- Lab
-
Libraries: If you want this lab, consider one of these libraries.
- Cloud

Minikube: Using Helm
In this hands-on lab we will be looking at using Helm to deploy a microservice stack in our Minikube cluster. We will be using the Instana robot-shop application as an example.

Lab Info
Table of Contents
-
Challenge
Start the Minikube Cluster Using the Correct Driver
Issue the command to start Minikube
sudo minikube start --vm-driver none
-
Challenge
Unpack Helm, Move it into the Path, Install Socat and Run helm init
Unpack the
helm.tar.gz
file that is sitting in our home directory:tar -xvzf ~/helm.tar.gz
Move the
helm
andtiller
executables into the path at/usr/local/bin
:sudo mv ./linux-amd64/helm /usr/local/bin sudo mv ./linux-amd64/tiller /usr/local/bin
To test, run
helm version
from our home directory. This means it's in our path and we can runhelm
commands from anywhere.Initialize Helm:
sudo helm init
Check that
helm
andtiller
are up and available:sudo helm version
Helm requires socat in order to run, but it is already installed on your lab server.
-
Challenge
Install the Robot-Shop Application into Its Own Namespace via Helm
Get into the directory containing the Helm chart:
cd ~/robot-shop/K8s/helm
Create the name space:
sudo kubectl create namespace robot-shop
Run the Helm installation:
sudo helm install --name robot-shop --namespace robot-shop .
Verify that the pods are running:
sudo kubectl -n robot-shop get po
It might take a couple of minutes for all the pods to stand up.
-
Challenge
Edit the Web Service to Use Nodeport and Configure Nginx to Proxy to the Web Service
Edit the web service:
sudo kubectl -n robot-shop edit service web
Edit the service spec similar to this (changing
LoadBalancer
toNodePort
):selector: service: web sessionAffinity: None type: NodePort
Make sure our change took effect:
sudo kubectl -n robot-shop get service web
Get the target port from Minikube:
sudo minikube service list
Pay attention to TARGET PORT on web. We'll need that in a minute.
Configure Nginx to proxy to the target port from service list. Get the file open for editing:
sudo vim /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
Now, down at about line 50, we've got to change something in the
location
section. We'll paste that TARGET PORT we saw earlier in here, replacing the existing line with what's shown here (theproxy_pass
line):location / { # First attempt to serve request as file, then # as directory, then fall back to displaying a 404. proxy_pass http://<minikube IP>:<svc port>;
Our changes should take effect after an Nginx restart:
sudo systemctl restart nginx
Open a browser and point it to our server's public IP address to ensure the application is running.
About the author
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