Quickstart

This guide covers how you can quickly get started using Hypper.

If you already know Helm, this will be a breeze, as Hypper follows Helm's workflow and extends its functionalities to install Helm charts that have been extended to work with Hypper.

Prerequisites

The following prerequisites are required:

A Kubernetes cluster.
A Chart repository to install charts from.

Configuring Hypper by initializing repositories

Hypper enables you to deploy Helm and Hypper charts into your Kubernetes cluster. To simplify that, the best way is to add a chart repository, for example one with Helm charts:

$ hypper repo add bitnami https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami

You can add several repositories. Let's add a repository containing charts with some Hypper functionality:

$ hypper repo add hypper-charts https://rancher-sandbox.github.io/hypper-charts/repo

Now, you can list the repositories that Hypper can install charts from:

$ hypper repo list
NAME            URL
bitnami         https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami
hypper-charts   https://rancher-sandbox.github.io/hypper-charts/repo

Install an example Helm chart

To install a chart, you can run the hypper install command. Hypper has several ways to find and install a chart, but the easiest is to use a repository, in this case the Bitnami chart repository.

$ hypper install mariadb bitnami/mariadb
🛳  Installing chart "mariadb" as "mariadb" in namespace "default"…
👏 Done!

Whenever you install a chart, a new release is created. So one Helm chart can be installed multiple times into the same cluster. And each can be independently managed and upgraded.

Install an example Hypper chart

Hypper charts are supersets of Helm charts with more functionality, such as specifying default release name, namespace of installation, or installing shared-dependency charts automatically. They are thought to be installed system-wide in the cluster: 1 Hypper chart for all users of the cluster. Think of them as typical system OS libraries/services.

The commands are the same as you have already used:

$ hypper install hypper-charts/our-app
❓ Install optional shared dependency "rancher-tracing" of chart "demo"? [Y/n]:
y
The following charts are going to be installed:
our-app v0.1.0
 ├─ fleet v0.3.500
 └─ rancher-tracing v1.20.002

🛳  Installing chart "fleet" as "fleet" in namespace "fleet-system"…
🛳  Installing chart "rancher-tracing" as "rancher-tracing" in namespace "istio-system"…
🛳  Installing chart "our-app" as "our-app-name" in namespace "hypper"…
👏 Done!

This time, the chart got installed with a default name our-app-name, and into a default namespace hypper. Hypper to creates the namespace if it doesn't exist (you can pass --no-create-namespace if you don't want that). It also installed its defined shared and optional shared dependencies.

Learn about releases

It's easy to see what has been released with hypper:

$ hypper ls --all-namespaces
NAME            NAMESPACE       REVISION        UPDATED                                         STATUS          CHART                           APP VERSION
fleet           fleet-system    1               2021-05-18 15:44:16.11805509 +0200 CEST         deployed        fleet-0.3.500                   0.3.5
mariadb         default         1               2021-05-18 15:44:43.106328879 +0200 CEST        deployed        mariadb-9.3.11                  10.5.10
our-app-name    hypper          1               2021-05-18 15:44:18.687033582 +0200 CEST        deployed        our-app-0.0.2                   0.0.1
rancher-tracing istio-system    1               2021-05-18 15:44:18.592656807 +0200 CEST        deployed        rancher-tracing-1.20.002        1.20.0

Uninstall a release

To uninstall a release, use the hypper uninstall command:

$ hypper uninstall fleet -n fleet-system
🔥  uninstalling fleet
✅  release "fleet" uninstalled

This will uninstall fleet from Kubernetes, which will remove all resources associated with the release as well as the release history.

If the flag --keep-history is provided, release history will be kept. You will be able to request information about that release:

$ hypper status fleet -n fleet-system
NAME: fleet
LAST DEPLOYED: Fri Mar 12 12:14:28 2021
NAMESPACE: fleet-system
STATUS: uninstalled
REVISION: 1
TEST SUITE: None

Read the help text

To learn more about available Hypper commands, use hypper help, or type a command followed by the -h flag: hypper install -h.

Hypper documentation