helm-charts

DND-IT Helm Charts

Welcome to the DND-IT Helm Charts repository! This repository contains a collection of Helm charts for deploying applications on Kubernetes.

Available Charts

Opinionated Charts (Thin Wrappers)

These charts are thin wrappers around the common library chart. They provide opinionated defaults for specific workload types so teams can deploy with minimal configuration — just set your image and go.

Each chart includes sensible defaults for security contexts, health probes, scheduling, and Datadog integration, while still allowing full customization via values overrides.

Chart	Description	Documentation
web	External-facing web applications. Ingress enabled by default with ALB.	README
api	Internal API services. Service enabled, ingress disabled by default.	README
worker	Background worker processes. No service or ingress.	README
task	Scheduled CronJob workloads. No service, ingress, or HPA.	README

Why thin wrappers? The generic chart is powerful but requires teams to configure everything from scratch. The thin wrappers solve this by:

Reducing boilerplate — no need to repeatedly set the same defaults across services
Enforcing conventions — consistent security contexts, probe paths (/livez, /readyz), and scheduling across all deployments
Simplifying onboarding — new services only need image.repository and image.tag to get a production-ready deployment
Staying flexible — since they use the common library, any value can still be overridden

Other Charts

Chart	Description	Documentation
generic	A highly flexible and unopinionated Helm chart for deploying any Kubernetes workload.	README
common	Shared library chart with common templates and helpers. Used as a dependency by the thin wrapper charts.	README
custom-resources	Deploy arbitrary Kubernetes resources	README
karpenter-resources	Karpenter provisioner and node pool configurations	README

Deprecated Charts

Chart	Description	Documentation
webapp	[DEPRECATED] Use `web` instead	README
cronjob	[DEPRECATED] Use `task` instead	README

Kubernetes Version Support

Our charts support Kubernetes versions that are currently maintained by major cloud providers:

Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) - 1.29+
Other cloud providers with Kubernetes 1.29+

Quick Start

Add Helm Repository

helm repo add dnd-it https://dnd-it.github.io/helm-charts
helm repo update

Search Available Charts

helm search repo dnd-it

Install a Chart

Install using default values:

helm install my-release dnd-it/<chart-name>

Install with custom values file:

helm install my-release dnd-it/<chart-name> -f values.yaml

Install specific version:

helm install my-release dnd-it/<chart-name> --version <version>

Example: Deploy with Generic Chart

# Deploy a web application
helm install my-app dnd-it/generic \
  --set image.repository=nginx \
  --set image.tag=latest \
  --set ingress.enabled=true \
  --set ingress.hosts[0].host=myapp.example.com

# Deploy a CronJob
helm install my-job dnd-it/generic \
  --set workload.type=cronjob \
  --set cronjob.schedule="0 2 * * *" \
  --set image.repository=myorg/backup-job

Values Schema Generation

Each chart includes a values.schema.json file that provides JSON Schema validation for values.yaml. These schemas are generated using the helm-schema Helm plugin.

Installing the Plugin

helm plugin install https://github.com/losisin/helm-values-schema-json

Generating Schemas

Use the Makefile targets to generate schemas:

# Generate schema for a specific chart
make schema CHART=generic

# Generate schemas for all charts
make schema-all

Or run helm schema directly from the chart directory:

cd charts/generic
helm schema

This reads values.yaml and produces values.schema.json using the JSON Schema Draft 2020-12 specification.

You can also generate from multiple values files (e.g. to capture CI test values):

helm schema -f values.yaml -f ci/test-values.yaml

Schema Annotations

You can control schema generation by adding @schema annotations as comments in values.yaml. Each annotation must have @schema followed by the property on the same line:

# @schema type: string
# @schema required: true
image:
  repository: nginx

# @schema minimum: 1
replicaCount: 1

# @schema type: [string, integer]
minAvailable: 50%

Important: Multi-line annotations require @schema on each line:

# Correct
# @schema type: [string, integer]
# @schema minimum: 0
minAvailable: 50%

# Wrong - will not work
# @schema
# type: [string, integer]
minAvailable: 50%

See the helm-schema documentation for the full list of supported annotations.

Contributing

We welcome contributions! When working with this repository locally:

Prerequisites

Helm 3.x
Kubernetes 1.29+
kubectl

Building Dependencies

Some charts may have dependencies that need to be built:

cd charts/<chart-name>
helm dependency build

Testing Charts

Test template rendering:

helm template test-release ./charts/<chart-name> -f values.yaml

Run built-in tests:

helm test test-release

Linting

helm lint ./charts/<chart-name>

Repository Structure

helm-charts/
├── charts/
│   ├── common/              # Shared library chart (templates & helpers)
│   ├── web/                 # Opinionated: external web applications
│   ├── api/                 # Opinionated: internal API services
│   ├── worker/              # Opinionated: background worker processes
│   ├── task/                # Opinionated: scheduled CronJob workloads
│   ├── generic/             # Flexible multi-purpose chart
│   ├── custom-resources/    # Custom resources chart
│   ├── karpenter-resources/ # Karpenter configurations
│   ├── webapp/              # [DEPRECATED] Use web instead
│   └── cronjob/             # [DEPRECATED] Use task instead
└── README.md                # This file

Support

License

This repository is maintained by DND-IT.

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