In the last few guides I have put out, I have been working to make it easier, for those of us using Windows 10, to be able to use container and orchestration tools for development with Kubernetes. The goal is also to remove as many of the installation head aches of installing these tools, on your Windows 10 computer, as possible.
This guide will help you to install Helm, a package manager for Kubernetes, on your Windows computer. Package managers are nice when you are wanting to install dependencies quickly. Checkout this blog to hear more about making Windows simpler by using the Chocolatey package manager.
https://medium.com/@JockDaRock/using-windows-do-yourself-a-favor-and-install-chocolatey-6b01e0ab2715
Sadly, Helm, does not have a Chocolatey Package for Windows… yet. Instead, we will be installing this from the Helm site using the binary the Helm site provides provide.
WHY Helm?
The reason we want to install helm is to be able to easily try out and develop on cloud native applications and install them with minimal effort with Helm Charts.
Pre-Requisites
- You will need the command line program kubectl installed on your Windows 10 computer and configured to work with a Kubernetes Cluster. The easiest way to do this is to install using the Windows package manager Chocolatey, choco install kubernetes-cli.
- 7-Zip compression / decompression program is needed to extract the Helm program for Windows from the compressed file-folder from the Helm site. You can get 7-Zip here (http://www.7-zip.org/). Or if you have the Chocolatey package manager on Windows, you can use this command, choco install 7zip, to install the 7zip program quickly.
- Check out my previous guides to get Kubernetes up and running with Minikube on Windows and the Chocolatey package manager.
- https://medium.com/@JockDaRock/minikube-on-windows-10-with-hyper-v-6ef0f4dc158c
- https://medium.com/@JockDaRock/installing-the-chocolatey-package-manager-for-windows-3b1bdd0dbb49
Installation
Download the latest version of the compressed executable from the Helm github site, https://github.com/kubernetes/helm/releases. Click the windows link and it should download to your computer.
Navigate to the folder you downloaded the helm-vX.X.X-windows-amd64.tar.gz compressed file from and move the file to its own directory.
Navigate to the new directory and right click on the tar.gz file and with 7Zip, open the tar.gz archive.
Double click the single tar file in that directory, helm-v2.7.2-windows-amd64.tar.
You should now see a windows file folder in the 7Zip window, windows-amd64. Right click on the folder, select Copy To, and select the directory you want to copy the folder to.
After getting the folder moved to the directory of your choice, we will add the helm program to the System File path to make it easily accessible from the command line.
Open the Control Panel’s System panel.
Select the Advanced system settings link on the left.
Select Environment Variables.
Under System variables, select Path, and then select Edit.
Select the New button and then add the folder path where you copied the helm folder to and then press OK.
Helm should now be installed properly on your Windows 10 computer. Let’s check to make sure.
Open a new command line window and type helm on the command line to make sure you have access to helm from the command line.
Assuming you have the kubectl program configured for your kubernetes cluster you can now initialize helm.
helm init
Now you are ready to deploy kubernetes applications to your kube cluster. Visit the KubeApps site, https://hub.kubeapps.com/, to see what helm charts are currently available and instructions on how to install them.
Happy Helming!
