplifies the deployment and management of complex Kubernetes applications through a concept called Helm Charts. Inspired by a powerful explanation in a video by Technical Guftgu, I’ve created this blog to summarize and explain the key points with examples and practical use cases for beginners and intermediate learners alike.

What is Helm?

Helm is a package manager for Kubernetes, similar to how apt works for Ubuntu or yum for RHEL-based systems. Helm lets you define, install, and upgrade even the most complex Kubernetes applications using a structured format called Charts.

Think of Helm as a way to package your Kubernetes YAMLs in a reusable and shareable format.

Why Do We Need Helm?

Manually managing multiple YAML files for applications like WordPress or MongoDB can become messy, especially when you need to:

Set different values for dev, staging, and production environments

Re-deploy apps with new config values

Roll back to a previous release

Track app versioning

Helm handles all this for you!

What is a Helm Chart?

A Helm Chart is a collection of files that describe a related set of Kubernetes resources.

Structure of a Helm Chart:

mychart/

Chart.yaml – Metadata about the Helm chart (name, version, dependencies)

values.yaml – Default configuration settings

templates/ – Folder containing Go-template-based Kubernetes YAML files

Real-World Analogy :

Think of Helm as Docker Compose for Kubernetes.

You define your app’s entire stack in a chart, with configuration values abstracted into values.yaml, making it easy to reuse and deploy across environments.

Basic Helm Commands :-

Here are a few must-know commands:

# Install Helm (on Linux)