Install Helm charts in a Space

This topic tells you how to install Helm charts in a Space.

Helm applications on Spaces give you flexibility in deploying, promoting, and managing application workloads packaged as Helm charts. Helm applications enable you to use your existing build-tooling investments while benefiting from the features of Tanzu Platform for Kubernetes to streamline deployment and maximize efficiency.

Prepare your application environment for Helm

The following sections describe how to prepare your environment for the helm application.

Before you begin

Before you can create a Helm-enabled Space, ensure that you have the following:

Infrastructure in Tanzu Platform for Kubernetes, which includes:
- A Project in your organization
- A run cluster group in the Project
- A cluster in the cluster group to run your packaged application
- Availability Targets configured in the Project
For information about how to create a cluster group, cluster, and Availability Targets, see Set up the infrastructure to create an application environment.

Install the Flux CD Source Capability

To install the Flux CD Source Capability:

Go to Application Spaces > Capabilities.
Click the FluxCD Source Controller Capability.
Click install on the Details page.
Click the clustergroup that has the cluster part of the Availability Target.

Install the Flux CD Helm Capability

To install the Flux CD Helm Capability:

Go to Application Spaces > Capabilities.
Click the FluxCD Helm Controller Capability.
Click install on the Details page.
Click the clustergroup that has the cluster part of the Availability Target.

Create a Space

To create a Space:

Go to Application Spaces > Spaces.
Click Create Space and then click Step by step.
Fill in the necessary details, including the Space name and the Availability Target.
Select the fluxcd-helm.tanzu.vmware.com Profile. This Profile includes two Helm-related Capabilities and a single Trait that introduces the fluxcd-helmrelease-installer ServiceAccount with the following permissions. All the permissions are verbs for resources:
- ConfigMap
- Deployment
- Pod
- PodDisruptionBudget
- ReplicaSet
- Secret
- ServiceAccount
- Service
Add the my-custom-networking Profile.
Add api-gateway.spring.tanzu.vmware.com as a required Trait to the my-custom-networking Profile.
(Optional) Add the spring-dev.tanzu.vmware.com Profile. If you add the spring-dev Trait, api-gateway.spring.tanzu.vmware.com is not needed.
Finish the Space creation process.

Deploy Helm Chart

The following sections instruct how to deploy the podinfo Helm chart to a newly created Space.

Create Helm configuration

To create Helm configuration:

Define the location of the Helm chart through the GitRepository, HelmRepository, and OCIRepository APIs that the Flux CD Source Controller package provides. Use the following YAML to reference the standard Helm repository location:
```
# helmrepository.yaml
apiVersion: source.toolkit.fluxcd.io/v1
kind: HelmRepository
metadata:
  name: podinfo
spec:
  interval: 5m
  url: https://stefanprodan.github.io/podinfo
```
For more information about these APIs, see the Source Controller documentation.

The HelmRelease API enables continuous server-side orchestration of Helm releases through Helm actions, such as install, upgrade, test, uninstall, and rollback. This API also enables correction of configuration drift from the wanted release state.

Choose which Helm chart to install (fetched from the referenced repository) and provide configuration values. For example:

# helmrelease.yaml
apiVersion: helm.toolkit.fluxcd.io/v2
kind: HelmRelease
metadata:
  name: podinfo
spec:
  serviceAccountName: fluxcd-helmrelease-installer
  interval: 10m
  timeout: 5m
  chart:
    spec:
      chart: podinfo
      version: '6.5.4'
      sourceRef:
        kind: HelmRepository
        name: podinfo
      interval: 5m
  releaseName: podinfo
  install:
    remediation:
      retries: 3
  upgrade:
    remediation:
      retries: 3
  valuesFrom:
    - kind: Secret
      name: podinfo-values

Use the following YAML to define your secret:

# podinfo-values.yaml
apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: podinfo-values
type: Opaque
stringData:
  values.yaml: |
    replicaCount: 3

To expose the podinfo application, use HTTPRoute API as in this example:

# route.yaml
apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: HTTPRoute
metadata:
  name: podinfo-main
  annotations:
    healthcheck.gslb.tanzu.vmware.com/service: podinfo
    healthcheck.gslb.tanzu.vmware.com/path: /
    healthcheck.gslb.tanzu.vmware.com/port: "9898"
spec:
  parentRefs:
  - group: gateway.networking.k8s.io
    kind: Gateway
    name: default-gateway
    sectionName: http-podinfo
  rules:
  - backendRefs:
    - group: ""
      kind: Service
      name: podinfo
      port: 9898
      weight: 1
    matches:
    - path:
        type: PathPrefix
        value: /

Your directory structure now looks like this:

