Install the Edge Delta Pipelines with Helm

Guide to installing Edge Delta Pipelines in Kubernetes using Helm, including custom settings and secret management.

  7 minute read  

Overview

The Edge Delta pipelines (node, coordinator and gateway) can be installed in Kubernetes environments using Helm.

Note: for Amazon EKS Auto Mode: Ensure that the CoreDNS addon is enabled in your EKS cluster. Edge Delta components rely on Kubernetes DNS for service discovery. If DNS is missing, the Agent DaemonSet may fail to start even if the Helm installation completes successfully. See: Managing CoreDNS on EKS

Tip: The Edge Delta app provides ready-to-run install commands with your Pipeline ID and the latest chart version. Navigate to Pipelines, select your pipeline, and copy the deployment commands.

Choosing a pipeline type

Edge Delta offers three pipeline types for Kubernetes:

  • Node Pipeline collects logs, metrics, and traces from every node in a cluster. This is the starting point for most deployments.
  • Coordinator Pipeline adds centralized control for live captures, sample collection, and config distribution. Pair it with Node Pipelines in multi-node clusters.
  • Gateway Pipeline receives OTLP data from external sources or aggregates data across multiple clusters.

For architecture guidance, see Kubernetes Deployment Examples and Integrate Pipeline Types.

Install a Node Pipeline

  1. Click Pipelines.
  2. Click New Pipeline.
  3. Select Edge.
  4. Select the Kubernetes environment template.
  5. Select the Node Deployment Type
  6. Optionally, specify a Cluster Name used to group pipelines.
  7. Specify a name to identify the pipeline.
  8. Click Generate Deployment Command.
  9. Execute the installation commands, they include the unique ID for the pipeline.
  10. Click View Pipeline.

Note: To route agent traffic through a proxy, configure the httpProxy, httpsProxy, or noProxy Helm values. See Proxy Configuration for detailed setup instructions and Helm Values for all available values.

Install a Node Pipeline with Custom Settings

As with other Helm charts, there are a few ways to pass in optional or customized configuration parameters. You can download the chart and edit the values.yaml file, you can create a YAML file and pass in the whole file as a child configuration, or you can pass in specific parameters.

Creating a copy of the chart and editing the values file will disconnect your chart from the Edge Delta repo so it won’t benefit from upgrades published there. If you update your local chart, you will have to re-configure your local values.yaml file before upgrading your customized release. Passing in a child values file or individual parameters is recommended for customizations.

Individual parameters passed in with –set take precedence over passed in values files, which in turn take precedence over the default values file. For example if all three are used and they all contain a parameter but with different values, the value passed in during installation with –set will be used.

Get the Pipeline ID

Each custom settings approach requires you to pass in the Pipeline ID generated by the Edge Delta web app for your pipeline.

  1. Click Pipelines.
  2. Select the pipeline.
  3. Copy its Pipeline ID.
  4. Use the Pipeline ID when installing the Helm chart by passing it in with --set, or by including it in your organization’s key store.

Secret keys should not be saved in plain text. A key store should be used in line with your organization’s secret management policy.

Pass in a Child Values File

You can pass in a child values.yaml file into the default chart during the installation. The values in this child manifest will override the values in the default chart (unless individual parameters are also passed in with –set, then they will be used). The parts of the default values file that aren’t contradicted by the passed in file will still apply - your custom values file doesn’t need to contain the entire default file, only the parts that have changed.

  1. Download and update the Edge Delta Helm repo
helm repo add edgedelta https://helm.edgedelta.com

helm repo update
  1. Create a YAML file and populate it with your customizations. See Values Variables for information on the changes that can be made.
  2. Navigate to the folder where you saved your YAML file.
  3. Install the chart, while passing in the override file with the --values flag. You should pass in the secret key copied in the previous step with --set. It is also best practice to pass in and create a namespace. The following example shows the command passing in a file named myvalues.yaml with an example key 123456789. It will install in the edgedelta namespace, which it will create:
helm install edgedelta --values myvalues.yaml edgedelta/edgedelta --set secretApiKey.value=123456789 -n edgedelta --create-namespace`

Pass in Individual Parameters

If you only need to customize a few parameters, you can use a --set flag to pass in individual parameters during the installation. Bear in mind these parameters need to be passed in every time you install or upgrade the release.

  1. Download and update the Edge Delta Helm repo
helm repo add edgedelta https://helm.edgedelta.com

helm repo update
  1. Install the chart, while passing in the Pipeline ID copied in the previous step with --set. It is also best practice to pass in and create a namespace. The following example shows the command passing in an example key 123456789. In addition, it will install in the edgedelta namespace, which it will create.
helm install edgedelta edgedelta/edgedelta --set secretApiKey.value=123456789 -n edgedelta --create-namespace`

Edit the Chart Values File

You can download the default values file and make changes to your copy. Then you install the application using your local version.

  1. Download the default chart’s values.yaml file.
  2. Make changes to the values.yaml file. See Values Variables for information on the changes that can be made.
  3. Install the customized helm chart with the path to the un-archived files and pass in the Pipeline ID copied in the previous step. It is also best practice to pass in and create a namespace. The following example shows the command but with an example Pipeline ID 123456789:
helm install edgedelta path/to/values --set secretApiKey.value=123456789 -n edgedelta --create-namespace`

Install a Coordinator Pipeline

  1. Click Pipelines.
  2. Click New Pipeline.
  3. Select Edge.
  4. Select the Kubernetes environment template.
  5. Select the Coordinator Deployment Type
  6. Optionally, specify a Cluster Name used to group pipelines.
  7. Specify a name to identify the pipeline.
  8. Click Generate Deployment Command.
  9. Execute the installation commands, they include the unique ID for the pipeline.
  10. Click View Pipeline.

Install a Gateway Pipeline

  1. Click Pipelines.
  2. Click New Pipeline.
  3. Select Edge.
  4. Select the Kubernetes environment template.
  5. Select the Gateway Deployment Type
  6. Optionally, specify a Cluster Name used to group pipelines.
  7. Specify a name to identify the pipeline.
  8. Click Generate Deployment Command.
  9. Execute the installation commands, they include the unique ID for the pipeline.
  10. Click View Pipeline.

Verify the installation

After installing, confirm that the Edge Delta pods are running:

kubectl get pods -n edgedelta

All pods should show Running status and 1/1 ready. A Node Pipeline DaemonSet creates one pod per node; Coordinator and Gateway Pipelines each create a smaller set of pods.

To check the Helm values applied to your release:

helm get values edgedelta -n edgedelta

Note: If pods are not running or are crash-looping, see Troubleshoot Helm Deployments.

Upgrade

The Helm chart version and agent version are tightly coupled. Each chart release contains RBAC rules, resource limits, and configuration designed for a specific agent version. Always upgrade using helm upgrade with the target chart version — do not upgrade by changing only the agent image tag in your deployment.

To upgrade to a newer chart version:

  1. Update the Helm repo to get the latest charts:

    helm repo update

  2. Review the release notes for breaking changes in your target version.

  3. Run the upgrade with the target version:

    helm upgrade edgedelta edgedelta/edgedelta -i --version v1.17.0 --set secretApiKey.value=123456789 -n edgedelta --create-namespace

For full upgrade instructions, see Upgrading Edge Delta.

Uninstall Edge Delta using Helm

To uninstall the Edge Delta release from Kubernetes, use the helm delete command, specifying the release name and the namespace:

helm delete edgedelta -n edgedelta

See Also: