Helm

Helm is the package management tool of choice for Kubernetes. Helm charts provide templating syntax for Kubernetes YAML manifest documents. With Helm, developers or cluster administrators can create configurable templates known as Charts, instead of just using static manifests. For more information about creating your own Chart catalog, check out the docs at https://helm.sh/docs/intro/quickstart/.

K3s does not require any special configuration to support Helm. Just be sure you have properly set the kubeconfig path as per the cluster access documentation.

K3s includes a Helm Controller that manages installing, upgrading/reconfiguring, and uninstalling Helm charts using a HelmChart Custom Resource Definition (CRD). Paired with auto-deploying AddOn manifests, installing a Helm chart on your cluster can be automated by creating a single file on disk.

Using the Helm Controller

The HelmChart Custom Resource captures most of the options you would normally pass to the helm command-line tool. Here's an example of how you might deploy Apache from the Bitnami chart repository, overriding some of the default chart values. Note that the HelmChart resource itself is in the kube-system namespace, but the chart's resources will be deployed to the web namespace, which is created in the same manifest. This can be useful if you want to keep your HelmChart resources separated from the the resources they deploy.

apiVersion: v1
kind: Namespace
metadata:
  name: web
---
apiVersion: helm.cattle.io/v1
kind: HelmChart
metadata:
  name: apache
  namespace: kube-system
spec:
  repo: https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami
  chart: apache
  targetNamespace: web
  valuesContent: |-
    service:
      type: ClusterIP
    ingress:
      enabled: true
      hostname: www.example.com
    metrics:
      enabled: true

HelmChart Field Definitions

Field	Default	Description	Helm Argument / Flag Equivalent
metadata.name		Helm Chart name	NAME
spec.chart		Helm Chart name in repository, or complete HTTPS URL to chart archive (.tgz)	CHART
spec.targetNamespace	default	Helm Chart target namespace	--namespace
spec.version		Helm Chart version (when installing from repository)	--version
spec.repo		Helm Chart repository URL	--repo
spec.repoCA		Specify the certificates of HTTPS-enabled servers	--ca-file
spec.helmVersion	v3	Helm version to use (v2 or v3)
spec.bootstrap	False	Set to True if this chart is needed to bootstrap the cluster (Cloud Controller Manager, etc)
spec.set		Override simple default Chart values. These take precedence over options set via valuesContent.	--set / --set-string
spec.jobImage		Specify the image to use when installing the helm chart. E.g. rancher/klipper-helm:v0.3.0 .
spec.timeout	300	Timeout in seconds for Helm operations	--timeout
spec.failurePolicy	reinstall	Set to abort which case the Helm operation is aborted, pending manual intervention by the operator.
spec.valuesContent		Override complex default Chart values via YAML file content	--values
spec.chartContent		Base64-encoded chart archive .tgz - overrides spec.chart	CHART

Content placed in /var/lib/rancher/k3s/server/static/ can be accessed anonymously via the Kubernetes APIServer from within the cluster. This URL can be templated using the special variable %{KUBERNETES_API}% in the spec.chart field. For example, the packaged Traefik component loads its chart from https://%{KUBERNETES_API}%/static/charts/traefik-12.0.000.tgz.

note

The name field should follow the Helm chart naming conventions. Refer to the Helm Best Practicies documentation to learn more.

Customizing Packaged Components with HelmChartConfig

Version Gate

Available as of v1.19.1+k3s1

To allow overriding values for packaged components that are deployed as HelmCharts (such as Traefik), K3s supports customizing deployments via a HelmChartConfig resources. The HelmChartConfig resource must match the name and namespace of its corresponding HelmChart, and it supports providing additional valuesContent, which is passed to the helm command as an additional value file.

note

HelmChart spec.set values override HelmChart and HelmChartConfig spec.valuesContent settings.

For example, to customize the packaged Traefik ingress configuration, you can create a file named /var/lib/rancher/k3s/server/manifests/traefik-config.yaml and populate it with the following content:

apiVersion: helm.cattle.io/v1
kind: HelmChartConfig
metadata:
  name: traefik
  namespace: kube-system
spec:
  valuesContent: |-
    image:
      name: traefik
      tag: v2.8.5
    forwardedHeaders:
      enabled: true
      trustedIPs:
        - 10.0.0.0/8
    ssl:
      enabled: true
      permanentRedirect: false

Migrating from Helm v2

Version Gate

As of v1.17.0+k3s.1 Helm v3 is supported and used by default.

K3s can handle either Helm v2 or Helm v3. If you wish to migrate to Helm v3, this blog post by Helm explains how to use a plugin to successfully migrate. Refer to the official Helm 3 documentation here for more information. Just be sure you have properly set your kubeconfig as per the section about cluster access.

note

Helm 3 no longer requires Tiller and the helm init command. Refer to the official documentation for details.