> tree
.
├── helmrelease.yaml
├── helmrepository.yaml
├── podinfo-values.yaml
└── route.yaml

Deploy Helm resources

To deploy Helm resources:

In the context of your Space, run:
```
tanzu space use

tanzu deploy --only .
```

To verify that the Helm chart was downloaded successfully, view the status of HelmRepository by running:

kubectl get srs -l "resource-name=podinfo,kind=HelmRepository" -oyaml
...
          .status:
            artifact:
              digest: sha256:e09ebbeaf866d6c135bc52af01b736af10f604480fb10c89e4679e708cbd86dc
              lastUpdateTime: "2024-05-14T01:04:11Z"
              path: helmrepository/helm-565df78945-6h5kq/podinfo/index-604cc6699bc91ac6015f7324a41f43f079a5b96d559c51bcf812e9d9f1beda94.yaml
              revision: sha256:604cc6699bc91ac6015f7324a41f43f079a5b96d559c51bcf812e9d9f1beda94
              size: 66394
              url: http://fluxcd-source-controller.flux-system.svc.cluster.local./helmrepository/helm-565df78945-6h5kq/podinfo/index-604cc6699bc91ac6015f7324a41f43f079a5b96d559c51bcf812e9d9f1beda94.yaml
            conditions:
            - lastTransitionTime: "2024-05-14T01:04:11Z"
              message: 'stored artifact: revision ''sha256:604cc6699bc91ac6015f7324a41f43f079a5b96d559c51bcf812e9d9f1beda94'''
              observedGeneration: 1
              reason: Succeeded # <---
              status: "True"
              type: Ready
            - lastTransitionTime: "2024-05-14T01:04:11Z"
              message: 'stored artifact: revision ''sha256:604cc6699bc91ac6015f7324a41f43f079a5b96d559c51bcf812e9d9f1beda94'''
              observedGeneration: 1
              reason: Succeeded
              status: "True"
              type: ArtifactInStorage
            observedGeneration: 1
            url: http://fluxcd-source-controller.flux-system.svc.cluster.local./helmrepository/helm-565df78945-6h5kq/podinfo/index.yaml

To verify that the Helm chart was installed successfully, view the status of HelmRelease by running:

kubectl get srs -l "resource-name=podinfo,kind=HelmRelease" -oyaml
...
          .status:
            conditions:
            - lastTransitionTime: "2024-05-14T01:08:48Z"
              message: Release reconciliation succeeded
              reason: ReconciliationSucceeded # <---
              status: "True"
              type: Ready
            - lastTransitionTime: "2024-05-14T01:08:48Z"
              message: Helm upgrade succeeded
              reason: UpgradeSucceeded
              status: "True"
              type: Released
            helmChart: helm-565df78945-6h5kq/helm-565df78945-6h5kq-podinfo
            lastAppliedRevision: 6.5.4
            lastAttemptedRevision: 6.5.4
            lastAttemptedValuesChecksum: e8ec8c464e25c6b24e812282564f2f6edb011ade
            lastReleaseRevision: 2
            observedGeneration: 2

(Optional) Use ContainerApps to track application details

To use ContainerApps to track application details:

Ensure that the container-app.tanzu.vmware.com Capability is available in your Space to work with container applications.
ContainerApp resource is generally used for describing an application ready to be built and deployed. However, in this case you create a ContainerApp CR manually to represent the already deployed application (the podinfo application that is found inside the installed Helm chart).

Use the following example YAML to define the ContainerApp resource. The value of the labelSelector field is used to aggregate the status of deployments or pods created by HelmRelease.
```
# containerapp.yaml
apiVersion: apps.tanzu.vmware.com/v1
kind: ContainerApp
metadata:
  name: podinfo
  annotations:
    containerapp.apps.tanzu.vmware.com/class: "kubernetes"
spec:
  description: Podinfo application from Helm
  contact:
    slack: "#my-helm-apps"
  image: ghcr.io/stefanprodan/podinfo
  relatedRefs:
    - for: kubernetes.list-replicas
      kind: Pod
      labelSelector: app.kubernetes.io/name=podinfo
```

In the context of your Space, run:

tanzu space use

tanzu deploy --only containerapp.yaml

To verify the deployment, see information about the application by running:

tanzu app list

For example:

$ tanzu app list

tanzu app replicas podinfo
 REPLICA                   STATE    AT                            CONTENT  AGE
 podinfo-5cdff9fb64-h4wz7  Running  all-regions.tanzu.vmware.com           1m
 podinfo-5cdff9fb64-qc9vs  Running  all-regions.tanzu.vmware.com           1m
 podinfo-5cdff9fb64-rbcvz  Running  all-regions.tanzu.vmware.com           1m