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Helm

Helm is the package manager for Kubernetes — the standard way to define, share, and deploy Kubernetes applications through reusable, parameterisable packages called Charts. It's an essential tool for any team deploying applications to Kubernetes, dramatically simplifying application lifecycle management.

What is Helm?

Helm Charts are bundles of Kubernetes manifest templates with configurable values. helm install deploys a chart to a cluster; helm upgrade applies changes; helm rollback reverts to a previous version. The Helm Hub/Artifact Hub provides thousands of community charts for common applications (PostgreSQL, Redis, Nginx, Prometheus). Helm's templating engine (Go templates with Sprig functions) enables highly configurable deployments.

Why Helm matters for your career

Without Helm, deploying complex applications to Kubernetes requires managing dozens of YAML files manually with no standard packaging format. Helm provides repeatability, versioning, and parameterisation that make Kubernetes deployments manageable. It's the de facto standard for packaging Kubernetes applications, especially for third-party software.

Career paths using Helm

Helm skills are expected of DevOps Engineer, Platform Engineer, Cloud Engineer, and SRE roles. Any engineer managing Kubernetes application deployments will use Helm regularly.

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Frequently asked questions

Helm vs. Kustomize — which should I use?▼

Helm is better for packaging and distributing applications (especially third-party software). Kustomize is better for environment-specific overlays without a full templating language. Many teams use both: Helm for third-party charts, Kustomize for organisation-specific configuration management.

What's a Helm values file?▼

A values.yaml file provides default configuration for a Helm chart. When deploying, users override values with --set or by providing a custom values file (-f custom-values.yaml), enabling the same chart to deploy differently across environments (dev, staging, production).