We’re excited to announce the availability of Helm chart deployments to Kubernetes clusters running on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Container Engine for Kubernetes (OKE). This new feature of OCI DevOps service enables developers to easily create continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) pipelines that include Helm chart package deployments to their OKE clusters. Now, developers can add a specific Helm chart stage to deployment pipelines to automate the Helm deployment and automatically roll back on OKE environments.
Previously, developers who automated deployments with DevOps CD pipelines needed custom configuration to install the Helm command line onto a host with access to their OKE cluster and keep this extra jump host around only for deployments. With this new Helm-specific stage in a deployment pipeline, you don’t need to set up, operate, and maintain a bastion or jump host. Directly choose the private API OKE cluster environment and deploy from a DevOps service pipeline
Why Helm?
Helm is the often-used package manager for Kubernetes and the most popular way to deploy apps to Kubernetes (K8s). Helm simplifies application deployment to K8s in the same way that an OS or runtime package manager like Homebrew for Mac OS X or Conda for Python simplifies managing OS and language software installation.
With Helm, developers don’t need to deploy many individual K8s manifests. They can package all the manifests related to a piece of software as a chart and deploy it with all the related services and configurations in sequence. You can also customize the installation by changing values in the chart. If you’re new to Helm, see examples on the GitLab Helm chart or WordPress.
Helm isn’t just for installing third-party software. Developers on a team can use Helm to package and version their software to deploy together, instead of managing many individual manifests (like the GitLab or WordPress examples). You can build your Helm chart in a DevOps build pipeline then push it to the OCI Container Registry to use in your deployment. You can also push Helm charts to a container registry if it’s compatible with the Open Container Initiative.
Conclusion
To learn more about the Helm deployment stage in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure DevOps check out our documentation on how to add the new step type to your build instructions.
We’re excited to make it easier for developers to build, test, then deploy their application release using Helm charts! We look forward to hearing from you on how you integrate Helm into your CI/CD pipelines.
