Values Files

A variety of values files are used in the Patterns framework - but the three most common you will come across will be:

Values File Name

Purpose

values-<clustergroup>

This is where the bill of materials for the pattern resides. Applications and Products deployed by the pattern are driven from this values file.

values-global

Used for setting values across all clusters and resources in the pattern. The values are used by Helm charts.

values-secret

Stored locally and NOT in git, this template allows you declare secrets to be distributed to the cluster

In addition to the most common values files, we have also implemented the ability to use specialized values files so the same charts can be used to support multiple cloud providers, OpenShift versions and different environments.

consuming valuesSpecializedTypes

When it comes to values and especially values in Helm - order matters. We have to take care when defining values that we don’t accidentally overwrite or remove a value that we need.

consuming patternValuesFiles

If we review the values-hub.yaml we can see where and how resources are declared:

clusterGroup:
  name: hub

namespaces:
  - open-cluster-management
  - vault
  - golang-external-secrets
  - quay-enterprise

subscriptions:
  - name: advanced-cluster-management
    namespace: open-cluster-management

applications:
  - name: quay-registry
    namespace: quay-enterprise
    project: opp
    path: charts/hub/quay

Key

Purpose

namespaces

List (or map) of namespaces expected to be created

subscriptions

List of operators to be deployed on the cluster. If necessary, we can override default values for namespace, source, channel..etc

applications

Resource consumed by ArgoCD to define an application to be deployed

projects

Resource consumed by ArgoCD to group resources and configurations together
Sometimes we may need to override a default - an example of this is needing to create an OperatorGroup that doesn’t monitor namespaces - check out this blog to learn how!