Cloud / HELM Interview Questions
What are the common Helm anti-patterns and how to avoid them?
Recognizing Helm anti-patterns helps maintain production-grade charts.
1. Anti-pattern: Hardcoding values in templates
# BAD
image: nginx:1.21
replicas: 3
# GOOD
image: {{ .Values.image.repository }}:{{ .Values.image.tag }}
replicas: {{ .Values.replicaCount }}
2. Anti-pattern: Storing secrets in values.yaml
# BAD - values.yaml
database_password: "SuperSecret123"
# GOOD - Use external secrets manager
env:
- name: DB_PASSWORD
valueFrom:
secretKeyRef:
name: {{ .Values.dbSecretName }}
key: password
3. Anti-pattern: Ignoring .helmignore
# BAD - Large files, binaries, test data packaged in chart
# GOOD - .helmignore should exclude:
.git/
.gitignore
*.tgz
*.swp
*~
tests/
venv/
__pycache__/
*.log
4. Anti-pattern: Overly complex conditionals
# BAD - Nested conditionals deep
{{- if .Values.features.advanced }}
{{- if .Values.features.advanced.monitoring }}
{{- if .Values.features.advanced.monitoring.prometheus }}
# Only here
# GOOD - Use helper functions
{{- define "monitoring.enabled" -}}
{{- and .Values.features.advanced .Values.features.advanced.monitoring .Values.features.advanced.monitoring.prometheus }}
{{- end }}
{{- if include "monitoring.enabled" . }}
5. Anti-pattern: Not handling required values
# BAD - fails silently when value missing
host: {{ .Values.database.host }}
# GOOD
host: {{ required "database.host is required" .Values.database.host }}
6. Anti-pattern: Using latest tag for images
# BAD
image:
tag: latest
# GOOD
image:
tag: {{ .Values.image.tag | default "1.2.3" }}
7. Anti-pattern: Ignoring resource limits
# GOOD - always include
resources:
limits:
cpu: {{ .Values.resources.limits.cpu | default "500m" }}
memory: {{ .Values.resources.limits.memory | default "512Mi" }}
requests:
cpu: {{ .Values.resources.requests.cpu | default "250m" }}
memory: {{ .Values.resources.requests.memory | default "256Mi" }}
8. Anti-pattern: No upgrade strategy defined
# GOOD
spec:
strategy:
type: RollingUpdate
rollingUpdate:
maxSurge: 25%
maxUnavailable: 0
9. Anti-pattern: Chart name collisions
# Use naming helpers consistently: {{ include "myapp.fullname" . }}
10. Anti-pattern: Missing documentation # Include README.md with all configurable values and examples
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