If you’ve spent more than a week with Kubernetes, you’ve probably faced “YAML-fatigue.” You start by copy-pasting a deployment.yaml and a service.yaml. Soon, you need a configmap.yaml, a secret.yaml, and an ingress.yaml. Before you know it, you’re managing 12 different YAML files for a single application, and deploying to staging means find-and-replace on all of them.

This is the exact problem Helm (https://helm.sh/) was born to solve.

In the simplest terms, Helm is the “package manager for Kubernetes.” Think apt for Ubuntu, npm for Node.js, or brew for macOS. It lets you bundle all those messy YAML files into a single, neat package called a Chart.

This Chart is like a blueprint. It’s not just a pile of static files; it’s a template. You provide your own configuration (like “I want 3 replicas” or “use this database URL”) in a file called values.yaml, and Helm magically generates all the correct YAML and applies it to your cluster.

It’s the tool everyone uses, but is it any good?

My Lab Configuration

For this test, I used the following: Physical 2 x Raspberry Pi5 2 x Raspberry Pi4 MSI NUC Mini PC 32 Cores 32GB RAM and 250GB NVME Router Dedicated 1GBps Network Switch

Logical 4 (2VMs) Master\Control Plane Nodes -running ubuntu with k3s 4 (2VMs) Worker Nodes -running ubuntu with k3s Proxmox K8s Cluster

Workloads/Services Cert Manager Nginx Prometheus ArgoCD

The Good Stuff (The Advantages)

It Solves the “Copy-Paste” Problem: This is its prime directive. You can install a complex application like PostgreSQL or a full monitoring stack with a single command: helm install my-postgres postgresql-ha/postgresql. No more managing 50 different YAML files by hand.

Reusable and Shareable: The real magic is the public Artifact Hub, which is a giant repository of charts for almost anything you can imagine. You don’t have to write the YAML for a Redis cluster; someone already has, and they’ve made it configurable.

Sanity in CI/CD: Because you can pass in values from the command line, it’s perfect for automation. Your CI/CD pipeline can deploy the exact same chart to dev, staging, and prod, just by passing in a different values.yaml file for each.

Lifecycle Management (Upgrades & Rollbacks): This is a huge one. Helm doesn’t just install; it manages. When you want to update your app, you use helm upgrade. And if that upgrade goes horribly wrong? helm rollback my-app 1 to instantly revert to the previous working version.

The Not-So-Good Stuff (The Drawbacks)

The Templating is… a Lot: Helm uses Go’s templating language. For simple things, it’s fine. But to do anything complex—like if statements or loops—the syntax is famously ugly. You’ll soon find yourself looking at charts that are 50% and it can be a nightmare to read.

Debugging is an Art Form: When a Helm install fails, you’re often left with a cryptic error. The real skill is learning to debug what Helm would have done. You’ll have helm template . –debug and helm diff upgrade my-app . burned into your muscle memory.

The “Black Box” Problem: Helm is a powerful abstraction, which is also its weakness. It’s easy for new users to just helm install things without ever understanding the Kubernetes objects (Deployments, Services, etc.) that are actually being created. This is fine until it breaks, and then they’re totally lost.

Helm Gets Out of Sync: Helm’s “state” is based on what it thinks it deployed. If someone (hi, Greg) goes and manually deletes a service with kubectl delete svc my-service, Helm might not know. helm status my-app will still say “Deployed,” while your app is hopelessly broken.

The Verdict

So, should you use Helm? Yes, without a doubt.

Despite its quirks, it’s the standard for a reason. The problems it solves (complexity, reusability, updates) are far, far bigger than the problems it creates (templating is ugly).

The learning curve is real, but the power you get from being able to manage, version, and share your applications as a single unit is a non-negotiable part of a sane Kubernetes workflow. Just be prepared to get your hands dirty with helm template when things go wrong. You can utilize other options like manually creating manifests which can be tediuos or kustomize for templating.

Rating

5/5 - Templates, nuff said.

References

  • Helm Documentation: https://helm.sh/docs
  • CNCF: https://landscape.cncf.io/?item=app-definition-and-development–application-definition-image-build–helm