Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

Helm is a deployment tool for Kubernetes objects that supports package management, dependencies, and templating. In this article, we will explore how to optimize your Helm charts. To follow along, you’ll need a basic understanding of Helm and will have ideally written and deployed some basic Helm charts.

Kubernetes is currently the de-facto container orchestration system on the market. Both small and large companies adopt it, and all major cloud providers offer it as a service. However, Kubernetes is a complex and layered platform, so you can’t just jump into it. There are three essential stages for each application: design, deployment, and operation. This blog post will focus on operation, where you need to monitor and troubleshoot your deployed applications.

Kubernetes is today’s leading container management platform, due to its comprehensive API and developer-friendly features. Using Kubernetes, you can create scalable and reliable applications that run on-premises systems and public clouds. Its out-of-the-box features allow it to distribute hundreds of instances over data centers and keep them up and running. In order to catch up with the automation level of Kubernetes, developing and deploying applications requires more autonomy.

When you’re using an application or tool, it’s very important to make sure things are working as they should. For this reason, health checks are critical. A health check is when an application or tool checks its own components and dependencies, then either publishes or exposes a notification method if there is a problem.

Kubernetes has become the de-facto container management solution of the last decade—and we have no doubt it will stay that way in the upcoming years. It provides a solid abstraction between the infrastructure layer and applications, so that developers can quickly develop, deploy, and operate their applications. Kubernetes is designed as a set of APIs that work together. If you deploy simple applications and make them run, Kubernetes will do it for you.

A month and a half ago we released ValidKube, our first OS project that fused the capabilities of three other popular OS tools (kubeval, kubectl-neat and trivy) in a single easy-to-use microsite. Using the microsite, any user could ensure the security and hygiene of their K8s YAML, with just a few clicks of the button, pretty much on the fly. ValidKube was born out of a straightforward concept and we were happy to see its user-friendly approach resonate almost immediately.