AKS app deployment with Helm

[wbreza]

Helm is a package manager for Kubernetes that simplifies deploying and managing applications. It uses charts (packages of pre-configured Kubernetes resources) to streamline the process of defining, installing, and upgrading even complex applications.

Helm charts are useful for installing common components into k8s clusters and are ideal for iterative development based on its usage of robust templating support.

• Ability to reference helm repositories and deploy releases to AKS clusters
• Ability to reference local helm chart for development & deployment

[crazy4pi314]

I am working on building a AZD template for BinderHub that uses a helm chart, so I'll give this a +1 :)

[savannahostrowski]

Adding some additional rationale for why we need Helm chart support (as derived from a document that @crazy4pi314 wrote and shared with me). These are core data science scenarios we need to enable.

 

	Helm Chart	Setup Instructions	Azure deploy docs?
Jupyter Hub	Helm chart repository	Zero to JupyterHub with Kubernetes	Yes, quite long and detailed
Binder Hub	Helm chart repository	Zero to BinderHub	Yes, depend on Jupyter Hub
Dask	Dask Helm charts	Dask Cloud Provider documentation	Yes
Rstudio	RStudio Helm charts	Posit Documentation	None
Kubeflow	No helm	Kubeflow on Azure	Lots of confusing paths/options
Modin	Not needed	Installation — Modin	Easy, it’s an add-on to other tools here, uses Dask or Ray
Ray	ray-project/kuberay-helm	Launching Ray Clusters on Azure	Technically yes, but very scattered