Installing Helm Chart

In this lesson you’ll install Helm and deploy the kube-prometheus-stack Helm chart to provision Prometheus, Alertmanager, and related observability components on a Kubernetes cluster. The guide walks through installing Helm, adding the Prometheus Community repo, inspecting and customizing chart values, installing the chart, verifying the deployment, and uninstalling the release.

1) Install Helm

Follow the official Helm documentation for platform-specific instructions: https://helm.sh/docs/ Typical Linux install (official script):

curl -fsSL -o get_helm.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/helm/helm/main/scripts/get-helm-3
chmod 700 get_helm.sh
./get_helm.sh

Install via package managers:

# macOS (Homebrew)
brew install helm

# Windows (Chocolatey)
choco install kubernetes-helm

# Windows (Scoop)
scoop install helm

For other package managers (APT, YUM, etc.), see the Helm docs linked above. Verify Helm is installed:

helm version

Example output (your version/build info may differ):

version.BuildInfo{Version:"v3.10.2", GitCommit:"50f003e5ee8704ec937a756c646870227d7c8b58", GitTreeState:"clean", GoVersion:"go1.18.8"}

2) Add the Prometheus Helm repository and update

Add the Prometheus Community chart repository and refresh your local index:

helm repo add prometheus-community https://prometheus-community.github.io/helm-charts
helm repo update

Typical update output when the repo already exists:

"prometheus-community" already exists with the same configuration, skipping
Hang tight while we grab the latest from your chart repositories...
...Successfully got an update from the "prometheus-community" chart repository
Update Complete. ⚓Happy Helming!⚓

The release name you provide when installing a chart (for example prometheus in this guide) is arbitrary. Choose any valid name; just be consistent when running helm upgrade, helm uninstall, or when querying resources by label.

3) Inspect chart values (optional but recommended)

Charts expose many configurable values. To view the kube-prometheus-stack defaults:

helm show values prometheus-community/kube-prometheus-stack

Save defaults to a file for customization:

helm show values prometheus-community/kube-prometheus-stack > values.yaml

A short illustrative excerpt from values.yaml:

## Provide a name in place of kube-prometheus-stack for `app:` labels
nameOverride: ""

## Override the deployment namespace
namespaceOverride: ""

## Provide a k8s version to auto dashboard import script example: kubeTargetVersionOverride: 1.16.6
kubeTargetVersionOverride: ""

## Labels to apply to all resources
commonLabels: {}
  scmhash: abc123

## Service configuration example
externalTrafficPolicy: Cluster
type: ClusterIP

servicePerReplica:
  enabled: false
  annotations: {}

port: 9093
targetPort: 9093
nodePort: 30904

Edit values.yaml to adjust namespace, persistence, resource requests/limits, scrape settings, alerting configuration, and dashboard imports.

To deploy with your custom values file, pass it during install or upgrade: helm install prometheus prometheus-community/kube-prometheus-stack -f values.yaml (or helm upgrade --install prometheus ... -f values.yaml).

4) Install the chart

Install the chart with default values:

helm install prometheus prometheus-community/kube-prometheus-stack

Or install using your customized values:

helm install prometheus prometheus-community/kube-prometheus-stack -f values.yaml

Example installation summary:

NAME: prometheus
LAST DEPLOYED: Mon Nov 21 13:22:39 2022
NAMESPACE: default
STATUS: deployed
REVISION: 1
NOTES:
kube-prometheus-stack has been installed. Check its status by running:
  kubectl --namespace default get pods -l "release=prometheus"

Visit https://github.com/prometheus-operator/kube-prometheus for instructions on how to create & configure Alertmanager and Prometheus instances using the Operator.

Verify pods and other resources created by the release:

kubectl --namespace default get pods -l "release=prometheus"
kubectl --namespace default get svc -l "release=prometheus"
kubectl --namespace default get pvc -l "release=prometheus"

5) Uninstall the release

Remove the release and associated resources created by the chart:

helm uninstall prometheus

If you deployed to a namespace other than default, append --namespace <namespace> to both install and uninstall commands.

Quick reference: common commands

Action	Command
Add repo	`helm repo add prometheus-community https://prometheus-community.github.io/helm-charts`
Update repos	`helm repo update`
Inspect values	`helm show values prometheus-community/kube-prometheus-stack`
Save values	`helm show values prometheus-community/kube-prometheus-stack > values.yaml`
Install (defaults)	`helm install prometheus prometheus-community/kube-prometheus-stack`
Install (custom)	`helm install prometheus prometheus-community/kube-prometheus-stack -f values.yaml`
Upgrade (apply changes)	`helm upgrade prometheus prometheus-community/kube-prometheus-stack -f values.yaml`
Uninstall	`helm uninstall prometheus`
Verify pods	`kubectl get pods -l "release=prometheus"`

Summary

Install Helm (script or package manager) and verify with helm version.
Add the prometheus-community Helm repository and run helm repo update.
Optionally inspect and customize chart defaults with helm show values and a values.yaml file.
Install the kube-prometheus-stack chart: helm install <release-name> prometheus-community/kube-prometheus-stack (use -f values.yaml to apply customizations).
Verify resources using kubectl and remove the release with helm uninstall <release-name>.

Links and references

This article will be followed by a deeper look at the Kubernetes resources the kube-prometheus-stack chart creates and how Prometheus, Alertmanager, and the operator are configured.

Introduction

Observability Fundamentals

Prometheus Fundamentals

PromQL

Dashboarding & Visualization

Application Instrumentation

Service Discovery

Push Gateway

Alerting

Monitoring Kubernetes

Conclusion

Scaling & Long Term Storage

Installing Helm Chart

1) Install Helm

2) Add the Prometheus Helm repository and update

3) Inspect chart values (optional but recommended)

4) Install the chart

5) Uninstall the release

Quick reference: common commands

Summary

Links and references

Watch Video

​1) Install Helm

​2) Add the Prometheus Helm repository and update

​3) Inspect chart values (optional but recommended)

​4) Install the chart

​5) Uninstall the release

​Quick reference: common commands

​Summary

​Links and references

Watch Video

1) Install Helm

2) Add the Prometheus Helm repository and update

3) Inspect chart values (optional but recommended)

4) Install the chart

5) Uninstall the release

Quick reference: common commands

Summary

Links and references