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exercise5.md

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Exercise 5: Deploying charts from code with helmsman

Now it's time to deploy charts to our cluster from code. Helmsman is a Helm-Charts-as-Code tool which takes a desired state of charts deployment in your cluster and makes it happen.

This exercise will not work from Windows since Helmsman is not available yet on Windows. If you have Windows 10 with docker installed, you can complete this exercise using Helmsman's docker container. More details here.

We will use an example desired state file (DSF) which describes our desire to have kubernetes dashborad installed in the default namespace and our own helm-echoserver chart installed in the playground namespace.

For simplicity, the example DSF uses your already configured kubectl context.

So let's get down to it:

  1. Download the Helmsman binary for your OS from Github.
curl -L https://github.com/Praqma/helmsman/releases/download/v1.0.2/helmsman_1.0.2_linux_amd64.tar.gz | tar zx
mv helmsman /bin/helmsman
  1. Verify Helmsman is ready to use:
helmsman -v
  1. Let's run Helmsman with our example DSF:

Make sure to replace the kubeContext name in helmsman/dsf.toml with your context name Make sure your local helm repo is still serving charts on localhost (using helm serve)

cd helmsman
helmsman -debug -f dsf.toml

This should generate a plan for you but not execute it. If all is good, you can apply the plan:

helmsman -debug -apply -f dsf.toml
  1. Now you should have both kubernetes-dashboard and helm-echoserver deployed in your cluster. Verify with the following commands:
# listing helm releases
helm list

# view the pods and services created in the default namespace
kubectl get pods,svc

# view the pods and services created in the playground namespace
kubectl get pods,svc --namespace playground
  1. That's not all. We can continue to manipulate our releases from our dsf.toml.
  • Edit the kubernetes-dashboard section under apps in dsf.toml to change the enabled flag to false so that it looks like:
...
[apps.kubernetes-dashboard]
name = "kubernetes-dashboard"
description = "stable/kubernetes-dashboard"
namespace = "default"
enabled = false
chart = "stable/kubernetes-dashboard"
version = "0.4.4"
valuesFile = "k8s-dashboard-values.yaml"
purge = false
...
  • Now run helmsman again:
helmsman -debug -apply -f dsf.toml

# check deployed helm releases
helm list

# check deleted helm releases
helm list --deleted
  1. Now it's your turn to take the helm. Try making the following changes and running helmsman after each change and see what happens (using helm list):
  • Change the kubernetes-dashboard enabled flag back to true (This will fail if you are using helm v2.8.2 due to a bug).
  • Change the namespace for one of the applications, and why not add a new namespace in the namespaces section.
  • Why not add another app to the apps section. Choose any public chart from kubeapps
  • Change the values files for any of the charts you have (e.g, change the kubernetes-dashboard image tag).