Manage Helm Releases

Intermediate12 min

Upgrade, rollback, and manage the lifecycle of Helm releases with revision history, atomic upgrades, and cleanup strategies.

Prerequisites

-Helm 3 installed
-An existing Helm release in a cluster

Steps

Check current release status

View the current state and revision of a release.

$ helm status my-release --namespace production

Upgrade a release with new values

Apply new configuration to an existing release.

$ helm upgrade my-release bitnami/nginx --namespace production --set replicaCount=3 --atomic --timeout 5m

The --atomic flag automatically rolls back the upgrade if it fails, preventing broken deployments.

View release history

List all revisions of a release for auditing and rollback reference.

$ helm history my-release --namespace production

Rollback to a previous revision

Revert a release to a known-good state.

$ helm rollback my-release 2 --namespace production --wait

Rollback creates a new revision, it does not delete history. Verify the target revision number with 'helm history' first.

Uninstall a release

Remove a release and its associated resources from the cluster.

$ helm uninstall my-release --namespace production --keep-history

Use --keep-history to preserve release records for auditing. Without it, all history is deleted.

Full Script

full-script.sh

#!/bin/bash
# Helm Release Management Workflow
set -euo pipefail

RELEASE=${1:?"Usage: $0 <release-name> <namespace>"}
NAMESPACE=${2:-"default"}

echo "=== Current Release Status ==="
helm status "$RELEASE" -n "$NAMESPACE" 2>/dev/null || echo "Release not found"

echo ""
echo "=== Release History ==="
helm history "$RELEASE" -n "$NAMESPACE" --max 10 2>/dev/null || echo "No history available"

echo ""
echo "=== Current Values ==="
helm get values "$RELEASE" -n "$NAMESPACE" 2>/dev/null || echo "No values found"

echo ""
echo "=== Manifests Diff (if upgrading) ==="
echo "Run: helm diff upgrade $RELEASE <chart> -n $NAMESPACE -f values.yaml"

echo ""
echo "=== Quick Commands ==="
echo "Upgrade:  helm upgrade $RELEASE <chart> -n $NAMESPACE --atomic --timeout 5m"
echo "Rollback: helm rollback $RELEASE <revision> -n $NAMESPACE --wait"
echo "Delete:   helm uninstall $RELEASE -n $NAMESPACE --keep-history"

FAQ

Discussion

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#!/bin/bash # Helm Release Management Workflow set -euo pipefail RELEASE=${1:?"Usage: $0 <release-name> <namespace>"} NAMESPACE=${2:-"default"} echo "=== Current Release Status ===" helm status "$RELEASE" -n "$NAMESPACE" 2>/dev/null || echo "Release not found" echo "" echo "=== Release History ===" helm history "$RELEASE" -n "$NAMESPACE" --max 10 2>/dev/null || echo "No history available" echo "" echo "=== Current Values ===" helm get values "$RELEASE" -n "$NAMESPACE" 2>/dev/null || echo "No values found" echo "" echo "=== Manifests Diff (if upgrading) ===" echo "Run: helm diff upgrade $RELEASE <chart> -n $NAMESPACE -f values.yaml" echo "" echo "=== Quick Commands ===" echo "Upgrade: helm upgrade $RELEASE <chart> -n $NAMESPACE --atomic --timeout 5m" echo "Rollback: helm rollback $RELEASE <revision> -n $NAMESPACE --wait" echo "Delete: helm uninstall $RELEASE -n $NAMESPACE --keep-history"