What is Helm?
Helm is an open source package manager for Kubernetes. The project is maintaned by CNCF and has been hugely popular with the community, with 410 contributors and nearly 9,000 stars on GitHub.
The main aim of Helm Charts is to help you define, install, and upgrade even the most complex Kubernetes application.
Why Helm?
We are excited to launch Helm Release integration into Skycap Formations, alongside Stencils. This integration was requested by our Skycap users and it gives developers a flexible way to use Helm Charts for off-the-shelf services with predictable release cycles. It can be used alongside Stencils for internal services that tend to be more complex with regards to releases, configuration, and security.
How does it work?
This integration makes Skycap Formations the single control plane for building and managing all your configuration templates, files and deployment targets.
You can add multiple Helm Releases - which are combinations of Repo, Chart, and Version - to your formations. Cloud 66 will automatically pull in any relevant configuration from the chart - like values.yml - and make those available to you to edit and modify as you require. Advanced users can add their own private Helm Repositories!
Modifications to the chart configurations can include: Vault values, ConfigStore values, calculated fields, and much more. You can even apply Copper Policies to them to make sure they tow the company line!
Finally, when you're ready, you can snapshot your Helm Release - which makes it available into the future - and render it. This will generate a standalone helm command, complete with short-lived Cloud 66 generated URL arguments to run. Running that command will apply your helm releases to your clusters.
Neat and tidy... but very powerful!
For more information visit our help page 'Using Helm with Skycap'.
Set up
To add Helm Releases to your Skycap Formation go to your 'Application' and select 'Formation' from the righthand side bar of the dashboard. In the Formation Dashboard click on the 'Helm Releases' to add your Helm Releases to your application.
Visit our help page for more information on how to work with Helm.
