Deploy Service

Automates the deployment of microservices to Kubernetes clusters using Helm charts and environment-specific value overrides.

When to Use This Skill

Use when deploying a service to staging or production, or when updating an existing deployment with new configuration.

Implementation Steps

Step 1: Validate Chart

Run helm lint charts/ to verify the Helm chart is syntactically valid. Check that all required values are defined in values.yaml:

• image.repository
• image.tag
• replicaCount
• resources.limits.cpu
• resources.limits.memory

Step 2: Apply Configuration

Merge environment-specific values from values-{env}.yaml with the base values.yaml file:

helm template my-service charts/ \
  -f charts/values.yaml \
  -f charts/values-$ENV.yaml \
  --dry-run

Review the rendered manifest before applying.

Step 3: Execute Deployment

Run helm upgrade --install with the merged configuration:

helm upgrade --install my-service charts/ \
  -f charts/values.yaml \
  -f charts/values-$ENV.yaml \
  -n $NAMESPACE \
  --wait --timeout 300s

Step 4: Verify

Run kubectl rollout status deployment/my-service -n $NAMESPACE to confirm all pods are ready. Check that health endpoints return 200.

Examples

Example 1: Deploy to Staging

Deploy the user service to the staging cluster with default values:

helm upgrade --install user-service charts/ -f charts/values-staging.yaml -n staging

Example 2: Deploy with Custom Tag

Override the image tag for a specific build:

helm upgrade --install user-service charts/ --set image.tag=abc1234 -n production