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Sometimes you need to install external charts that are not managed by Porter. You can deploy custom Helm charts either through the Porter dashboard or directly via the Helm CLI.

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Deploying via Porter

Deploy Helm charts through the Porter dashboard for a managed experience with visibility into your deployments.
1

Select Helm Chart addon

Navigate to Add-ons in your Porter dashboard and select Helm Chart.
2

Configure the chart

Enter the Helm repository URL and select the chart you want to deploy.
3

Select version

Choose the chart version you want to install.
4

Customize values (optional)

Modify any values from the chart’s default configuration as needed.
5

Deploy

Click Deploy to install the chart to your cluster.
Since custom Helm charts install external components into your cluster, they fall outside of Porter’s standard support. However, we’ll do our best to help you troubleshoot issues.

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Managing deployed charts

Once deployed, you can:
  • View the chart status and deployment history in the Add-ons tab
  • Update values and redeploy
  • Upgrade to newer chart versions
  • Compare changes between revisions
  • Delete the chart when no longer needed

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Viewing deployment history

Each custom Helm chart add-on includes a Deployments tab that displays a full history of every revision deployed. For each deployment, you can see:
  • Revision number — the sequential deployment version
  • Date — when the deployment occurred
  • Repository URL — the Helm repository the chart was pulled from
  • Chart name and version — exactly which chart was installed
To compare what changed between two deployments, click the Changes icon on any row. This opens a diff view showing the differences in chart name, repository URL, version, and values between that revision and the previous one.
The add-on header also displays the chart name and version as metadata tags, so you can quickly identify which chart and version is currently deployed without opening the Deployments tab.

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Deploying via Helm CLI

For more control or CI/CD integration, you can deploy Helm charts directly using the Helm CLI.

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Prerequisites

  1. Install the Helm CLI
  2. Configure kubectl to connect to your Porter cluster. Run: 
    porter config set-cluster
    And select the cluster from the dropdown. If there is only one cluster in your project it will be automatically selected.

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Deploying a chart

# Add the Helm repository
helm repo add <repo-name> <repo-url>
helm repo update

# Install the chart:
porter helm -- install <release-name> <repo-name>/<chart-name> \
  --namespace <namespace> \
  --values values.yaml

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Example: Installing NGINX Ingress

# Add the ingress-nginx repository
porter helm -- repo add ingress-nginx https://kubernetes.github.io/ingress-nginx
porter helm -- repo update

# Install the chart
porter helm -- install my-ingress ingress-nginx/ingress-nginx \
  --namespace ingress \
  --create-namespace

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Upgrading a release

porter helm -- upgrade <release-name> <repo-name>/<chart-name> \
  --namespace <namespace> \
  --values values.yaml

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Listing releases

porter helm -- list --all-namespaces

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Uninstalling a release

porter helm -- uninstall <release-name> --namespace <namespace>

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Observability

Custom Helm chart add-ons provide logs and deployment history directly in the dashboard. For more complex scenarios, you can deploy a Grafana addon, which is already configured with the existing observability stack deployed in the cluster. Grafana makes it possible to explore, query and build dashboard to monitor any charts or workloads deployed in your cluster.

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Best Practices

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Use version pinning

Always specify a chart version to ensure reproducible deployments: 
porter helm -- install my-release repo/chart --version 1.2.3

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Store values in version control

Keep your custom values files in version control alongside your application code. For example, for the “custom-chart” helm chart, you can keep the following structure: porter-custom-helm-chart-addons/custom-chart/chart.yaml 
# chart.yaml
chartUrl: https://custom-chart-repo.com
version: 1.0.0
porter-custom-helm-chart-addons/custom-chart/values.yaml 
# values.yaml
replicaCount: 3
resources:
  limits:
    cpu: 100m
    memory: 128Mi
You can then use these values in CI to install the chart 
CHART_URL=$(yq e '.chartUrl' porter-custom-helm-chart-addons/custom-chart/chart.yaml)
VERSION=$(yq e '.version' porter-custom-helm-chart-addons/custom-chart/chart.yaml)

porter helm -- install custom-chart $CHART_URL \
  --version $VERSION \
  --values porter-custom-helm-chart-addons/custom-chart/values.yaml

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Test in non-production first

Before deploying to production, test custom charts in a development or staging cluster to verify compatibility with your Porter environment.