Helm (an incubated CNCF project) is the Kubernetes package manager which allows you to parametrize, version and publish your Kubernetes applications. However, Helm is NOT the Kubernetes CI/CD tool. And that’s why we created Helmsman.

We use Helmsman to automate the lifecycle management of Helm releases in k8s clusters using a declarative desired state. The desired state describes how we would like to setup the cluster and deploy the applications. By version controlling our desired states and using a CI tool we can achieve GitOps ( in plain English: trigger changes from git commits).

In this talk, I will explain why we need Helmsman, how it works and how it can be used together with CI tools to achieve GitOps. I will run a demo using Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and CircleCI (though any k8s provider and CI tool will work the same).

Agenda:
17:00 - 17:15 Meet & Greet
17:15 - 17:30 Brief introduction to Helm
17:30 - 17:45 Why GitOps?
17:45 - 18:00 GitOps with Helm? What’s missing?
18:00 - 18:20 Break
18:20 - ~19:00 Introducing Helmsman and demo

Bio:
Sami is a DevOps consultant at Praqma where he supports clients with tasks like: automation, infrastructure as code, secrets management, Kubernetes and Helm. He holds a PhD in Computing Science from Newcastle University, UK and has previous experience in teaching, research and software development.