Case study: we want to install Elasticsearch via Helm chart.
From Elastic Stack Helm chart | Elastic Docs we can see that Elastic offers a repository of Helm charts: https://helm.elastic.co.
We first need to add Elastic Helm repository to our local Helm repository list:
% helm repo add elastic https://helm.elastic.co
We can choose an arbitrary local name for the repository we're adding. We used elastic as repository is provided by Elastic.
The next step is to update information of available charts locally from all added chart repositories, or from the one we've just added:
% helm repo update elastic
Hang tight while we grab the latest from your chart repositories...
...Successfully got an update from the "elastic" chart repository
Update Complete. ⎈Happy Helming!⎈
helm repo update basically downloads all Helm charts from a given repo to our local registry.
Let's now list all charts in elastic repository:
% helm search repo elastic
NAME CHART VERSION APP VERSION DESCRIPTION
elastic/eck-elasticsearch 0.15.0 Elasticsearch managed by the ECK operator
elastic/elastic-agent 9.0.1 9.0.1 Elastic-Agent Helm Chart
elastic/elasticsearch 8.5.1 8.5.1 Official Elastic helm chart for Elasticsearch
elastic/apm-attacher 1.1.3 A Helm chart installing the Elastic APM Kuberne...
elastic/apm-server 8.5.1 8.5.1 Official Elastic helm chart for Elastic APM Server
elastic/eck-agent 0.15.0 Elastic Agent managed by the ECK operator
elastic/eck-apm-server 0.15.0 Elastic APM Server managed by the ECK operator
elastic/eck-beats 0.15.0 Elastic Beats managed by the ECK operator
elastic/eck-enterprise-search 0.15.0 Elastic Enterprise Search managed by the ECK op...
elastic/eck-fleet-server 0.15.0 Elastic Fleet Server as an Agent managed by the...
elastic/eck-kibana 0.15.0 Kibana managed by the ECK operator
elastic/eck-logstash 0.15.0 Logstash managed by the ECK operator
elastic/eck-operator 3.0.0 3.0.0 Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes (ECK) operator
elastic/eck-operator-crds 3.0.0 3.0.0 ECK operator Custom Resource Definitions
elastic/eck-stack 0.15.0 Elastic Stack managed by the ECK Operator
elastic/filebeat 8.5.1 8.5.1 Official Elastic helm chart for Filebeat
elastic/kibana 8.5.1 8.5.1 Official Elastic helm chart for Kibana
elastic/kube-state-metrics 5.30.1 2.15.0 Install kube-state-metrics to generate and expo...
elastic/logstash 8.5.1 8.5.1 Official Elastic helm chart for Logstash
elastic/metricbeat 8.5.1 8.5.1 Official Elastic helm chart for Metricbeat
elastic/pf-host-agent 8.14.3 8.14.3 Hyperscaler software efficiency. For everybody.
elastic/profiling-agent 9.0.0 9.0.0 Hyperscaler software efficiency. For everybody.
elastic/profiling-collector 9.0.0 9.0.0 Universal Profiling. Hyperscaler software effic...
elastic/profiling-symbolizer 9.0.0 9.0.0 Universal Profiling. Hyperscaler software effic...
Another way of checking all charts is to download index.yaml file from the remote repository. It contains information of ALL versions of ALL charts in the repo:
% curl https://helm.elastic.co/index.yaml
...
- apiVersion: v2
appVersion: 8.15.0
created: "2024-08-08T09:05:09.582088545Z"
description: 'Universal Profiling. Hyperscaler software efficiency. For everybody. '
digest: 9f6a78ed179cda2792259ad7c73db32c2753bf5e3317135fca52fbfb48a8063c
icon: https://static-www.elastic.co/v3/assets/bltefdd0b53724fa2ce/blt6ec3007768940247/63337a1f4d11fa0cfdb55244/illustration-deployment-3-arrows.png
kubeVersion: '>= 1.22.0-0'
name: profiling-symbolizer
urls:
- https://helm.elastic.co/helm/profiling-symbolizer/profiling-symbolizer-8.15.0.tgz
version: 8.15.0
- apiVersion: v2
appVersion: 8.14.3
created: "2024-07-11T13:35:06.289007371Z"
description: 'Universal Profiling. Hyperscaler software efficiency. For everybody. '
digest: 9d1656e80f9c96c3cf7fa2d0692c7318e34e20ff6ad1da13a6b4dae1c82bc990
icon: https://static-www.elastic.co/v3/assets/bltefdd0b53724fa2ce/blt6ec3007768940247/63337a1f4d11fa0cfdb55244/illustration-deployment-3-arrows.png
kubeVersion: '>= 1.22.0-0'
name: profiling-symbolizer
urls:
- https://helm.elastic.co/helm/profiling-symbolizer/profiling-symbolizer-8.14.3.tgz
version: 8.14.3
...
To see only versions of some particular chart e.g. eck-elasticsearch:
% curl -s https://helm.elastic.co/index.yaml | grep eck-elasticsearch
eck-elasticsearch:
name: eck-elasticsearch
- https://helm.elastic.co/helm/eck-elasticsearch/eck-elasticsearch-0.15.0.tgz
name: eck-elasticsearch
- https://helm.elastic.co/helm/eck-elasticsearch/eck-elasticsearch-0.14.1.tgz
name: eck-elasticsearch
- https://helm.elastic.co/helm/eck-elasticsearch/eck-elasticsearch-0.14.0.tgz
name: eck-elasticsearch
- https://helm.elastic.co/helm/eck-elasticsearch/eck-elasticsearch-0.13.0.tgz
name: eck-elasticsearch
- https://helm.elastic.co/helm/eck-elasticsearch/eck-elasticsearch-0.12.1.tgz
name: eck-elasticsearch
- https://helm.elastic.co/helm/eck-elasticsearch/eck-elasticsearch-0.12.0.tgz
name: eck-elasticsearch
- https://helm.elastic.co/helm/eck-elasticsearch/eck-elasticsearch-0.11.0.tgz
name: eck-elasticsearch
- https://helm.elastic.co/helm/eck-elasticsearch/eck-elasticsearch-0.10.0.tgz
name: eck-elasticsearch
- https://helm.elastic.co/helm/eck-elasticsearch/eck-elasticsearch-0.9.1.tgz
name: eck-elasticsearch
- https://helm.elastic.co/helm/eck-elasticsearch/eck-elasticsearch-0.9.0.tgz
name: eck-elasticsearch
- https://helm.elastic.co/helm/eck-elasticsearch/eck-elasticsearch-0.8.0.tgz
name: eck-elasticsearch
- https://helm.elastic.co/helm/eck-elasticsearch/eck-elasticsearch-0.7.0.tgz
name: eck-elasticsearch
- https://helm.elastic.co/helm/eck-elasticsearch/eck-elasticsearch-0.7.0-SNAPSHOT.tgz
name: eck-elasticsearch
- https://helm.elastic.co/helm/eck-elasticsearch/eck-elasticsearch-0.6.0.tgz
name: eck-elasticsearch
- https://helm.elastic.co/helm/eck-elasticsearch/eck-elasticsearch-0.4.0.tgz
name: eck-elasticsearch
- https://helm.elastic.co/helm/eck-elasticsearch/eck-elasticsearch-0.3.0.tgz
name: eck-elasticsearch
- https://helm.elastic.co/helm/eck-elasticsearch/eck-elasticsearch-0.2.0.tgz
name: eck-elasticsearch
- https://helm.elastic.co/helm/eck-elasticsearch/eck-elasticsearch-0.1.1.tgz
name: eck-elasticsearch
- https://helm.elastic.co/helm/eck-elasticsearch/eck-elasticsearch-0.1.0.tgz
- condition: eck-elasticsearch.enabled
name: eck-elasticsearch
- condition: eck-elasticsearch.enabled
name: eck-elasticsearch
...
As the response is YAML document, we can use yq tool to extract exactly what we need:
% curl -s https://helm.elastic.co/index.yaml | yq '.entries | to_entries | .[].value[] | select(.name == "eck-elasticsearch") | "Name: " + .name + "\nVersion: " + .version + "\n\n"'
Name: eck-elasticsearch
Version: 0.15.0
Name: eck-elasticsearch
Version: 0.14.1
Name: eck-elasticsearch
Version: 0.14.0
Name: eck-elasticsearch
Version: 0.13.0
Name: eck-elasticsearch
Version: 0.12.1
...
Let's say we want to install elastic/eck-elasticsearch chart. How can we find its default values?
% helm show values elastic/eck-elasticsearch
---
# Default values for eck-elasticsearch.
# This is a YAML-formatted file.
# Overridable names of the Elasticsearch resource.
# By default, this is the Release name set for the chart,
# followed by 'eck-elasticsearch'.
#
# nameOverride will override the name of the Chart with the name set here,
# so nameOverride: quickstart, would convert to '{{ Release.name }}-quickstart'
#
# nameOverride: "quickstart"
#
# fullnameOverride will override both the release name, and the chart name,
# and will name the Elasticsearch resource exactly as specified.
#
# fullnameOverride: "quickstart"
# Version of Elasticsearch.
#
version: 9.0.0
# Elasticsearch Docker image to deploy
#
# image:
# Labels that will be applied to Elasticsearch.
#
labels: {}
# Annotations that will be applied to Elasticsearch.
#
annotations: {}
# Settings for configuring Elasticsearch users and roles.
# ref: https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/cloud-on-k8s/current/k8s-users-and-roles.html
#
auth: {}
# Settings for configuring stack monitoring.
# ref: https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/cloud-on-k8s/current/k8s-stack-monitoring.html
#
monitoring: {}
# metrics:
# elasticsearchRefs:
# - name: monitoring
# namespace: observability
# logs:
# elasticsearchRefs:
# - name: monitoring
# namespace: observability
...
...
We can save this document into a local yaml file which we can then modify and adjust to our needs:
% helm show values elastic/eck-elasticsearch > eck-elasticsearch-values.yaml
To deploy Helm chart into the Kubernetes cluster by using our own values:
% helm install \
my-elasticsearch \
elastic/eck-elasticsearch \
-f eck-elasticsearch-values.yaml \
-n elastic-system \
--create-namespace
We chose to deploy it in a custom namespace which we named elastic-system.
By default, helm install installs the chart into the Kubernetes cluster our kubectl is currently configured to use. Helm relies on the kubeconfig file (typically located at ~/.kube/config) to know which cluster to interact with.
helm install:
- Reads the kubeconfig file used by kubectl.
- Connects to the current Kubernetes context (cluster and namespace).
- Installs the Helm chart to that cluster, unless you override the context or namespace.
We can control the target cluster and namespace using the following:
helm install my-release elastic/eck-elasticsearch --kube-context=my-cluster-context
To list contexts:
kubectl config get-contexts
To switch context:
kubectl config use-context my-cluster-context
Before we attempt to target a remote Kubernetes cluster, we need to ensure that:
- Our ~/.kube/config contains valid credentials and cluster info.
- We can interact with it using kubectl (test with kubectl get nodes or kubectl get pods).
---
