Installing the chart

Prerequisites

• Kubernetes 1.20+
• Helm 3.2.0+

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 my-valkey-operator oci://dhi.io/valkey-operator-chart --version <version> \
  --create-namespace \
  -n valkey-operator-system \
  --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

The deployment's pod should show up and running almost immediately:

$ kubectl -n valkey-operator-system get pods -l app.kubernetes.io/instance=my-valkey-operator
NAME                                                       READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
my-valkey-operator-valkey-operator-chart-64dd674c49-bbtbz  1/1     Running   0          20s

With the operator now running, you can create your first Valkey cluster:

cat > valkey-cluster.yaml << 'EOF'
apiVersion: valkey.io/v1alpha1
kind: ValkeyCluster
metadata:
  name: my-cluster
  namespace: default
spec:
  shards: 3
  replicas: 1
  image: dhi/valkey:9.1-debian13
  exporter:
    image: dhi/redis-exporter:1-debian13
  resources:
    requests:
      memory: "64Mi"
      cpu: "50m"
    limits:
      memory: "128Mi"
      cpu: "200m"
EOF
kubectl apply -f valkey-cluster.yaml

Common valkey-operator use cases

Restrict the operator to specific namespaces

By default the operator watches every namespace in the cluster. Restrict its informer cache to a set of namespaces with the manager.watchNamespaces value, which maps to a repeated --watch-namespace flag on the operator binary:

helm install my-valkey-operator oci://dhi.io/valkey-operator-chart --version <version> \
  --create-namespace \
  -n valkey-operator-system \
  --set manager.watchNamespaces[0]=valkey-prod \
  --set manager.watchNamespaces[1]=valkey-staging

Operator with secure metrics endpoint

Enable secure metrics served over HTTPS with authn/authz:

helm install my-valkey-operator oci://dhi.io/valkey-operator-chart --version <version> \
  --create-namespace \
  -n valkey-operator-system \
  --set metrics.secure=true

Monitoring with Prometheus

Enable the built-in ServiceMonitor so the Prometheus Operator scrapes the operator's metrics endpoint:

helm install my-valkey-operator oci://dhi.io/valkey-operator-chart --version <version> \
  --create-namespace \
  -n valkey-operator-system \
  --set metrics.serviceMonitor.enabled=true