Unlocking Flexibility and Reusability: Harnessing the Power of Helm Multiple Instances Subcharts

Helm Multiple Instances Subchart usages as part of your main chart could be something that, from the beginning, can sound strange. We already commented about the helm charts sub-chart and dependencies in the blog because the usual use case is like that:

I have a chart that needs another component, and I “import” it as a sub-chart, which gives me the possibility to deploy the same component and customize its values without needing to create another chart copy and, as you can imagine simplifying a lot of the management of the charts, a sample can be like that:

So, I think that’s totally clear, but what about are we talking now? The use-case is to have the same sub-chart defined twice. So, imagine this scenario, we’re talking about that instead of this:

# Chart.yaml
dependencies:
- name: nginx
  version: "1.2.3"
  repository: "https://example.com/charts"
- name: memcached
  version: "3.2.1"
  repository: "https://another.example.com/charts"

We’re having something like this

# Chart.yaml
dependencies:
- name: nginx
  version: "1.2.3"
  repository: "https://example.com/charts"
- name: memcached-copy1
  version: "3.2.1"
  repository: "https://another.example.com/charts"
- name: memcached-copy2
  version: "3.2.1"
  repository: "https://another.example.com/charts"

So we have the option to define more than one “instance” of the same sub chart. And I guess, at this moment, you can start asking to yourself: “What are the use-case where I could need this?”

Because that’s quite understandable, unless you need it you will never realize about that. It is the same that happens to me. So let’s talk a bit about possible use cases for this.

 Use-Cases For Multi Instance Helm Dependency

Imagine that you’re deploying a helm chart for a set of microservices that belongs to the scope of the same application and each of the microservices has the same technology base, that can be TIBCO BusinessWorks Container Edition or it can be Golang microservices. So all of them has the same base so it can use the same chart “bwce-microservice” or “golang-microservices” but each of them has its own configuration, for example:

• Each of them will have its own image name that would differ from one to the other.
• Each of them will have its own configuration that will differ from one to the other.
• Each of them will have its own endpoints that will differ and probably even connecting to different sources such as databases or external systems.
  

So, this approach would help us reuse the same technology helm chart, “bwce” and instance it several times, so we can have each of them with its own configuration without the need to create something “custom” and keeping the same benefits in terms of maintainability that the helm dependency approach provides to us.

 How can we implement this?

Now that we have a clear the use-case that we’re going to support, the next step is regarding how we can do this a reality. And, to be honest, this is much simpler than you can think from the beginning, let’s start with the normal situation when we have a main chart, let’s call it a “program,” that has included a “bwce” template as a dependency as you can see here:

name: multi-bwce
description: Helm Chart to Deploy a TIBCO BusinessWorks Container Edition Application
apiVersion: v1
version: 0.2.0
icon: 
appVersion: 2.7.2

dependencies:
- name: bwce
  version: ~1.0.0
  repository: "file:///Users/avazquez/Data/Projects/DET/helm-charts/bwce"

And now, we are going to move to a multi-instance approach where we will require two different microservices, let’s call it serviceA and serviceB, and both of them we will use the same bwce helm chart.

So the first thing we will modify is the Chart.yaml as follows:

name: multi-bwce
description: Helm Chart to Deploy a TIBCO BusinessWorks Container Edition Application
apiVersion: v1
version: 0.2.0
icon: 
appVersion: 2.7.2

dependencies:
- name: bwce
  alias: serviceA
  version: ~0.2.0
  repository: "file:///Users/avazquez/Data/Projects/DET/helm-charts/bwce"
- name: bwce
  alias: serviceB
  version: ~0.2.0
  repository: "file:///Users/avazquez/Data/Projects/DET/helm-charts/bwce"

The important part here is how we declare the dependency. As you can see in the name we still keeping the same “name” but they have an additional field named “alias” and this alias is what we will help to later identify the properties for each of the instances as we required. With that, we’re already have our two serviceA and serviceB instance definition and we can start using it in the values.yml as follows:

# This is a YAML-formatted file.
# Declare variables to be passed into your templates.

serviceA:
  image: 
    imageName: 552846087011.dkr.ecr.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/tibco/serviceA:2.5.2
    pullPolicy: Always
serviceB:  
  image: 
    imageName: 552846087011.dkr.ecr.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/tibco/serviceB:2.5.2
    pullPolicy: Always
  

 Conclusion

The main benefit of this is that it enhances the options of using helm chart for “complex” applications that require different instances of the same kind of components and at the same time.

That doesn’t mean that you need a huge helm chart for your project because this will go against all the best practices of the whole containerization and microservices approach but at least it will give you the option to define different levels of abstraction as you want, keeping all the benefits from a management perspective.