Pushing a Helm chart to an Amazon ECR private repository

You can push Open Container Initiative (OCI) artifacts to an Amazon ECR repository. To see an example of this functionality, use the following steps to push a Helm chart to Amazon ECR.

For information about using your Amazon ECR hosted Helm charts with Amazon EKS, see Installing a Helm chart on an Amazon EKS cluster.

To push a Helm chart to an Amazon ECR repository

1. Install the latest version of the Helm client. These steps were written using Helm version 3.8.2. For more information, see Installing Helm.

2. Use the following steps to create a test Helm chart. For more information, see Helm Docs - Getting Started.

   1. Create a Helm chart named helm-test-chart and clear the contents of the templates directory.

      helm create helm-test-chart
      rm -rf ./helm-test-chart/templates/*

   2. Create a ConfigMap in the templates folder.

      cd helm-test-chart/templates
      cat <<EOF > configmap.yaml
      apiVersion: v1
      kind: ConfigMap
      metadata:
        name: helm-test-chart-configmap
      data:
        myvalue: "Hello World"
      EOF

3. Package the chart. The output will contain the filename of the packaged chart which you use when pushing the Helm chart.

   cd ../..
   helm package helm-test-chart

   Output

   Successfully packaged chart and saved it to: /Users/username/helm-test-chart-0.1.0.tgz

4. Create a repository to store your Helm chart. The name of your repository should match the name you used when creating the Helm chart in step 2. For more information, see Creating an Amazon ECR private repository to store images.

   aws ecr create-repository \
        --repository-name helm-test-chart \
        --region us-west-2

5. Authenticate your Helm client to the Amazon ECR registry to which you intend to push your Helm chart. Authentication tokens must be obtained for each registry used, and the tokens are valid for 12 hours. For more information, see Private registry authentication in Amazon ECR.

   aws ecr get-login-password \
        --region us-west-2 | helm registry login \
        --username AWS \
        --password-stdin aws_account_id.dkr.ecr.region.amazonaws.com

6. Push the Helm chart using the helm push command. The output should include the Amazon ECR repository URI and SHA digest.

   helm push helm-test-chart-0.1.0.tgz oci://aws_account_id.dkr.ecr.region.amazonaws.com/

7. Describe your Helm chart.

   aws ecr describe-images \
        --repository-name helm-test-chart \
        --region us-west-2

   In the output, verify that the artifactMediaType parameter indicates the proper artifact type.

   {
       "imageDetails": [
           {
               "registryId": "aws_account_id",
               "repositoryName": "helm-test-chart",
               "imageDigest": "sha256:dd8aebdda7df991a0ffe0b3d6c0cf315fd582cd26f9755a347a52adEXAMPLE",
               "imageTags": [
                   "0.1.0"
               ],
               "imageSizeInBytes": 1620,
               "imagePushedAt": "2021-09-23T11:39:30-05:00",
               "imageManifestMediaType": "application/vnd.oci.image.manifest.v1+json",
               "artifactMediaType": "application/vnd.cncf.helm.config.v1+json"
           }
       ]
   }

8. (Optional) For additional steps, install the Helm ConfigMap and get started with Amazon EKS. For more information, see Installing a Helm chart on an Amazon EKS cluster.