Install Helm

 

What is Helm?

1. Install Helm:

If you haven't already installed Helm on your local machine and your Kubernetes cluster, you can follow the instructions provided in the official Helm documentation: Installing Helm.

2. Add Helm Chart Repositories:

Helm uses repositories to store and retrieve charts. You can add popular Helm chart repositories to your Helm configuration using the helm repo add command. For example:

bash
helm repo add stable https://charts.helm.sh/stable
helm repo add bitnami https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami

This adds the stable and Bitnami repositories to your Helm configuration, allowing you to search for and install charts from these repositories.

3. Search for Helm Charts:

You can use the helm search repo command to search for Helm charts available in the configured repositories. For example:

bash
helm search repo wordpress

This command searches for Helm charts related to WordPress in the configured repositories.

4. Customize Helm Values:

Before installing a Helm chart, you may need to customize the values used by the chart. You can create a values.yaml file with your custom configuration values or override specific values using the --set flag when installing the chart.

5. Install Helm Charts:

Once you've found the Helm chart you want to install and have customized the values as needed, you can use the helm install command to install the chart. For example:

bash
helm install my-wordpress stable/wordpress -f values.yaml

This command installs the WordPress Helm chart from the stable repository using the values specified in the values.yaml file.

6. Manage Helm Releases:

You can use various Helm commands to manage your Helm releases, such as helm list to list installed releases, helm upgrade to upgrade releases, and helm delete to delete releases.

7. Helm Charts for Your Applications:

If you have custom applications or services that you want to deploy using Helm, you can create your own Helm charts to package and deploy them. The Helm documentation provides guidance on creating charts: Developing Charts.

Steps to Install ArgoCD on EKS:

1. Install ArgoCD using Helm:

   Run the following commands to add the ArgoCD Helm repository and install ArgoCD:

   bash
   # Add ArgoCD Helm repository
   
   helm repo add argo https://argoproj.github.io/argo-helm
   
   
   # Create namespace
   kubectl create namespace argocd
   # Install ArgoCD
   
   helm install argocd argo/argo-cd --name-space argocd
   

2. Wait for ArgoCD Pods to be Ready:

   After installing ArgoCD, wait for the pods to be in the Running state. You can use the following command to monitor the pods:

   bash
   kubectl get pods -n argocd
   

3. Access ArgoCD UI:

   By default, ArgoCD's UI is not exposed externally. To access the UI, you need to create a port forward:

   bash
   kubectl port-forward svc/argocd-server -n argocd 8080:443
   

   Now, you can access the ArgoCD UI by navigating to http://localhost:8080 in your web browser. The default username is admin and the password is the pod name of the ArgoCD API server.

4. Configure ArgoCD:

   Once you're logged into the ArgoCD UI, you can start deploying applications or configuring Git repositories for continuous delivery.