Select Bitnami-Packaged Data Services Helm Charts Now Support Service Bindings for Kubernetes 

 

We are happy to announce that some of the widely used Bitnami-packaged Data Services Helm charts now support Service Binding Specification for Kubernetes. With this move, our goal is to improve the lives of platform teams and developers by removing the complexities around data services configuration and the secrets retrieval processes.

With Tanzu Application Platform 1.5 being a Service Bindings-compatible platform, users are now empowered to exploit the Service Bindings support of select Bitnami-packaged data services Helm charts … Continued

The post Select Bitnami-Packaged Data Services Helm Charts Now Support Service Bindings for Kubernetes first appeared on the VMware Tanzu Blog.

Bitnami packaged applications are now available in the new Microsoft Azure Marketplace Kubernetes apps format

Last year Microsoft announced the release of Kubernetes apps in Microsoft Cloud Marketplace, to provide users with a seamless deployment experience by enabling easy one-click deployments to Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS) clusters.

Bitnami has been publishing Kubernetes solutions as Helm Charts in Azure Marketplace for years now. Today, we are happy to announce that we are adopting the new Azure Marketplace Kubernetes apps format to provide a click-through deployment experience into Azure Kubernetes Service from Azure Marketplace.

Enhanced user experience with Azure Marketplace and Kubernetes Applications

Azure Marketplace Kubernetes apps are Helm chart-based solution packages which include the cluster and UI definitions along with the Helm chart and the corresponding containers.

Previously, with Helm Charts in Azure Marketplace, users needed to perform the several steps involved in provisioning the cluster and deploying the applications manually, by themselves. Now, with Azure Marketplace Kubernetes apps, you get an out-of-the-box experience. Not only can you configure your cluster details but also all the application parameters are accessible for you to customize your deployment.

Take a look at our documentation to learn how to get your favorite application up and running in Azure Kubernetes Service in three steps:

• Configure your project (resources, option to launch a new cluster, etc)
• Configure you cluster (size, autoscaling, number of nodes)
• Configure and launch your application!

Bitnami Kubernetes Applications in Azure Marketplace

Bitnami has already published a few solutions as Azure Marketplace Kubernetes Applications which can be found here.

As we continue working with the Azure team to migrate more solutions to the new format and enable you to enjoy the recommended and enhanced experience that the new format offers, we will be removing our listings for container images and Helm charts from Azure Marketplace. Please note that this doesn’t prevent you from continuing deploying standalone Bitnami Helm Charts on AKS if that is your preference.

 Follow us on Twitter to get timely updates on which applications are migrated next!

Bitnami Helm Charts Now Generally Available as OCI Packages

In January 2023, the whole Bitnami Helm Charts catalog was made available as OCI Packages for early adopters only. Now, we are happy to make the Bitnami OCI Helm charts catalog generally available in the bitnamicharts DockerHub organization. We are also delighted to announce that OCI Helm charts will be the de facto standard used by Bitnami for distributing the Helm charts.

OCI packages help overcome the many issues typically associated with the traditional method (index.yaml served at https://charts.bitnami.com) of distributing and maintaining a large catalog of Helm charts. So, this move to OCI packages will help us deliver a more robust product and in turn richer user experience.

Making OCI Helm Charts the standard method for distributing and consuming Bitnami Helm charts was enabled by two of our recent milestones:

• The bitnamicharts DockerHub organization joined the Docker Verified Publisher Program

• The OCI Helm Charts are fully integrated into our automated test and release process

Bitnami Helm charts will default to OCI

In order to distribute the Bitnami Helm charts as OCI artifacts in a native way, the source code of the Helm charts will be modified so the Charts documentation and also all dependencies defined in the Chart.yaml/Chart.lock files will be updated to point to the OCI registry. All Bitnami documentation will be updated as well.

What will happen to the current index.yaml stored at charts.bitnami.com?

As part of this move to OCI, we will be deprecating Helm chart consumption via index.yaml. In case, you need to consume Bitnami Helm charts via index.yaml, please note that all such requests from now on will be redirected to a new index.yaml that is generated and stored in a different location, and not in the Bitnami Content Delivery Network (CDN). This change may not be explicitly observable to the users since the content will remain the same, while only the index.yaml will be served from a different location.

We will be moving index.yaml to a reliable CDN (e.g. GitHub) but we would like you to note that any possible rate limits that the CDN provider might choose to apply to individual IP addresses consuming Helm Charts at a large scale are out of our control. In addition to this, keeping all the limitations and issues faced when using large Helm chart catalogs in a single index, we strongly recommend users start consuming Helm Charts as OCI packages going forward (although the index will remain available).

Roadmap

April, May and June

• During April, May, and June both distribution methods will coexist in the same way as today (no redirection implemented during this period definitively).

• During those months, the documentation will be updated so the installation instructions reflect the new method. From

helm repo add bitnami https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami
helm install my-release bitnami/<chart>

to

helm install my-release oci://registry-1.docker.io/bitnamicharts/<chart>

• In the same way, the Helm chart source code present in the bitnami/charts GitHub repository will be updated so the dependencies defined in the Chart.yaml are also fetched as OCI packages
  condition: mariadb.enabled
    name: mariadb
      -repository: https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami
      +repository: oci://registry-1.docker.io/bitnamicharts
    version: 11.x.x

with that change, the Chart.lock will be updated as well after executing the helm dependency update command
name: mariadb
    -repository: https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami
    -version: 11.5.4
    +repository: oci://registry-1.docker.io/bitnamicharts
    +version: 11.5.5

This will mean that, regardless of the installation method chosen by the users, all the Helm charts used as dependencies will be fetched automatically as OCI packages.

• During this period, we will perform some planned redirections from the index.yaml stored at https://charts.bitnami.com to the index.yaml stored in a different location. Redirections will be notified timely and accordingly from our community forums.
  The purpose of this action is to redirect different amounts of traffic to detect any kind of issue. For end users, this means the Helm CLI commands or any CI/CD tool will fetch the index.yaml from a different location instead of from the traditional Bitnami repository.

        Provisional dates and test parameters:
    - Traffic redirection 1: 100% of traffic during 4 hours at the end of May
    - Traffic redirection 2: 100% of traffic during 8 hours in mid-June
    - Traffic redirection 3: 100% of traffic during 24 hours at the end of June

July

• In the same way, as described above, during July the index.yaml stored at https://charts.bitnami.com will be redirected to the index.yaml stored in a different location permanently unless some unexpected new issues pop up.

Although we strictly aim to stick to this roadmap, please note that the timeline and the respective action items mentioned above in the roadmap are susceptible to change if we are faced with any unforeseen issues. As usual, we welcome all feedback Please feel free to create an issue in the GitHub repo by accessing this link.