Installing the chart

Prerequisites

• Kubernetes 1.34+ cluster
• Helm 3.0+

Installation steps

All examples in this guide use the public chart and images. If you've mirrored the repository for your own use (for example, to your Docker Hub namespace), update your commands to reference the mirrored chart instead of the public one.

For example:

• Public chart: dhi.io/<repository>:<tag>
• Mirrored chart: <your-namespace>/dhi-<repository>:<tag>

For more details about customizing the chart to reference other images, see the documentation⁠.

Step 1: Optional. Mirror the Helm chart and/or its images to your own registry

To optionally mirror a chart to your own third-party registry, you can follow the instructions in How to mirror an image ⁠ for either the chart, the image, or both.

The same regctl tool that is used for mirroring container images can also be used for mirroring Helm charts, as Helm charts are OCI artifacts.

For example:

regctl image copy \
    "${SRC_CHART_REPO}:${TAG}" \
    "${DEST_REG}/${DEST_CHART_REPO}:${TAG}" \
    --referrers \
    --referrers-src "${SRC_ATT_REPO}" \
    --referrers-tgt "${DEST_REG}/${DEST_CHART_REPO}" \
    --force-recursive

Step 2: Create a Kubernetes secret for pulling images

The Docker Hardened Images that the chart uses require authentication. To allow your Kubernetes cluster to pull those images, you need to create a Kubernetes secret with your Docker Hub credentials or with the credentials for your own registry.

Follow the authentication instructions for DHI in Kubernetes⁠.

For example:

kubectl create secret docker-registry helm-pull-secret \
  --docker-server=dhi.io \
  --docker-username=<Docker username> \
  --docker-password=<Docker token> \
  --docker-email=<Docker email>

Step 3: Install the Helm chart

To install the chart, use helm install. Make sure you use helm login to log in before running helm install. Optionally, you can also use the --dry-run flag to test the installation without actually installing anything.

helm install spark oci://dhi.io/spark-kubernetes-operator-chart --version <version> \
  --set "imagePullSecrets[0].name=helm-pull-secret"

Replace <version> accordingly. If the chart is in your own registry or repository, replace dhi.io with your own registry and namespace. Replace helm-pull-secret with the name of the image pull secret you created earlier.

Step 4: Verify the installation

Check that the release deployed and the operator pod is running:

$ helm list
NAME   NAMESPACE REVISION UPDATED                  STATUS   CHART                             APP VERSION
spark  default   1        2026-08-17 10:00:00.0000 deployed spark-kubernetes-operator-chart-1.0.0 1.0.0

With the operator running, submit a SparkApplication resource:

$ cat > spark-pi.yaml << 'EOF'
apiVersion: spark.apache.org/v1
kind: SparkApplication
metadata:
  name: pi
spec:
  mainClass: "org.apache.spark.examples.SparkPi"
  jars: "local:///opt/spark/examples/jars/spark-examples.jar"
  runtimeVersions:
    sparkVersion: "4.2.0"
EOF
$ kubectl apply -f spark-pi.yaml
sparkapplication.spark.apache.org/pi created

That command created a SparkApplication resource which can also be queried to check how the run went:

$ kubectl get sparkapp
NAME   CURRENT STATE      AGE
pi     ResourceReleased   4m10s

Clean up the example application once you are done with it:

$ kubectl delete sparkapp pi
sparkapplication.spark.apache.org "pi" deleted

Consult the upstream documentation⁠ for SparkCluster examples, RBAC customization, and other workload configuration options.

🧹 Uninstall:

$ helm uninstall spark

Uninstalling the chart does not remove the CRDs it installed. Remove them explicitly if you no longer need them:

$ kubectl delete crd sparkapplications.spark.apache.org
$ kubectl delete crd sparkclusters.spark.apache.org