Deploy a Silo Tenant with Helm Charts

Overview

Helm is a tool for automating the deployment of applications to Kubernetes clusters. A Helm chart is a set of YAML files, templates, and other files that define the deployment details. The following procedure uses a Helm Chart to deploy a Tenant managed by the MinIO Operator.

This procedure requires the Kubernetes cluster have a valid Operator deployment. You cannot use the MinIO Operator Tenant chart to deploy a Tenant independent of the Operator.

Prerequisites

You must meet the following requirements to install a MinIO Tenant with Helm:

• An existing Kubernetes cluster
• The kubectl CLI tool on your local host with version matching the cluster.
• Helm version 3.8 or greater.
• yq version 4.18.1 or greater.
• An existing MinIO Operator installation.

This procedure assumes your Kubernetes cluster access grants you broad administrative permissions.

For more about Tenant installation requirements, including supported Kubernetes versions and TLS certificates, see the Tenant deployment prerequisites.

This procedure assumes familiarity with the referenced Kubernetes concepts and utilities. While this documentation may provide guidance for configuring or deploying Kubernetes-related resources on a best-effort basis, it is not a replacement for the official Kubernetes Documentation.

Namespace

The tenant must use its own namespace and cannot share a namespace with another tenant. In addition, MinIO strongly recommends using a dedicated namespace for the tenant with no other applications running in the namespace.

Deploy a Silo Tenant using Helm Charts

The following procedure deploys a MinIO Tenant using the MinIO Operator Chart Repository. This method supports a simplified installation path compared to the local chart installation.

The following procedure uses Helm to deploy a MinIO Tenant with the archived upstream Tenant Chart at v7.1.1.

This procedure is not exhaustive of all possible configuration options available in the Tenant Chart. It provides a baseline from which you can modify and tailor the Tenant to your requirements.

1. Verify your MinIO Operator Repo Configuration

   The archived project’s endpoint at https://operator.min.io currently serves the v7.1.1 chart. If the repository does not already exist in your local Helm configuration, add it before continuing:

   helm repo add minio-operator https://operator.min.io

   You can validate the repo contents using helm search:

   helm search repo minio-operator

   The response should resemble the following:

   NAME                            CHART VERSION   APP VERSION     DESCRIPTION
   minio-operator/minio-operator   4.3.7           v4.3.7          A Helm chart for MinIO Operator
   minio-operator/operator         7.1.1           v7.1.1          A Helm chart for MinIO Operator
   minio-operator/tenant           7.1.1           v7.1.1          A Helm chart for MinIO Operator

2. Create a local copy of the Helm values.yaml for modification

   curl -sLo values.yaml https://raw.githubusercontent.com/minio/operator/v7.1.1/helm/tenant/values.yaml

   Open values.yaml in your preferred text editor. Before continuing, replace the upstream server image defaults and disable the inherited in-place updater:

   tenant:
     image:
       repository: pgsty/minio
       tag: RELEASE.2026-08-04T00-00-00Z
       pullPolicy: IfNotPresent
     env:
       - name: MINIO_UPDATE
         value: "off"

   Use a newer tag only after it is published on the Silo download page and validated for your deployment. Do not leave quay.io/minio/minio or latest in a Silo production values file.

3. Configure the Tenant topology

   The following fields share the tenant.pools[0] prefix and control the number of servers, volumes per server, and storage class of all pods deployed in the Tenant:

   Field	Description
   servers	The number of MinIO pods to deploy in the Server Pool.
   volumesPerServer	The number of persistent volumes to attach to each MinIO pod (servers). The Operator generates volumesPerServer x servers Persistent Volume Claims for the Tenant.
   storageClassName	The Kubernetes storage class to associate with the generated Persistent Volume Claims. If no storage class exists matching the specified value or if the specified storage class cannot meet the requested number of PVCs or storage capacity, the Tenant may fail to start.
   size	The amount of storage to request for each generated PVC.

4. Configure Tenant Affinity or Anti-Affinity

   The Tenant Chart supports the following Kubernetes Selector, Affinity and Anti-Affinity configurations:

   • Node Selector (tenant.nodeSelector)
   • Node/Pod Affinity or Anti-Affinity (spec.pools[n].affinity)

   MinIO recommends configuring Tenants with Pod Anti-Affinity to ensure that the Kubernetes schedule does not schedule multiple pods on the same worker node.

   If you have specific worker nodes on which you want to deploy the tenant, pass those node labels or filters to the nodeSelector or affinity field to constrain the scheduler to place pods on those nodes.

5. Configure Network Encryption

   The MinIO Tenant CRD provides the following fields with which you can configure tenant TLS network encryption:

   Field	Description
   tenant.certificate.requestAutoCert	Enable or disable MinIO automatic TLS certificate generation. Defaults to true or enabled if omitted.
   tenant.certificate.certConfig	Customize the behavior of automatic TLS, if enabled.
   tenant.certificate.externalCertSecret	Enable TLS for multiple hostnames via Server Name Indication (SNI). Specify one or more Kubernetes secrets of type kubernetes.io/tls or cert-manager.
   tenant.certificate.externalCACertSecret	Enable validation of client TLS certificates signed by unknown, third-party, or internal Certificate Authorities (CA). Specify one or more Kubernetes secrets of type kubernetes.io/tls containing the full chain of CA certificates for a given authority.

