What is Helm?

Instead of manually creating and maintaining dozens of separate configuration files, Helm bundles everything needed for an application into a single, reusable package called a Helm chart.

Helm helps reduce the complexity of working with Kubernetes—the open source platform that automates the deployment and operation of containerized applications across multiple servers. While Kubernetes is powerful, it often requires extensive and detailed configuration written in YAML files—specifying how applications should run, how they connect and what resources they need.

Manual management of these configurations by developers, system administrators and DevOps engineers—especially across multiple environments like development, testing and production—can quickly become time-consuming and error-prone. Helm addresses this challenge by introducing standardization, reusability and version control, with features that include rollbacks and environment-specific customization.

Before diving into Helm, it’s essential to understand containerization, the foundation of Kubernetes and modern cloud native tools.

Containerization packages an application with everything it needs to run—code, libraries and configuration—into a lightweight, portable unit called a container. This capability enables software to run consistently across various environments, ranging from a developer’s laptop to a production cloud environment.

Containers are typically based on Linux and are faster and more efficient than traditional virtual machines. They’re also well suited for microservices architectures, where applications are broken into smaller, independently deployable components that can scale as needed. In Kubernetes, these containerized workloads run on a cluster—a group of machines consisting of a control plane that manages the system and worker nodes that execute applications across the infrastructure.

Docker, an open source platform released to the public in 2013, is the most widely used containerization tool. Today, containerization is a core part of the open source cloud-native ecosystem, enabling faster development, more reliable deployments and greater operational flexibility.

Kubernetes orchestrates containers at scale by automating deployment, scaling and resource management. However, managing Kubernetes configurations directly can be complex and prone to errors. Helm plays a key role here by simplifying, standardizing and streamlining the deployment and maintenance of containerized applications.

Deis (later acquired by Microsoft) created Helm in 2016 as one of the first tools to simplify Kubernetes application management. In 2018, the team donated the project to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), which graduated it as a full CNCF project in 2020.

Helm's open source development is actively maintained on GitHub, where contributors from around the world collaborate on its evolution. The official website, helm.sh, provides comprehensive documentation (docs), downloads, and resources to help users get started and stay updated.

A key milestone was the release of Helm 3 in late 2019. This version removed the Tiller component from Helm 2, improving security and simplifying access control by interacting directly with the Kubernetes application programming interfaces (API). Helm 3 also enhanced upgrade processes, dependency management and support for library charts, making it more secure, flexible and easy to use in enterprises.

Helm has seen massive adoption across the cloud-native ecosystem. According to recent CNCF surveys, Helm leads as the preferred Kubernetes package manager, with 75% adoption among organizations running Kubernetes.¹

Artifact Hub (which replaced the original Helm Hub) hosts thousands of charts, and major software vendors routinely provide Helm charts as their primary Kubernetes distribution method.

Helm simplifies Kubernetes application management by bundling Kubernetes manifests (configuration files), configuration templates, and metadata into reusable packages called Helm charts. These charts contain all the specifications needed to generate the appropriate YAML files for Kubernetes resources—such as deployments, services, ingress controllers, persistentVolumes, configMaps and secrets—that make up an application. 

“YAML” is an acronym that stands for "YAML Ain't Markup Language" or "Yet Another Markup Language." It’s a human-friendly data format used to write configuration files, offering a clear, structured way to represent information that both people and programs can read.

When a chart is installed, Helm automatically applies these resources to the target Kubernetes cluster, with support for versioning, rollbacks and dependency management built in.

Helm operates primarily as a client-side tool that interacts directly with the Kubernetes apiserver to manage application deployments:

• Helm client

• Helm chart

• Helm release

• Helm repositories

A Helm client is a command-line (CLI) tool that interacts with Kubernetes clusters and manages charts and releases. This tool is what developers and operators use on a day-to-day basis. Unlike kubectl, Kubernetes’ native command tool, Helm manages entire applications rather than individual components.

A Helm chart is a packaging format that contains all the resource definitions needed to run an application on Kubernetes. Charts include templates, default configuration values and metadata.

A Helm release is an instance of a chart running in a Kubernetes cluster. Each release has a unique name and can be independently managed.

Helm repositories are collections of charts that can be shared and distributed, similar to app stores or package libraries in other ecosystems.

A Helm chart is a collection of files that describe a related set of Kubernetes resources. The chart structure includes:

• Helm templates are templated Kubernetes manifests that adapt to different deployment environments—such as development, staging and production—by using configurable parameters.

• Values files (values.yaml) are default configuration values that can be overridden for different deployments. Values can be provided in YAML or JSON format.

• Chart metadata (chart.yaml) describes the chart’s name, version, apiVersion, dependencies and maintainers.

• Documentation includes human-readable content (for example, readme files, quickstart guides or usage instructions) that helps users understand how to deploy and operate the chart.

Kubernetes developers, system administrators and other IT operations (ITOps) professionals at enterprise organizations use Helm to accomplish tasks such as:

• Operational efficiency

• Risk mitigation

• Governance and compliance

• Developer productivity

Helm significantly reduces the operational complexity associated with managing Kubernetes deployments. By automating and standardizing configuration management, Helm streamlines workflows that would otherwise involve complex and error-prone manual YAML editing.

This efficiency becomes especially important as organizations scale their cloud-native environments and adopt emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) workloads and edge computing.

Helm’s built-in rollback capabilities provide crucial safety nets for production deployments. If an upgrade fails or causes issues, teams can instantly revert to the previous working version with a single command. This feature reduces the mean time to recovery (MTTR) for deployment-related incidents, which is an essential requirement for high-availability applications and real-time AI inference services.

Helm charts and schemas can be version-controlled and code-reviewed like any other software artifact. This approach provides audit trails for deployments and ensures that changes go through proper approval processes. Many organizations use Helm with GitOps workflows to enhance governance, enabling organizations to meet the compliance requirements of regulated industries that adopt cloud-native architectures.

By abstracting away Kubernetes complexity, Helm allows developers to focus on application logic rather than infrastructure configuration. Teams can self-serve deployments that use preapproved charts, reducing dependencies on platform teams and accelerating the development velocity needed for competitive AI and digital transformation initiatives.

• Application lifecycle management

• Third-party software deployment

• Multitenant environments

• CI/CD integration and scaling

• AI/ML and GPU workloads

Kustomize is another widely adopted solution for managing Kubernetes configurations, though it takes a different approach than Helm. While Helm uses templating to generate manifests, Kustomize uses a declarative approach with patches and overlays to modify base configurations.

Kustomize is simpler and requires a lower learning curve, but it lacks Helm’s package-management capabilities, versioning and rollback features. Many organizations use both tools together, with Kustomize handling configuration variants and Helm managing the overall application lifecycle.

Kubernetes operators are application-specific controllers that extend Kubernetes APIs to manage complex applications. While Helm focuses on packaging and deployment, operators provide ongoing lifecycle management. They can handle application-specific operational tasks, such as backups, scaling and upgrades.

Helm is better suited for general application deployment and simpler workloads. At the same time, operators excel at managing stateful applications with complex operational requirements. Many organizations use Helm to deploy operators themselves.