Introduction
Helm is the de facto package manager for Kubernetes, enabling teams to define, install, and manage Kubernetes applications using versioned, reusable charts.
By encapsulating Kubernetes manifests into configurable templates, Helm provides a standardized way to deploy applications, enforce best practices, and reduce operational overhead. At Cake, Helm plays a key role in automating deployments, promoting infrastructure consistency, and enabling reproducible environments across development, staging, and production.
Key benefits of using Helm in Cake include:
Templated Kubernetes Manifests: Encodes Kubernetes configurations as parameterized templates, reducing duplication and enabling reusable deployment patterns.
Versioned Application Releases: Packages applications as charts with version control, enabling reliable rollouts, upgrades, and rollbacks across environments.
Configurable Deployments: Supports values files and overrides to tailor deployments for different teams, regions, or environments—without altering core templates.
Chart Repository and Reusability: Leverages internal and external chart repositories for standardized component deployment (e.g., databases, ingress controllers, monitoring stacks).
CI/CD and GitOps Integration: Seamlessly integrates with GitHub Actions, Argo CD, and other tools to automate chart releases and maintain declarative delivery pipelines.
Within the Cake platform, Helm is used to manage both internal and third-party services, such as APIs, data pipelines, observability tools, and platform infrastructure components. It supports consistent deployments across clusters, improves visibility into configuration drift, and simplifies onboarding for new services.
By leveraging Helm, Cake ensures that Kubernetes applications are modular, configurable, and consistently deployed—accelerating development velocity while preserving operational stability.