{"id":78474,"date":"2019-11-13T07:40:26","date_gmt":"2019-11-13T15:40:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cloudblogs.microsoft.com\/opensource\/?p=78474"},"modified":"2025-06-27T04:42:56","modified_gmt":"2025-06-27T11:42:56","slug":"helm-3-available-simpler-more-secure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/opensource.microsoft.com\/blog\/2019\/11\/13\/helm-3-available-simpler-more-secure\/","title":{"rendered":"Helm 3: Simpler and more secure"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Ecosystem complexity increases every time we look around, our dizzying panoply of choices multiplies by the day, and (now, as always) we need a way to find, share, and operate applications reliably, in production, and at scale. What\u2019s a busy Kubernetes user to do?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Helm is the well-known and much-used package manager for Kubernetes. If Helm is new to you, you\u2019re in luck! Join in using Helm, one of the most popular tools in the cloud native toolbox \u2013 it\u2019s great for managing the complexity in your applications, sharing configurations, and easily versioning your updates for maintainability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Helm 3 (now available!)<\/a> is an evolutionary improvement, bringing enterprise-grade security and increased usability. Enhancements in Helm\u2019s security and stability are in direct response to and in coordination with community needs, as Helm is a widely-used Incubating Cloud Native Computing Foundation<\/a> (CNCF) project, with an open source community numbering in the hundreds of contributors shaping its decisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being almost as old as Kubernetes itself, Helm originally evolved with some configuration options which were parallel but not entirely congruent with Kubernetes. Rethinking Helm 3 from the ground up let the community bring Helm\u2019s permissions model, command-line switches, RBAC, and more in line with current Kubernetes implementations. The Helm team edited the Helm 3 architecture carefully and removed the server-side component known as Tiller, which was obviated by improvements to Kubernetes in the years since Helm 2\u2019s design. Helm 3 is simultaneously simpler and supports more modern security, identity, and authorization features of Kubernetes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSounds exciting!\u201d you may say. \u201cHow do I get started?\u201d You can use Helm 3 immediately whether or not you\u2019ve used Helm before. If you have Helm charts you\u2019ve been using with Helm 2, you will want to read about essential changes, but most charts will work unmodified. A migration guide<\/a> and Helm 2to3 plugin<\/a> will help you make the move. And you may find that while you don\u2019t need to rewrite your charts right away, you\u2019ll delight in the new library charts, which will help you de-duplicate configs you use across many charts for consistency and security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Release information is now stored in the namespace with the release. This enables you to use a release name on a per-namespace basis, instead of being limited by all releases needing to share the same Tiller namespace. (One side effect of the removal of Tiller!) And the re-imagined three-way strategic merge patches allow the old and new state on disk to be examined in the context of the live state in the running cluster. This prevents unexpected incidents caused by uncommitted production updates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“But wait…” comes the worried exclamation. \u201cI don\u2019t have time to change anything right now!\u201d Good news: Helm 2 will get bug fixes backported for six months and security patches for a year, so you can update at the pace that fits your organization\u2019s needs. And backward compatibility is emphasized \u2013 if you want to keep using previous command-line flags, in many cases that option is available. The Helm FAQ<\/a> covers the breaking changes, and the Helm blog post<\/a> on this major version release dives into the technical details you\u2019ll want to know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, any major shift in an open source project comes with changes, and the upstream chart repository of yore will be one of those \u2013 we\u2019re looking at pushing charts to Open Container Initiative<\/a> (OCI) registries to ameliorate limitations of the Chart Repository API. Experimental features like OCI support are a great place to look if you\u2019d like to get involved with the direction of the project \u2013 testing and feedback are valuable contributions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Open source means giving back to the community and the Helm Go SDK<\/a> has proven so handy for our needs that we\u2019ve refactored it to allow for broader use. If you\u2019ve integrated Helm into other projects, we\u2019d love to hear from you!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether in person at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon<\/a> or on our weekly community calls<\/a>, Slack<\/a>, mailing lists<\/a>, GitHub<\/a>, and more, the Helm maintainers are delighted to hear what\u2019s working, what needs improvement, and how you\u2019re using Helm to make package management in your Kubernetes clusters simpler and more secure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ecosystem complexity increases every time we look around, our dizzying panoply of choices multiplies by the day, and (now, as always) we need a way to find, share, and operate applications reliably, in production, and at scale. What\u2019s a busy Kubernetes user to do? Helm is the well-known and much-used package manager for Kubernetes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5562,"featured_media":95490,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"msxcm_post_with_no_image":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","_classifai_text_to_speech_error":"","footnotes":""},"post_tag":[143,158,2272],"content-type":[346,361],"topic":[2241,2242],"programming-languages":[],"coauthors":[603],"class_list":["post-78474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-helm","tag-kubernetes","tag-microsoft","content-type-news","content-type-project-updates","topic-cloud","topic-containers","review-flag-1593580419-521","review-flag-2-1593580437-411","review-flag-3-1593580442-169","review-flag-alway-1593580310-39","review-flag-new-1593580248-669"],"yoast_head":"\nHelm 3: Simpler and more secure | Microsoft Open Source Blog<\/title>\n<meta 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