Installing the chart

Installation steps

All examples in this guide use the public chart and images. If you've mirrored the repository for your own use (for example, to your Docker Hub namespace), update your commands to reference the mirrored chart instead of the public one.

For example:

• Public chart: dhi.io/<repository>:<tag>
• Mirrored chart: <your-namespace>/dhi-<repository>:<tag>

For more details about customizing the chart to reference other images, see the documentation⁠.

Step 1: Optional. Mirror the Helm chart and/or its images to your own registry

To optionally mirror a chart to your own third-party registry, you can follow the instructions in How to mirror an image ⁠ for either the chart, the image, or both.

The same regctl tool that is used for mirroring container images can also be used for mirroring Helm charts, as Helm charts are OCI artifacts.

For example:

 regctl image copy \
     "${SRC_CHART_REPO}:${TAG}" \
     "${DEST_REG}/${DEST_CHART_REPO}:${TAG}" \
     --referrers \
     --referrers-src "${SRC_ATT_REPO}" \
     --referrers-tgt "${DEST_REG}/${DEST_CHART_REPO}" \
     --force-recursive

Step 2: Create a Kubernetes secret for pulling images

The Docker Hardened Images that the chart uses require authentication. To allow your Kubernetes cluster to pull those images, you need to create a Kubernetes secret with your Docker Hub credentials or with the credentials for your own registry.

Follow the authentication instructions for DHI in Kubernetes⁠.

For example:

kubectl create secret docker-registry helm-pull-secret \
  --docker-server=dhi.io \
  --docker-username=<Docker username> \
  --docker-password=<Docker token> \
  --docker-email=<Docker email>

Step 3: Configure object storage

Unlike the upstream chart, this chart doesn't deploy MinIO. Grafana Mimir needs an object storage backend for its blocks, rules, and Alertmanager state, which you configure in mimir.structuredConfig. Create a mimir-values.yaml file. The following example uses Amazon S3, replace the endpoint, region, and bucket names with your own:

mimir:
  structuredConfig:
    common:
      storage:
        backend: s3
        s3:
          endpoint: s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com
          region: us-east-1
    blocks_storage:
      s3:
        bucket_name: <blocks bucket>
    alertmanager_storage:
      s3:
        bucket_name: <alertmanager bucket>
    ruler_storage:
      s3:
        bucket_name: <ruler bucket>

For other backends such as Google Cloud Storage or Azure Blob Storage, see the Grafana Mimir object storage documentation⁠.

Step 4: Install the Helm chart

To install the chart, use helm install. Make sure you use helm login to log in before running helm install. Optionally, you can also use the --dry-run flag to test the installation without actually installing anything.

helm install my-mimir oci://dhi.io/mimir-distributed-chart --version <version> \
  --values mimir-values.yaml \
  --set "image.pullSecrets[0]=helm-pull-secret" \
  --set "kafka.image.pullSecrets[0]=helm-pull-secret" \
  --set "rollout_operator.imagePullSecrets[0].name=helm-pull-secret"

Replace <version> accordingly. If the chart is in your own registry or repository, replace dhi.io with your own registry and namespace. Replace helm-pull-secret with the name of the image pull secret you created earlier.

Step 5: Verify the installation

The Grafana Mimir components, the gateway, and Kafka should start and become ready:

kubectl get pods

To check that the gateway answers, forward its port and send a request:

kubectl port-forward svc/my-mimir-gateway 8080:80
curl http://localhost:8080/

The gateway answers OK. Grafana Mimir is multi-tenant, so queries need a tenant ID in the X-Scope-OrgID header:

curl -H "X-Scope-OrgID: demo" "http://localhost:8080/prometheus/api/v1/labels"