Deploy Helm Chart on EKS Cluster [ 2 Steps]

In this article we are going to cover Deploy helm chart on EKS cluster | deploy application on eks using helm.

What is Helm?

Helm is a package manager that works very similar to brew, choco, apt and yum on Mac OS, Windows, Debian and Red Hat, respectively. It is used for software installation and gives you the advantage of using a single command to install something. For example, if you followed a manual process to deploy a frontend application on an EKS cluster, it would likely involve running the following commands at the bear minimum.

Step #1:Install Helm on Ubuntu

Download the gpg key

curl https://baltocdn.com/helm/signing.asc | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/helm.gpg > /dev/null

Install the apt-transport-https 

sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https --yes

echo "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/helm.gpg] https://baltocdn.com/helm/stable/debian/ all main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/helm-stable-debian.list

We need to update your system packages:

sudo apt-get update

Now lets Install helm:

sudo apt-get install helm

Step #2:Install AWS CLI on Ubuntu

Download the aws cli bundle using below command

 sudo curl "https://awscli.amazonaws.com/awscli-exe-linux-x86_64.zip" -o "awscliv2.zip"

Extract the aws cli bundle setup

sudo unzip awscliv2.zip

Configure the AWS CLI on Ubuntu

sudo ./aws/install

Verify the AWS CLI version

aws --version

Step #3:Install eksctl CLI tool for creating EKS Clusters on AWS

Use below command to download eksctl CLI tool for creating EKS Clusters on AWS, To download latest eksctl tool visit eksctl official github page

curl --silent --location "https://github.com/weaveworks/eksctl/releases/latest/download/eksctl_$(uname -s)_amd64.tar.gz" | tar xz -C /tmp

move eksctl setup to /usr/local/bin directory

sudo mv /tmp/eksctl /usr/local/bin 

To check eksctl version

eksctl version

Step #4:Install kubectl binary with curl

Download the latest release with the command:

curl -LO "https://dl.k8s.io/release/$(curl -L -s https://dl.k8s.io/release/stable.txt)/bin/linux/amd64/kubectl"

Install kubectl

sudo install -o root -g root -m 0755 kubectl /usr/local/bin/kubectl

Test to ensure the version you installed is up-to-date:

kubectl version --client

Output:

Client Version: version.Info{Major:"1", Minor:"27", GitVersion:"v1.27.3", GitCommit:"25b4e43193bcda6c7328a6d147b1fb73a33f1598", GitTreeState:"clean", BuildDate:"2023-06-14T09:53:42Z", GoVersion:"go1.20.5", Compiler:"gc", Platform:"linux/amd64"}
Kustomize Version: v5.0.1

Step #5:Create AWS Access Key ID and Secret Access Key

Now create AWS Access Key ID and Secret Access Key ID

1. Go to the security credentials 

2. Then click on create access key 

Step #6:Configure AWS CLI

To connect AWS using CLI we have configure AWS user using below command

aws configure

it will ask AWS Access Key ID, AWS Secret Access Key, Default region name, Default output format

AWS Access Key ID [None]: *********7G
AWS Secret Access Key [None]: ***********************px
Default region name [None]: ap-south-1
Default output format [None]: json

Now you have connected your aws account using AWS CLI.

Step #7:Create Amazon EKS cluster using eksctl

Create Create EKS Cluster in AWS using eksctl

eksctl create cluster --name demo-ekscluster --region ap-south-1 --version 1.21 --nodegroup-name linux-nodes --node-type t2.micro --nodes 2

Step #8:Check nodes in EKS cluster

To check the details about your node run the below command

kubectl get nodes

Output:

NAME                                            STATUS   ROLES    AGE   VERSION
ip-192-168-14-133.ap-south-1.compute.internal   Ready    <none>   58m   v1.27.1-eks-2f008fe
ip-192-168-41-158.ap-south-1.compute.internal   Ready    <none>   58m   v1.27.1-eks-2f008fe

Step #9:Deploy Helm Chart on EKS cluster

You are going to name your chart ‘devopshint’, so the first step is to run the following command:

helm create devopshint

Output:

ubuntu@ip-172-31-8-100:~$ helm create devopshint
Creating devopshint

You can ensure that your kubectl command line tool is correctly configured to communicate with your EKS cluster with the following command:

kubectl config current-context

Output:

ubuntu@ip-172-31-8-100:~$ kubectl config current-context
[email protected]

You should see a response with the Amazon Resource Name (ARN) for your EKS cluster. To install the application with Helm/Deploy Helm Chart on EKS cluster, run the helm install command in the directory of the chart.

cd name-of-your-helm-chart
helm install devopshint .

This will deploy your application, and to verify that the pod is running successfully, you can use kubectl to fetch the pods in the default namespace of your EKS cluster.

kubectl get pods

Output:

NAME                         READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
devopshint-dfbdc6699-ptmf7   1/1     Running   0          50s

Once you’ve confirmed that the pod is running, the next step will be to upgrade your application. This upgrade will involve an update to the configuration of the service. You can modify the service type from ClusterIP to LoadBalancer in the values.yaml file.

This will make the application publicly accessible. You can then save the file and run the helm upgrade command.

helm upgrade devopshint .

Once the upgrade is complete, you can get the domain name (listed under External IP) from the service. Keep in mind, the load balancer typically takes a few minutes to get fully setup and configured.

kubectl get svc

Step #10:To delete the EKS Cluster run:

eksctl delete cluster your-cluster-name

Conclusion:

In this article we have covered Deploy Helm Chart on EKS cluster.

Related Articles:

How to Create Amazon EKS cluster using eksctl [2 Steps]

Reference:

Using Helm with Amazon EKS AWS official page