helm-upgrade

name	helm-upgrade
description	Use when asked to deploy, upgrade, roll back, or release a service to Kubernetes. Also triggers for questions about Helm chart values, image tags, release history, or when a deployment is failing or stuck.
license	MIT

Helm upgrade — project runbook

Pre-flight (always run these first)

# 1. Confirm cluster and namespace
kubectl config current-context
kubectl get namespace <namespace>

# 2. Diff before applying (requires helm-diff plugin)
helm diff upgrade <release> charts/<service> \
  --namespace <namespace> \
  --values charts/<service>/values-<env>.yaml \
  --set image.tag=<new-tag>

Stop if any -/+ (destroy + recreate) lines appear — they are disruptive.

Upgrade

helm upgrade --install <release> charts/<service> \
  --namespace <namespace> \
  --values charts/<service>/values-<env>.yaml \
  --set image.tag=<new-tag> \
  --atomic --timeout 5m --history-max 5

--atomic auto-rolls-back on health check failure.

Smoke test

kubectl rollout status deployment/<release> -n <namespace> --timeout=3m
curl -sf https://<ingress-host>/actuator/health | jq .status

Rollback

helm history <release> -n <namespace>          # list revisions
helm rollback <release> 0 -n <namespace>       # 0 = previous revision

Failure patterns

Symptom	Cause	Fix
ImagePullBackOff	Wrong tag or missing Artifactory creds	kubectl describe pod → check events
Pod stuck Pending	Insufficient node resources	Check requests vs node capacity
Readiness probe failing	App not healthy at startup	Check logs, raise initialDelaySeconds
another operation in progress	Previous release stuck	Check and delete stuck Helm secret

Values file locations

charts/<service>/values.yaml           ← defaults
charts/<service>/values-dev.yaml       ← DEV overrides
charts/<service>/values-staging.yaml   ← staging
charts/<service>/values-prod.yaml      ← prod (PR required)