5 exercises on Helm packaging and deployment of Kubernetes applications.
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What is a Helm chart?
A chart is Helm's packaging format for a Kubernetes application: a directory (or .tgz archive) containing templated manifests in templates/, a Chart.yaml with metadata and version, a values.yaml with defaults, and optional subcharts in charts/. Installing a chart renders the templates into concrete Kubernetes objects and applies them. Charts make complex applications — with their Deployments, Services, ConfigMaps, and more — reusable, versioned, and shareable, much like an operating-system package manages software.
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What role does values.yaml play in a Helm chart?
values.yaml holds the default configuration for a chart. Templates pull these values via .Values.someKey, so the same chart can be customized without editing the templates themselves. At install or upgrade time you override defaults with --set key=value or a custom values file (-f prod.yaml), enabling one chart to serve dev, staging, and production with different replica counts, image tags, or resource limits. This separation of configuration from templates is central to Helm's reusability.
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What is a Helm template?
A Helm template is a Kubernetes manifest file in templates/ containing Go templating directives — {{ .Values.x }}, conditionals, loops, and built-in functions from the Sprig library. When you install or upgrade, Helm renders these templates by substituting values and helper functions to produce final manifests. Reusable snippets live in _helpers.tpl as named templates included with include. Templating is what lets one chart generate environment-specific Kubernetes resources from a shared blueprint.
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What is a Helm release?
A release is a running instance of a chart deployed into a Kubernetes cluster, identified by a name you choose. You can install the same chart multiple times under different release names. Helm records each install and upgrade as a numbered revision, storing the state so you can helm rollback to a previous revision if an upgrade misbehaves. helm list shows active releases. This release-and-revision model gives Helm its lifecycle management: install, upgrade, rollback, and uninstall.
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What is a Helm repository?
A Helm repository is an HTTP(S) server that hosts packaged chart archives alongside an index.yaml cataloguing the available charts and versions. You add a repo with helm repo add, refresh its index with helm repo update, and then install charts by name. Repositories make charts discoverable and distributable — public examples include Bitnami and Artifact Hub. Modern Helm can also store charts in OCI registries (the same registries that hold container images), unifying artifact distribution.