Helm vs Kubernetes Operators - the ultimate showdown!!! ;)

So I have been asked this a few times now, so I thought I would go ahead and make a short video on it!

Here is a link to some resources I found that I like on the subject if you would like to read more on it.

short read:

Longer read, a bit of random info on openshift stuff but good info:

And no, this is not my Mighty Mini monday... it's gotten delayed. might be released on Tuesday... again :)

[puravc]

Thanks, I was actually looking for difference between admission controller and operator but this video helped me clear my mind on what an operator is and what is helm. If you can make a video in admission controller vs operator, that would be super for somebody like me. Thanks again!

[nforlife]

Nice video, the explanation is straight forward and easy to understand. If you can make a video in operator, that would be super helpful for somebody like me.

[berinloritsch]

I have to say, Helm fails at package management in the same sense of how apt and rpm work (and npm, nuget, maven, etc.). Unless your charts are very simple and wholly contained, you are going to fight the tool. It doesn't let you import a dependency that also has a dependency on something in the chart you are writing. A traditional package manager will resolve which version to use and flatten the dependency structure. Bottom line, if you have a chart for a ConfigMap that is shared between all the charts for your microservices, you won't be able to deploy in the same namespace. Helm will complain that the ConfigMap was already installed. A correctly designed package manager would recognize what is going on and use just one central version of that ConfigMap chart. If I could trust Helm to be a proper package management tool, it would be much better.

[michaelbest]

Thanks for the video! In a future could you go into why you don't like using helm? And perhaps what alternatives you have found for this?

[guents]

It sounds to me that the operator functionalities are a superset of those of helm. I don't see how they complement each other. To me it sounds like, if your application is simple and you don't care about day 2, go for helm. If you want to deploy something at a client, and you would want to take care of the whole lifecycle, then helm is useless.

[akshaybihari]

Disliked initially for the clickbait but finally liked after gaining a lot than expected

[asmacdonful]

I'd watch and share an operator in 30 minutes video :)

[anirbankundu]

Can i install any of the operator frameworks like Cross plane in minikube environment?