Installing Helm

Prerequisites

Install the kubectl binary on your Ansible box
Install the UCP Client bundle for the admin user
Confirm that you can connect to the cluster by running a test command, for example, kubectl get nodes

Playbook

To run the playbook on your Ansible controller:

# cd ~/Docker-SimpliVity
# ansible-playbook -i vm_hosts playbooks/install_helm.yml --vault-password-file .vault_pass

The playbook relies on the variable helm_version to determine the version of Helm to download. The playbooks have been tested using version 2.12.3. You must also specify the appropriate checksum for the download in the variable helm_checksum. This value can be obtained from the downloads page at https://github.com/helm/helm/releases. The vars.sample file that ships with this release contains the following values:

helm_version: "2.12.3"
helm_checksum: "sha256:3425a1b37954dabdf2ba37d5d8a0bd24a225bb8454a06f12b115c55907809107"

Install sample charts

A number of sample charts are delivered with the solution, for the purposes of demonstration.

Alpine

A simple chart is provided in the ~/Docker-SimpliVity/test/files/helm/alpine directory to run a single pod of Alpine Linux.

The templates/ directory contains a very simple pod resource with a couple of parameters. The values.yaml file contains the default values for the alpine-pod.yaml template.

# cd ~/Docker-SimpliVity
# helm install test/files/helm/alpine

The output shows that a single pod was deployed.

NAME:   old-mole
LAST DEPLOYED: Fri Feb  8 17:27:35 2019
NAMESPACE: default
STATUS: DEPLOYED

RESOURCES:
==> v1/Pod
NAME             READY  STATUS   RESTARTS  AGE
old-mole-alpine  1/1    Running  0         0s

Nginx

An example chart is provided in the ~/Docker-SimpliVity/test/files/helm/nginx directory to install a simple nginx server according to the following pattern:

A ConfigMap is used to store the files the server will serve. (templates/configmap.yaml)
A Deployment is used to create a Replica Set of nginx pods. (templates/deployment.yaml)
A Service is used to create a gateway to the pods running in the replica set (templates/service.yaml)

The values.yaml exposes a few of the configuration options in the charts.

# cd ~/Docker-SimpliVity
# helm install test/files/helm/nginx

The output shows a service being created with a NodePort at 34567. This value comes from the values.yml file in the folder.

NAME:   worn-olm
LAST DEPLOYED: Fri Feb  8 16:23:21 2019
NAMESPACE: default
STATUS: DEPLOYED

RESOURCES:
==> v1/Deployment
NAME            DESIRED  CURRENT  UP-TO-DATE  AVAILABLE  AGE
worn-olm-nginx  1        1        1           1          14s

==> v1/Pod(related)
NAME                             READY  STATUS     RESTARTS  AGE
worn-olm-nginx-7d648f7dfb-gg2jk  1/1    Running    0         14s
worn-olm-nginx-vhwc7             0/1    Completed  0         14s

==> v1/ConfigMap
NAME            DATA  AGE
worn-olm-nginx  2     14s

==> v1/Service
NAME            TYPE      CLUSTER-IP    EXTERNAL-IP  PORT(S)       AGE
worn-olm-nginx  NodePort  10.96.30.222  <none>       80:34567/TCP  14s

Helm also allows you to easily delete installed releases. List the installed releases to find the name of the release you wish to delete.

# helm list
NAME            REVISION        UPDATED                         STATUS          CHART           APP VERSION     NAMESPACE
worn-olm        1               Fri Feb  8 16:23:21 2019        DEPLOYED        nginx-0.1.0                     default

Use the helm delete command to remove the named release.

# helm delete worn-olm
release "worn-olm" deleted

# Installing Helm

# Prerequisites

# Playbook

# Install sample charts