Jason Gilmore - August 5, 2020

Over the past 18 months the DreamFactory team has made a significant investment into Kubernetes. Not only do we rely on Kubernetes to power our hosted environment, but we’re also increasingly addressing client questions about Kubernetes- and Docker-related topics (you can clone our Docker container via DockerHub and GitHub). It’s clear Kubernetes is here to stay, and we’re committed to ensuring our users can capitalize upon the powerful range of capabilities offered by this powerful next generation infrastructure tooling.

With this in mind, we’re happy to announce the release our first Helm chart. Available via the GitHub repository https://github.com/dreamfactorysoftware/df-helm, we consider this to be an alpha release, and appreciate both feedback and contributions. We’re also researching making DreamFactory available as a Kubernetes Operator, and would appreciate input on this matter. E-mail us at [email protected] with your thoughts!

What is Helm?

Helm is a package manager for Kubernetes, similar to PHP’s Composer or Debian’s APT. Once installed, you can use the Helm CLI to browse, install, upgrade, and even rollback Kubernetes packages.

What is a Helm Chart?

A Helm chart is a set of YAML files which describe the various Kubernetes objects that comprise your application. Helm charts are typically published to a repository for easy adoption by colleagues or the larger community. The de facto repository is the Helm Hub, a directory of published Helm charts which you can browse and install into your own Kubernetes cluster.