Installing with Helm

Prerequisites

For this guide in particular, you will need:

• kubectl - the Kubernetes CLI
• Helm - the package manager for Kubernetes

Install Spin Operator With Helm

The following instructions are for installing Spin Operator using a Helm chart (using helm install).

Prepare the Cluster

Before installing the chart, you’ll need to ensure the following are installed:

• cert-manager to automatically provision and manage TLS certificates (used by spin-operator’s admission webhook system). For detailed installation instructions see the cert-manager documentation.

kubectl apply -f https://github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager/releases/download/v1.14.5/cert-manager.yaml

• Runtime Class Manager is required to install WebAssembly shims on Kubernetes nodes that don’t already include them. See more details at the project’s README.md.

# Install Runtime Class Manager
helm upgrade --install runtime-class-manager  \
  --namespace runtime-class-manager \
  --create-namespace \
  --version 0.2.0 \
  oci://ghcr.io/spinframework/charts/runtime-class-manager

# Create Shim resource for installing the containerd-shim-spin binary
kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/spinframework/runtime-class-manager/refs/tags/v0.2.0/config/samples/sample_shim_spin.yaml

# Label all Nodes where the shim should be installed (and thus where Spin Apps may run)
# Note: this specific key and value matches the nodeSelector configuration used in the Shim resource above
kubectl label node --all spin=true

You should now see a wasmtime-spin-v2 RuntimeClass and all labeled Nodes should be ready to run Spin Apps.

Chart prerequisites

Now we have our dependencies installed, we can start installing the operator. This involves a couple of steps that allow for further customization of Spin Applications in the cluster over time, but here we install the defaults.

• First ensure the Custom Resource Definitions (CRD) are installed. This includes the SpinApp CRD representing Spin applications to be scheduled on the cluster.

kubectl apply -f https://github.com/spinframework/spin-operator/releases/download/v0.6.1/spin-operator.crds.yaml

• Finally, we create a containerd-spin-shim SpinAppExecutor. This tells the Spin Operator to use the RuntimeClass we just created to run Spin Apps:

kubectl apply -f https://github.com/spinframework/spin-operator/releases/download/v0.6.1/spin-operator.shim-executor.yaml

Installing the Spin Operator Chart

The following installs the chart with the release name spin-operator:

# Install Spin Operator with Helm
helm upgrade --install spin-operator \
  --namespace spin-operator \
  --create-namespace \
  --version 0.6.1 \
  --wait \
  oci://ghcr.io/spinframework/charts/spin-operator

Head over to the Quickstart to deploy your first Spin App. Or, read on for how to upgrade or uninstall Spin Operator.

Upgrading the Chart

Note that you may also need to upgrade the spin-operator CRDs in tandem with upgrading the Helm release:

kubectl apply -f https://github.com/spinframework/spin-operator/releases/download/v0.6.1/spin-operator.crds.yaml

To upgrade the spin-operator release, run the following:

# Upgrade Spin Operator using Helm
helm upgrade spin-operator \
  --namespace spin-operator \
  --version 0.6.1 \
  --wait \
  oci://ghcr.io/spinframework/charts/spin-operator

Uninstalling the Chart

To delete the spin-operator release, run:

# Uninstall Spin Operator using Helm
helm delete spin-operator --namespace spin-operator

This will remove all Kubernetes resources associated with the chart and deletes the Helm release.

To completely uninstall all resources related to spin-operator, you may want to delete the corresponding CRD resources:

kubectl delete -f https://github.com/spinframework/spin-operator/releases/download/v0.6.1/spin-operator.shim-executor.yaml
kubectl delete -f https://github.com/spinframework/spin-operator/releases/download/v0.6.1/spin-operator.crds.yaml