Installation from Helm¶

Helm is the package manager for Kubernetes and the most straightforward way to install FrontStage stack on a Kubernetes cluster. With a single command, you deploy, rollback or uninstall fully working FrontStage instance.

Install Helm¶

The Helm helm commandline tool can be installed from source, pre-built binary release, or via package managers like Homebrew, APT, etc.

Please follow the Helm installation docs.

Once installed, make sure it is added to your PATH and test it with the:

$ helm version
version.BuildInfo{Version:"v3.8.2", GitCommit:"6e3701edea09e5d55a8ca2aae03a68917630e91b", GitTreeState:"clean", GoVersion:"go1.18.1"}

Once you have the Helm successfully installed, you can move on to using Helm to manage charts and add the stable repo.

Have access to a cluster¶

You must have Kubernetes installed. Also, you must have a local configured copy of kubectl tool that communicates to a Kubernetes cluster.

To see which cluster and context kubectl talks with, issue kubectl config get-contexts. The active context will be a row with the asterisk in the CURRENT column.

$ kubectl config get-contexts
CURRENT   NAME             CLUSTER          AUTHINFO         NAMESPACE
*         docker-desktop   docker-desktop   docker-desktop

To quickly switch between clusters, use the kubectl config use-context command.

Add chart repository¶

The Helm calls its packages a chart. Once you have Helm ready, you can add the FrontStage chart repository.

$ help repo add frontstage https://.....

Once this is installed, you will be able to list the charts you can install:

$ helm search repo frontstage
...

If the repo was added some time ago, it is advisable to refresh a list of available charts in the repo first:

$ helm repo update

Install a chart¶

To install a chart, you can run the helm install <chart-name> command.

The installed chart is called release, and you can either choose own name or let Helm generate it.

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.

To install it under a custom name, put it before the chart specification:

$ helm install reporting-for-customer-a frontstage/reporting

Otherwise, to generate a name similar to reporting-1731919701 for you:

$ helm install frontstage/reporting --generate-name

Configure the release¶

Many times, you will want to customize the chart release configuration. To see what options are configurable, use help show values <chart>.

$ helm get values frontstage/reporting
...

There are two ways to pass configuration during installation or upgrade:

--values (or -f) pointing to YAML file with overrides. For example,:
```
$ helm install -f myvals.yaml mychart
```
--set overriding configuration on the command line. For instance,:
```
$ helm install --set foo=bar mychart
```

The --set can be difficult to write for complex or nested data structures, and the generally preferred way is passing value files.

Upgrade or rollback a release¶

When a new chart version is released, or to apply the release configuration, use the helm upgrade command. For example,:

$ helm upgrade -f new.yaml reporting-1731919701 fronstage/reporting

A release is numbered with incremental revision number. Every time an install, upgrade or rollback happens, the revision is incremented by 1. The very first revision is 1. Use helm history <release> to see revision numbers for a certain release.

If something does not go as planned during a release, it is easy to roll back to a previous release using helm rollback <release> <revision>:

$ helm rollback reporting-1731919701 4

Uninstall a release¶

Use the helm uninstall with the release name:

$ helm uninstall reporting-1731919701