💥 Helm Chart to Deploy Jenkins in Kubernetes 💥

Hello Everyone 🙋‍♀️

8 min readSep 25, 2021

💥 In this article I’m explaining about Helm Chart, and How to Deploy Jenkins in Kubernetes using Helm Chart.

🔰 What is Kubernetes ?

👉🏻 Kubernetes is a portable, extensible, open-source platform for managing containerized workloads and services, that facilitates both declarative configuration and automation. It has a large, rapidly growing ecosystem. Kubernetes services, support, and tools are widely available.

🔰 What is Jenkins ?

👉 Jenkins is a free and open source automation server. It helps automate the parts of software development related to building, testing, and deploying, facilitating continuous integration and continuous delivery. It is a server-based system that runs in servlet containers such as Apache Tomcat.

🔰 What is Helm?

👉 Helm is a Kubernetes package and operations manager. The name “Kubernetes” is derived from the Greek word for “pilot” or “helmsman”, making Helm its steering wheel. Using a packaging manager, Charts, Helm allows us to package Kubernetes releases into a convenient zip (.tgz) file. A Helm chart can contain any number of Kubernetes objects, all of which are deployed as part of the chart. A Helm chart will usually contain at least a Deployment and a Service, but it can also contain an Ingress, Persistent Volume Claims, or any other Kubernetes object.

Helm charts are used to deploy an application, or one component of a larger application. It helps us to manage Kubernetes applications . Helm Charts help you define, install, and upgrade even the most complex Kubernetes application.

🔰 What are Charts?

👉 Helm uses a packaging format called charts. A chart is a collection of files that describe a related set of Kubernetes resources. A single chart might be used to deploy something simple, like a memcached pod, or something complex, like a full web app stack with HTTP servers, databases, caches, and so on.

Basic directory structure of the chart:

👉 These directory and file have their respective functions:

charts/: Chart dependencies can be placed in the directory.
templates/: This directory contains template files that are combined with configuration values and rendered into Kubernetes manifests.
Chart.yaml: This file consists the information about the chart, such as chart name and version, maintainer information, a relevant website, and search keywords.
LICENSE: A license for charts
README.md: A readme file with information for users of the chart.
values.yaml: This file stores the values that are used in the chart

Let’s begin 🤩

🔅 Creating a Dockerfile for deploying Jenkins

👉First create a separate workspace for a Dockerfile . I have created a directory named js-ws. In this workspace create a Dockerfile.

🔅 Build the Dockerfile by using below command

docker build -t <image_name>:<tag> /workspace

👉 Now, The image is ready to work in Kubernetes.

Let’s, Start with Helming🤩

🔅 Installing Helm

The URL where you can download helm according to your operating system. link .

👉 I am using Windows OS.

NOTE : Helm had the client-server architecture till version 2, We have to need to install a server-side program Tiller in the Kubernetes cluster. In version 3 helm provides more facilities i.e. install helm on the client-side only. It provides more security than version 2.

After downloading in windows extract the zip and go to folder, copy the path and add into the environment variable.

📌 To check the helm installed or not :

helm version

🔅 Create Chart for Jenkins

👉 Create a new workspace or folder

create “Chart.yaml” file inside that workspace

👉 Now create one more folder inside the workspace “jenkins” Folder name will “templates”

Create a YAML file for launching the deployment for Jenkins inside the templates folder.

👉 Create YAML file for exposing the services of Jenkins inside the templates folder.

👉 Now we will install the chart as we create earlier using helm.

helm install <chart_name> folder_name/

Now, our Jenkins deployment and service has been install also.

👉 To check run the below commands:

kubectl get deploy
kubectl get pods
kubectl get svc

👉 After running the command pick the port number that has been exposed jenkins service. And If you run a single node cluster minikube, run below command to check ip.

minikube ip

Note: This command will give ip of your minikube enter it in the below URL

👉 Now type http://<minikube ip>:<port_no> in browser.

A page will appear asking for an administrator password .

👉 Let’s use kubectl to pull the password from those logs.

kubectl logs <pod_name>

👉 The selected text is the initial password to login to Jenkins 👆

Copy the password and paste into Jenkins UI.

👉 Click on continue….

Now, our jenkins setup is ready 😄

👉 Let’s run a Sample Job…..

Click on New item..

👉 Enter an item name and select Freestyle project

👉 Select Execute shell, and write any command of Linux in the box(Here, i am giving cal command) then click onSave button.

👉 Click on build now..

🔅 Publish Helm Chart on Artifacthub.io

Artifact hub is a web-based application that helps to storing and installing helm packages. It is a public repository everyone can contribute to it by creating and publishing charts for any technologies.

💥 Creating a package of the chart

👉 Create a directory(named -> charts) where we will store everything related to our chart and also this folder will go to artifacthub.io/ .

mkdir charts

Artifact hub only allows archive files so the package will provide an archive file of the chart.

👉 Run the following command to create the package

$ helm package jenkins -d charts

In the above command jenkins is the chart name and charts is the directory name.

👉 Go to charts directory and run the following command, here we can see tar file

💥 Creating an index.yaml file

We have to need to create an index.yaml file for every chart. It contains all the information or metadata of our chart.

👉 Now, run the following command to create index.yaml

helm repo index charts

💥 Pushing the charts in the GitHub repository

👉 Create a new repository in GitHub and upload charts folder into the GitHub repository.

💥 Hosting Chart using GitHub Pages

We require a URL where we had hosted our helm chart for publishing the Helm chart on artifacthub.io/. So, host our charts using GitHub pages.

👉 Go to the settings of your GitHub repository and go to the GitHub Pages section.

👉 Select master as a branch and click on save.