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Learning Helm: Managing Apps on Kubernetes
Get up to speed with Helm, the preeminent package manager for the Kubernetes container orchestration system. This practical guide shows you how to efficiently create, install, and manage the applications running inside your containers. Helm maintainers Matt Butcher, Matt Farina, and Josh Dolitsky explain how this package manager fits into the Kubernetes ecosystem and provide an inside look at Helm's design and best practices. More than 70% of the organizations that work with Kubernetes use Helm today. While the Helm community provides thousands of packages, or charts, to help you get started, this book walks developers and DevOps engineers through the process of creating custom charts to package applications. If you have a working understanding of Kubernetes, you're ready to go.
212 pages, Paperback
Published February 23, 2021
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118 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
November 14, 2021
A very good intro book for Helm. Why so?
1. It doesn't drag you through all the details - what's a container? what's K8s? etc. - it assumes you already know that and are here only to learn about Helm
2. It does really well when it comes to introducing Helm's concepts one by one. There are practical examples. And the book doesn't treat a reader like an idiot (e.g. by re-iterating the same stuff over and over again).
3. It's concise and dense. Quick read and you're all set. Good luck.
Anything I'd improve/change? Oh yeah, a bunch of things:
1. It'd be nice to at least present alternative approaches to the same problem. Or design rationale behind the changes between v2 and v3. These are super-interesting things that would enrich the context and make the understanding of the tool "deeper".
2. The examples are OK and they do their job (illustrate the idea just described) - but IMHO they are too trivial. I miss something more "real-life-ish" or even a full chapter on best practices (to find a good spot between being too generic and solving the too specific problem).
A very good book, that could have been even better. Easily a recommended entry book for anyone who's like to learn Helm. Grab it while it's still up to date.
4.2 stars
1. It doesn't drag you through all the details - what's a container? what's K8s? etc. - it assumes you already know that and are here only to learn about Helm
2. It does really well when it comes to introducing Helm's concepts one by one. There are practical examples. And the book doesn't treat a reader like an idiot (e.g. by re-iterating the same stuff over and over again).
3. It's concise and dense. Quick read and you're all set. Good luck.
Anything I'd improve/change? Oh yeah, a bunch of things:
1. It'd be nice to at least present alternative approaches to the same problem. Or design rationale behind the changes between v2 and v3. These are super-interesting things that would enrich the context and make the understanding of the tool "deeper".
2. The examples are OK and they do their job (illustrate the idea just described) - but IMHO they are too trivial. I miss something more "real-life-ish" or even a full chapter on best practices (to find a good spot between being too generic and solving the too specific problem).
A very good book, that could have been even better. Easily a recommended entry book for anyone who's like to learn Helm. Grab it while it's still up to date.
4.2 stars
April 9, 2022
A great intro to Helm, explaining why Helm was born and what one can do with it.
The book is not meant to replace the official docs but rather to give an insight of what Helm does and why. It covers the primary features and commands of Helm as well as some more advanced topics.
The book is not just a theory, it contains a lot of examples and advice and it is written by some of the maintainers of the project.
The book is not meant to replace the official docs but rather to give an insight of what Helm does and why. It covers the primary features and commands of Helm as well as some more advanced topics.
The book is not just a theory, it contains a lot of examples and advice and it is written by some of the maintainers of the project.
February 14, 2021
Quite ok, describes Helm basic, command line, ecosystem. I was expecting to see more advanced real life examples, while this book focuses mostly on simple application. But still good as a starting point to learn Helm.
March 13, 2021
It worked very well for improving my helm workflow to install and upgrade k8s services. The book excels on this part as it dedicates chapters to explain what the right (and wrong) practices to manage your services via helm are.
At the time of writing this review, it was the most up to date book I found about Helm (1st edition, Feb2021) and will recommend it to acquire a strong foundation on helm day to day basis.
At the time of writing this review, it was the most up to date book I found about Helm (1st edition, Feb2021) and will recommend it to acquire a strong foundation on helm day to day basis.
October 11, 2022
It’s just a doc in book format with some extra insights on why.
March 13, 2023
This book provides introduction to helm v3.
It describes why helm was created, how we can create and manage charts, how to use templates etc.
I read this book as a helm newbie, I had some prior knowledge about helm before reading this book, but I wanted to learn more about how it works underneath and how templates work.
While this book contains many examples, it is more like "introduction" book, instead of "deep dive" in my opinion. Some of the topics that haven't been covered are: how to migrate plain resources to helm chart with zero downtime? when to use helm and when to create own k8s operator?
I can recommend this book to everyone who wants to learn helm's basics and to start working with helm. If you want to learn more about helm internals, this book might be not enough.
It describes why helm was created, how we can create and manage charts, how to use templates etc.
I read this book as a helm newbie, I had some prior knowledge about helm before reading this book, but I wanted to learn more about how it works underneath and how templates work.
While this book contains many examples, it is more like "introduction" book, instead of "deep dive" in my opinion. Some of the topics that haven't been covered are: how to migrate plain resources to helm chart with zero downtime? when to use helm and when to create own k8s operator?
I can recommend this book to everyone who wants to learn helm's basics and to start working with helm. If you want to learn more about helm internals, this book might be not enough.
December 15, 2024
Very good book on Helm.
It starts from really basics about why Helm was created and why. Motivation but also architectural and usage considerations. Then even more basic: how to instal and perform basic stuff. From installing a package to lint and test.
Second part of the book on how to manage and create own packages with all possible details. I find not all are useful for me but I definitely appreciate that how much information is there, in such a small book.
Last piece of book is more advanced topics which I also enjoyed. Will probably not use all of them but it's great to know there are options.
Overall, book is quite easy to read, I think this is one of the easiest tech book I read this year. SO well done, authors. I recommend to anyone who wants to understand Helm, and not only syntax but overall idea behind Helm.
It starts from really basics about why Helm was created and why. Motivation but also architectural and usage considerations. Then even more basic: how to instal and perform basic stuff. From installing a package to lint and test.
Second part of the book on how to manage and create own packages with all possible details. I find not all are useful for me but I definitely appreciate that how much information is there, in such a small book.
Last piece of book is more advanced topics which I also enjoyed. Will probably not use all of them but it's great to know there are options.
Overall, book is quite easy to read, I think this is one of the easiest tech book I read this year. SO well done, authors. I recommend to anyone who wants to understand Helm, and not only syntax but overall idea behind Helm.
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March 6, 2021Good introduction to Helm but describes only part of the solution: Helm is just a package manager so you need complementary tools such as Flux to be able to manage them declaratively. This book mentions in passing but doesn’t go into details on declarative (or GitOps, if you like) Helm.
June 21, 2021
I wish the book was more hands on. The book has way more information than necessary. It's a small book, but still only 20% is worth it, the rest is just fillings.
November 19, 2021
A perfect place to learn helm. A little more clearer explanations of the concepts and some diagrams would have made the book more better
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews