Helm (Github, Docs) is a tool for managing Kubernetes packages called charts
.
Helm can do the following:
- Create new charts from scratch
- Package charts into chart archive (tgz) files
- Interact with chart repositories where charts are stored
- Install and uninstall charts into an existing Kubernetes cluster
- Manage the release cycle of charts that have been installed with Helm
For Helm, there are three important concepts:
- The
chart
is a bundle of information necessary to create an instance of a Kubernetes application. - The
config
contains configuration information that can be merged into a packaged chart to create a releasable object. - A
release
is a running instance of achart
, combined with a specificconfig
.