Helm Release Recovery

Comprehensive guidance for recovering from failed Helm deployments, rolling back releases, and managing stuck or corrupted release states.

When to Use

Use this skill automatically when:

• User needs to rollback a failed or problematic deployment

• User reports stuck releases (pending-install, pending-upgrade)

• User mentions failed upgrades or partial deployments

• User needs to recover from corrupted release state

• User wants to view release history

• User needs to clean up failed releases

Core Recovery Operations

Rollback to Previous Revision

Rollback to previous revision (most recent successful)

helm rollback <release> --namespace <namespace>

Rollback to specific revision number

helm rollback <release> 3 --namespace <namespace>

Rollback with wait and atomic behavior

helm rollback <release>
--namespace <namespace>
--wait
--timeout 5m
--cleanup-on-fail

Rollback without waiting (faster but less safe)

helm rollback <release>
--namespace <namespace>
--no-hooks

Key Flags:

• --wait

• Wait for resources to be ready

• --timeout

• Maximum time to wait (default 5m)

• --cleanup-on-fail

• Delete new resources on failed rollback

• --no-hooks

• Skip running rollback hooks

• --force

• Force resource updates through deletion/recreation

• --recreate-pods

• Perform pods restart for the resource if applicable

View Release History

View all revisions

helm history <release> --namespace <namespace>

View detailed history (YAML format)

helm history <release>
--namespace <namespace>
--output yaml

Limit number of revisions shown

helm history <release>
--namespace <namespace>
--max 10

History Output Fields:

• REVISION: Sequential version number

• UPDATED: Timestamp of deployment

• STATUS: deployed, superseded, failed, pending-install, pending-upgrade

• CHART: Chart name and version

• APP VERSION: Application version

• DESCRIPTION: What happened (Install complete, Upgrade complete, Rollback to X)

Check Release Status

Check current release status

helm status <release> --namespace <namespace>

Show deployed resources

helm status <release>
--namespace <namespace>
--show-resources

Get status of specific revision

helm status <release>
--namespace <namespace>
--revision 5

Common Recovery Scenarios

Scenario 1: Recent Deploy Failed - Simple Rollback

Symptoms:

• Recent upgrade/install failed

• Application not working after deployment

• Want to restore previous working version

Recovery Steps:

1. Check release status

helm status myapp --namespace production

2. View history to identify good revision

helm history myapp --namespace production

Output example:

REVISION STATUS CHART DESCRIPTION

1 superseded myapp-1.0.0 Install complete

2 superseded myapp-1.1.0 Upgrade complete

3 deployed myapp-1.2.0 Upgrade "myapp" failed

3. Rollback to previous working revision (2)

helm rollback myapp 2
--namespace production
--wait
--timeout 5m

4. Verify rollback

helm history myapp --namespace production

5. Verify application health

kubectl get pods -n production -l app.kubernetes.io/instance=myapp helm status myapp --namespace production

Scenario 2: Stuck Release (pending-install/pending-upgrade)

Symptoms:

helm list -n production

NAME STATUS CHART

myapp pending-upgrade myapp-1.0.0

Recovery Steps:

1. Check what's actually deployed

kubectl get all -n production -l app.kubernetes.io/instance=myapp

2. Check release history

helm history myapp --namespace production

Option A: Rollback to previous working revision

helm rollback myapp <previous-working-revision>
--namespace production
--wait

Option B: Force new upgrade to unstick

helm upgrade myapp ./chart
--namespace production
--force
--wait
--atomic

Option C: If rollback fails, delete and reinstall

WARNING: This will cause downtime

helm uninstall myapp --namespace production --keep-history helm install myapp ./chart --namespace production --atomic

3. Verify recovery

helm status myapp --namespace production

For additional recovery scenarios (partial deployments, corrupted history, failed rollbacks, cascading failures), history management, atomic deployment patterns, recovery best practices, troubleshooting, and CI/CD integration, see REFERENCE.md.

Agentic Optimizations

Context Command

Release history (JSON) helm history <release> -n <ns> --output json

Release status (JSON) helm status <release> -n <ns> -o json

Revision values (JSON) helm get values <release> -n <ns> --revision <N> -o json

Pod status (compact) kubectl get pods -n <ns> -l app.kubernetes.io/instance=<release> -o wide

Helm secrets (list) kubectl get secrets -n <ns> -l owner=helm,name=<release> -o json

Related Skills

• Helm Release Management - Install, upgrade operations

• Helm Debugging - Troubleshooting deployment failures

• Helm Values Management - Managing configuration

• Kubernetes Operations - Managing deployed resources

References

• Helm Rollback Documentation

• Helm Release Management

• Helm History Documentation

• Helm Storage Backends