Helmfile

You may wonder what the heck is helmfile ? Well, I would say what is docker-compose to Docker, this is helmfile to Helm . Basically, it allows us to install the whole stack of applications to our Kubernetes cluster in a declarative way.

And you may also wonder why is cert-manager so special? I would say cert-manager itself is not that special Helm chart, but it contains CRD ’s which may be installed either by using value installCRDs=true or by installing them using kubectl apply before you install the chart.

Helm is a great tool to deploy popular services and applications to your Kubernetes cluster, but from the moment I started using it I had a feeling that something is missing. You could easily configure and install whatever, but each chart that you use is a separate unit and there is no code containing all resources. This practically means in case of disaster it was still not easy to recreate the cluster, at least not in a quick time frame. Another contra is that in order to pin exact image versions, you would have to edit each values file every time you want to upgrade something.