Quickstart Guide

    The following prerequisites are required for a successful and properly secured use of Helm.

    1. A Kubernetes cluster
    2. Deciding what security configurations to apply to your installation, if any
    3. Installing and configuring Helm and Tiller, the cluster-side service.
    • You must have Kubernetes installed. For the latest release of Helm, we recommend the latest stable release of Kubernetes, which in most cases is the second-latest minor release.
    • You should also have a local configured copy of .

    NOTE: Kubernetes versions prior to 1.6 have limited or no support for role-based access controls (RBAC).

    Helm will figure out where to install Tiller by reading your Kubernetes configuration file (usually $HOME/.kube/config). This is the same file that kubectl uses.

    To find out which cluster Tiller would install to, you can run kubectl config current-context or kubectl cluster-info.

    Understand your Security Context

    As with all powerful tools, ensure you are installing it correctly for your scenario.

    If you’re using Helm on a cluster that you completely control, like minikube or a cluster on a private network in which sharing is not a concern, the default installation – which applies no security configuration – is fine, and it’s definitely the easiest. To install Helm without additional security steps, and then initialize Helm.

    However, if your cluster is exposed to a larger network or if you share your cluster with others – production clusters fall into this category – you must take extra steps to secure your installation to prevent careless or malicious actors from damaging the cluster or its data. To apply configurations that secure Helm for use in production environments and other multi-tenant scenarios, see

    If your cluster has Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) enabled, you may want to configure a service account and rules before proceeding.

    Install Helm

    For more details, or for other options, see the installation guide.

    Once you have Helm ready, you can initialize the local CLI and also install Tiller into your Kubernetes cluster in one step:

    1. $ helm init --history-max 200

    TIP: Setting --history-max on helm init is recommended as configmaps and other objects in helm history can grow large in number if not purged by max limit. Without a max history set the history is kept indefinitely, leaving a large number of records for helm and tiller to maintain.

    This will install Tiller into the Kubernetes cluster you saw with kubectl config current-context.

    TIP: Want to install into a different cluster? Use the --kube-context flag.

    TIP: When you want to upgrade Tiller, just run helm init --upgrade.

    By default, when Tiller is installed, it does not have authentication enabled. To learn more about configuring strong TLS authentication for Tiller, consult .

    Install an Example Chart

    To install a chart, you can run the helm install command. Helm has several ways to find and install a chart, but the easiest is to use one of the official stable charts.

    Whenever you install a chart, a new release is created. So one chart can be installed multiple times into the same cluster. And each can be independently managed and upgraded.

    The helm install command is a very powerful command with many capabilities. To learn more about it, check out the

    It’s easy to see what has been released using Helm:

    1. $ helm ls
    2. wintering-rodent    1           Thu Oct 18 15:06:58 2018    DEPLOYED    mysql-0.10.1    5.7.14         default

    The function will show you a list of all deployed releases.

    Uninstall a Release

    To uninstall a release, use the helm delete command:

    This will uninstall wintering-rodent from Kubernetes, but you will still be able to request information about that release:

    1. $ helm status wintering-rodent
    2. LAST DEPLOYED: Thu Oct 18 14:21:18 2018
    3. NAMESPACE: default
    4. STATUS: DELETED
    6. NOTES:
    7. MySQL can be accessed via port 3306 on the following DNS name from within your cluster:
    8. wintering-rodent-mysql.default.svc.cluster.local
    10. To get your root password run:
    12.     MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=$(kubectl get secret --namespace default wintering-rodent-mysql -o jsonpath="{.data.mysql-root-password}" | base64 --decode; echo)
    14. To connect to your database:
    19. 2. Install the mysql client:
    21.     $ apt-get update && apt-get install mysql-client -y
    23. 3. Connect using the mysql cli, then provide your password:
    24.     $ mysql -h wintering-rodent-mysql -p
    26. To connect to your database directly from outside the K8s cluster:
    27.     MYSQL_HOST=127.0.0.1
    28.     MYSQL_PORT=3306
    30.     # Execute the following command to route the connection:
    31.     kubectl port-forward svc/wintering-rodent-mysql 3306
    32.     mysql -h ${MYSQL_HOST} -P${MYSQL_PORT} -u root -p${MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD}

    Because Helm tracks your releases even after you’ve deleted them, you can audit a cluster’s history, and even undelete a release (with helm rollback).

    To learn more about the available Helm commands, use helm help or type a command followed by the -h flag: