Helm vs Pulumi: What are the differences?

Introduction

Both Helm and Pulumi are popular tools used in the world of infrastructure and application deployment. While they serve similar purposes, there are several key differences between the two.

1. Package Management: Helm is primarily focused on package management for Kubernetes, providing a way to define, install, and update applications in a Kubernetes cluster. It uses a packaging format called charts, which encapsulate all the necessary resources, dependencies, and configuration for an application. On the other hand, Pulumi offers a more general-purpose infrastructure as code platform, allowing you to define and manage infrastructure resources across different cloud providers using programming languages like JavaScript, Python, and Go.

2. Imperative vs Declarative: Helm follows an imperative approach, where you define a series of steps and actions to deploy an application. You explicitly specify the desired state of your deployment. Pulumi, on the other hand, takes a declarative approach, where you define the desired end state of your infrastructure using code. Pulumi then determines the necessary actions to bring the actual state of the infrastructure to match the desired state.

3. Infrastructure Provisioning: Helm is primarily focused on application deployment within a Kubernetes cluster. It assumes that the underlying infrastructure, such as the cluster itself, is already provisioned. Pulumi, on the other hand, can not only deploy applications but also handle infrastructure provisioning. It provides abstractions to create and manage various cloud resources like virtual machines, storage, networks, etc., across different cloud providers.

4. Language Support: Helm uses its own templating language called Helm Template, which is based on Go templates. These templates allow you to define and manipulate Kubernetes resources. Pulumi, on the other hand, supports multiple programming languages like JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, and Go. This gives you the freedom to choose a language you are more comfortable with and leverage its full power to define and manage your infrastructure.

5. Extensibility and Community Support: Helm has a large and active community with a vast collection of pre-built charts available in the official Helm chart repository. This makes it easy to reuse and share application templates. Pulumi also has an active community, but being a relatively newer tool, it may have a smaller ecosystem of available resources. However, Pulumi provides the flexibility to use any existing third-party library, npm package, or Python module, making it highly extensible and adaptable.

6. Managed Service Integration: Helm operates as a standalone tool, independent of any cloud provider. It can be used with any Kubernetes deployment, whether it's on-premises or in the cloud. Pulumi, on the other hand, deeply integrates with various cloud providers like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. It provides enhanced support for managing and provisioning cloud-specific resources and services.

In summary, Helm is primarily focused on package management for Kubernetes applications, using an imperative approach and a packaging format called charts. Pulumi, on the other hand, is a general-purpose infrastructure as code platform with support for multiple programming languages and cloud providers, enabling both infrastructure provisioning and application deployment.