---
title: "Install bitnami/nginx"
date: 2018-08-07T08:30:11-07:00
weight: 400
---

Installing the Bitnami standalone nginx web server Chart involves us using the
[helm install](https://helm.sh/docs/helm/helm_install/) command.

A Helm Chart can be installed multiple times inside a Kubernetes cluster. This
is because each installation of a Chart can be customized to suit a different
purpose.

For this reason, you must supply a unique name for the installation, or ask Helm
to generate a name for you.

#### Challenge:
**How can you use Helm to deploy the bitnami/nginx chart?**

**HINT:** Use the `helm` utility to `install` the `bitnami/nginx` chart
and specify the name `mywebserver` for the Kubernetes deployment. Consult the
[helm install](https://helm.sh/docs/intro/quickstart/#install-an-example-chart)
documentation or run the `helm install --help` command to figure out the
syntax.

{{%expand "Expand here to see the solution" %}}
```sh
helm install mywebserver bitnami/nginx
```
{{% /expand %}}

Once you run this command, the output will contain the information about the deployment status, revision, namespace, etc, similar to:

{{< output >}}
NAME: mywebserver
LAST DEPLOYED: Thu Jul 15 13:52:34 2021
NAMESPACE: default
STATUS: deployed
REVISION: 1
TEST SUITE: None
NOTES:
** Please be patient while the chart is being deployed **

NGINX can be accessed through the following DNS name from within your cluster:

    mywebserver-nginx.default.svc.cluster.local (port 80)

To access NGINX from outside the cluster, follow the steps below:

1. Get the NGINX URL by running these commands:

  NOTE: It may take a few minutes for the LoadBalancer IP to be available.
        Watch the status with: 'kubectl get svc --namespace default -w mywebserver-nginx'

    export SERVICE_PORT=$(kubectl get --namespace default -o jsonpath="{.spec.ports[0].port}" services mywebserver-nginx)
    export SERVICE_IP=$(kubectl get svc --namespace default mywebserver-nginx -o jsonpath='{.status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].ip}')
    echo "http://${SERVICE_IP}:${SERVICE_PORT}"
{{< /output >}}

In order to review the underlying Kubernetes services, pods and deployments, run:
```sh
kubectl get deploy,po,svc
```

{{% notice info %}}
In the following `kubectl` command examples, it may take a minute or two for
each of these objects' `DESIRED` and `CURRENT` values to match; if they don't
match on the first try, wait a few seconds, and run the command again to check
the status.
{{% /notice %}}

The first object shown in this output is a
[Deployment](https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/workloads/controllers/deployment/).
A Deployment object manages rollouts (and rollbacks) of different versions of an
application.

You can inspect this Deployment object in more detail by running the following
command:

```
kubectl describe deployment mywebserver
```

The next object shown created by the Chart is a
[Pod](https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/workloads/pods/pod/).  A Pod is a
group of one or more containers.

To verify the Pod object was successfully deployed, we can run the following
command:

```
kubectl get pods -l app.kubernetes.io/name=nginx
```
And you should see output similar to:

{{< output >}}
NAME                                 READY     STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
mywebserver-nginx-85985c8466-tczst   1/1       Running   0          10s
{{< /output >}}

The third object that this Chart creates for us is a
[Service](https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/services-networking/service/). A
Service enables us to contact this nginx web server from the Internet, via an
Elastic Load Balancer (ELB).

To get the complete URL of this Service, run:

```
kubectl get service mywebserver-nginx -o wide
```

That should output something similar to:

{{< output >}}
NAME                TYPE           CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP
mywebserver-nginx   LoadBalancer   10.100.223.99   abc123.amazonaws.com
{{< /output >}}

Copy the value for `EXTERNAL-IP`, open a new tab in your web browser, and
paste it in.

{{% notice info %}}
It may take a couple minutes for the ELB and its associated DNS name to become
available; if you get an error, wait one minute, and hit reload.
{{% /notice %}}

When the Service does come online, you should see a welcome message similar to:

![Helm Logo](/images/helm-nginx/welcome_to_nginx.png)

Congratulations!  You've now successfully deployed the nginx standalone web
server to your EKS cluster!