Helm Chart Repositories

As mentioned previously, Helm needs a "special place" to store and share charts. This place is called a Helm repository. There are two types of Helm repositories: public and private. Private ones are usually hosted on your company's infrastructure or on a cloud provider. Public ones are available for anyone to use and usually contain charts for popular applications and services. Some popular public Helm repositories are:

https://artifacthub.io/: A web-based application that enables finding, installing, and publishing packages and configurations for CNCF projects, including Helm charts.
https://charts.bitnami.com/: A popular Helm chart repository maintained by Bitnami.
https://helm.elastic.co: The Elastic Helm chart repository.
https://kubernetes.github.io/ingress-nginx: The Ingress NGINX Helm chart repository.
https://charts.helm.sh/stable: The old stable Helm chart repository (deprecated).

If you add /index.yaml at the end of each URL, you can see the repository's index file.

For example:

The index.yaml file of the Bitnami Helm repository: https://repo.vmware.com/bitnami-files/index.yaml.
The index.yaml file of the Elastic Helm repository: https://helm.elastic.co/index.yaml.

The index.yaml file is a YAML file that contains the chart metadata (name, version, description, project URL, maintainers, etc.) for all the charts available in the repository.

Here is an example of an index file containing 1 entry (= 1 chart) and 2 versions (v8.5.1 and v7.17.3) of a chart called apm-server:

apiVersion: v1
# List of chart entries in the repository
entries:
  # First chart entry
  apm-server:
  # First version of the chart (8.5.1)
  - apiVersion: v1
    # Application version that the chart deploys
    appVersion: 8.5.1
    created: "2022-11-16T15:16:41.666729191Z"
    description: Official Elastic helm chart for Elastic APM Server
    digest: df2112d12a0e51a7c399475ffee007cdf12241af1a347b03bf1ed7f97173b490
    home: https://github.com/elastic/helm-charts
    icon: https://helm.elastic.co/icons/apm.png
    maintainers:
    - email: helm-charts@elastic.co
      name: Elastic
    name: apm-server
    sources:
    - https://github.com/elastic/apm
    # URLs where the chart archive can be downloaded
    urls:
    - https://helm.elastic.co/helm/apm-server/apm-server-8.5.1.tgz
    # The version of the chart itself
    version: 8.5.1
  # Second version of the chart (7.17.3)
  - apiVersion: v1
    # Application version that the chart deploys
    appVersion: 7.17.3
    created: "2022-04-21T11:54:17.086564501Z"
    description: Official Elastic helm chart for Elastic APM Server
    digest: 4226b932d6ac72504aa69c6ceb53c41cf3983d2fe825a777c1db73727131125c
    home: https://github.com/elastic/helm-charts
    icon: https://helm.elastic.co/icons/apm.png
    maintainers:
    - email: helm-charts@elastic.co
      name: Elastic
    name: apm-server
    sources

Helm in Practice

Designing, Deploying, and Operating Kubernetes Applications at Scale

Enroll now to unlock current content and receive all future updates for free. Your purchase supports the author and fuels the creation of more exciting content. Act fast, as the price will rise as the course nears completion!

Unlock now ~~$15.99~~$11.99

Hurry! This limited time offer ends in:

To redeem this offer, copy the coupon code below and apply it at checkout:

Learn More

Previous Next