Installing the chart

Prerequisites

• Kubernetes 1.21+ (recommended 1.30+)
• Helm 3.6+ (recommended 3.7+)

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 my-trivy-operator oci://dhi.io/trivy-operator-chart --version <version> \
  --set "image.pullSecrets[0].name=helm-pull-secret" \
  --set "trivy.image.imagePullSecret=helm-pull-secret" \
  --set "nodeCollector.imagePullSecret=helm-pull-secret"

Note: Trivy Operator configures image pull secrets separately for each image. image.pullSecrets applies to the operator itself, trivy.image.imagePullSecret applies to the Trivy scanner used in scan jobs, and nodeCollector.imagePullSecret applies to the node-collector used in node/infrastructure scans.

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

The operator pod should be running within a few seconds:

$ kubectl get all
NAME                                             READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
pod/test-trivy-operator-chart-74f47f4b6f-szww6   1/1     Running   0          32s

NAME                                TYPE        CLUSTER-IP   EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)   AGE
service/test-trivy-operator-chart   ClusterIP   None         <none>        80/TCP    32s

NAME                                        READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
deployment.apps/test-trivy-operator-chart   1/1     1            1           32s

NAME                                                   DESIRED   CURRENT   READY   AGE
replicaset.apps/test-trivy-operator-chart-74f47f4b6f   1         1         1       32s

Once running, the operator will begin scanning workloads in your cluster and producing security reports as Kubernetes custom resources. You can list them with:

kubectl get vulnerabilityreports -A
kubectl get configauditreports -A

Using the built-in Trivy server

By default, each scan job runs its own Trivy process and downloads the vulnerability database independently. For clusters with many workloads, you can enable the built-in Trivy server, which caches the vulnerability database once and serves all scan jobs from a single StatefulSet:

helm install my-trivy-operator oci://dhi.io/trivy-operator-chart --version <version> \
  --set "image.pullSecrets[0].name=helm-pull-secret" \
  --set "trivy.image.imagePullSecret=helm-pull-secret" \
  --set "nodeCollector.imagePullSecret=helm-pull-secret" \
  --set "operator.builtInTrivyServer=true"

Network requirements

Trivy Operator requires outbound HTTPS access to the following hosts at scan time:

• ghcr.io — vulnerability database (trivy-db) and misconfiguration checks (trivy-checks)
• mirror.gcr.io — fallback mirror for the vulnerability database

In air-gapped environments, you can mirror these OCI artifacts to an internal registry and configure Trivy to use it:

helm install my-trivy-operator oci://dhi.io/trivy-operator-chart --version <version> \
  --set "image.pullSecrets[0].name=helm-pull-secret" \
  --set "trivy.image.imagePullSecret=helm-pull-secret" \
  --set "nodeCollector.imagePullSecret=helm-pull-secret" \
  --set "trivy.dbRepository=<your-registry>/aquasecurity/trivy-db" \
  --set "trivy.javaDbRepository=<your-registry>/aquasecurity/trivy-java-db"