First, a little context: I have 4 Kubernetes clusters, one for each environment (develop, staging, testing, prod). Each cluster has its own values.yaml
file with env-specific configuration of all helm charts that we've written.
So, when our CD pipeline deploys mychart
to the develop
cluster, it essentially does the following:
helm install -f base-values.yaml -f develop-values.yaml ./mychart.tgz
Now, let's presume mychart
has a requirements.yaml
file which specifies the mongodb chart as a subchart dependency. The mongodb chart references, for example, .Values.mongodbRootPassword
. When included as a subchart by mychart
, I can set .Values.mongodb.mongodbRootPassword
in mychart
's default values.yaml
to change this value.
My problem is that given my current CD pipeline, if I set .Values.mongodb.mongodbRootPassword
in develop-values.yaml
, it will be taken for all mongodb instances that are deployed to the develop
cluster - not just mychart
's.
So, my questions:
values.yaml
files, how would I go about setting mychart
's mongodb's root password in one of the cluster-specific values.yaml
files?I created a named template (within _helpers.tpl) that combined a set of default values defined in values.yaml with a set of env specific values defined in their own file. This allows me to set 20+ default values and then override them with the env file WITHOUT setting them as part of the cli command. I wanted to avoid using the cli to override values because that gets complicated and doesn't provide tracking (ie my env specific files are in git).
- using per-environment
values.yaml
files, how would I go about settingmychart
's mongodb's root password in one of the cluster-specificvalues.yaml
files?
You can override YAML files with --set
option from install
Example:
helm install -f base-values.yaml -f develop-values.yaml --set someSection.someValue=1234 ./mychart.tgz
Then, you can set CI command call with environment settings and have just one YAML.
- is this even possible? Or is my current CD approach (per-environment values files) an anti-pattern?
Nope, that's a feature :-)
- if this is not possible or an anti-pattern, how would you go about setting the values of helm individual charts and subcharts on a per-environment basis?
It would be nice also. Perhaps, if your infrastructure grow fast and you have a lot of environments, apps or else, this could be better to manage.