6. Configure Silo Environment Variables

   You can set the server’s MINIO_* environment variables using the tenant.configuration field. These names are MinIO-compatible contracts and must not be renamed.

   Field	Description
   tenant.configuration	Specify a Kubernetes opaque secret whose data payload config.env contains each MinIO environment variable you want to set. The config.env data payload must be a base64-encoded string. You can create a local file, set your environment variables, and then use cat LOCALFILE | base64 to create the payload.

   The YAML includes an object kind: Secret with metadata.name: storage-configuration that sets the root username, password, erasure parity settings, and enables Tenant Console.

   Modify this as needed to reflect your Tenant requirements.

7. Deploy the Tenant

   Use helm to install the Tenant Chart using your values.yaml as an override:

   helm install \
   --namespace TENANT-NAMESPACE \
   --create-namespace \
   --version 7.1.1 \
   --values values.yaml \
   TENANT-NAME minio-operator/tenant

   You can monitor the progress using the following command:

   watch kubectl get all -n TENANT-NAMESPACE

8. Expose the Tenant MinIO S3 API port

   To test the MinIO Client mc from your local machine, forward the MinIO port and create an alias.

   • Forward the Tenant’s MinIO port:
   kubectl port-forward svc/TENANT-NAME-hl 9000 -n TENANT-NAMESPACE

   • Create an alias for the Tenant service:
   mc alias set myminio https://localhost:9000 minio minio123 --insecure

   You can use mc mb to create a bucket on the Tenant:

   mc mb myminio/mybucket --insecure

   If you deployed your MinIO Tenant using TLS certificates minted by a trusted Certificate Authority (CA) you can omit the --insecure flag.

   See Connect to the Tenant for additional documentation on external connectivity to the Tenant.

Deploy a Tenant using a Local Helm Chart

The following procedure deploys a Tenant using a local copy of the Helm Charts. This method may support easier pre-configuration of the Tenant compared to the repo-based installation.

1. Download the Helm charts

   On your local host, pull the pinned Tenant chart and extract its default values into a separate override file:

   helm pull minio-operator/tenant --version 7.1.1
   helm show values tenant-7.1.1.tgz > values.yaml

   Each chart contains a values.yaml file you can customize to suit your needs. For details on the options available in the MinIO Tenant values.yaml, see Tenant Helm Charts.

   Open values.yaml in your preferred text editor. Set tenant.image.repository to pgsty/minio, pin tenant.image.tag to a published Silo release, and add MINIO_UPDATE=off to tenant.env, exactly as shown in the repository-based procedure.

2. Configure the Tenant topology

   The following fields share the tenant.pools[0] prefix and control the number of servers, volumes per server, and storage class of all pods deployed in the Tenant:

   Field	Description
   servers	The number of MinIO pods to deploy in the Server Pool.
   volumesPerServer	The number of persistent volumes to attach to each MinIO pod (servers). The Operator generates volumesPerServer x servers Persistent Volume Claims for the Tenant.
   storageClassName	The Kubernetes storage class to associate with the generated Persistent Volume Claims. If no storage class exists matching the specified value or if the specified storage class cannot meet the requested number of PVCs or storage capacity, the Tenant may fail to start.
   size	The amount of storage to request for each generated PVC.

3. Configure Tenant Affinity or Anti-Affinity

   The Tenant Chart supports the following Kubernetes Selector, Affinity and Anti-Affinity configurations:

   • Node Selector (tenant.nodeSelector)
   • Node/Pod Affinity or Anti-Affinity (spec.pools[n].affinity)

   MinIO recommends configuring Tenants with Pod Anti-Affinity to ensure that the Kubernetes schedule does not schedule multiple pods on the same worker node.

   If you have specific worker nodes on which you want to deploy the tenant, pass those node labels or filters to the nodeSelector or affinity field to constrain the scheduler to place pods on those nodes.

4. Configure Network Encryption

   The MinIO Tenant CRD provides the following fields from which you can configure tenant TLS network encryption:

   Field	Description
   tenant.certificate.requestAutoCert	Enables or disables MinIO automatic TLS certificate generation
   tenant.certificate.certConfig	Controls the settings for automatic TLS. Requires spec.requestAutoCert: true
   tenant.certificate.externalCertSecret	Specify one or more Kubernetes secrets of type kubernetes.io/tls or cert-manager. MinIO uses these certificates for performing TLS handshakes based on hostname (Server Name Indication).
   tenant.certificate.externalCACertSecret	Specify one or more Kubernetes secrets of type kubernetes.io/tls with the Certificate Authority (CA) chains which the Tenant must trust for allowing client TLS connections.

5. Configure Silo Environment Variables

   You can set the server’s MINIO_* environment variables using the tenant.configuration field. These names remain compatibility contracts.

   The field must specify a Kubernetes opaque secret whose data payload config.env contains each MinIO environment variable you want to set.

   The YAML includes an object kind: Secret with metadata.name: storage-configuration that sets the root username, password, erasure parity settings, and enables Tenant Console.

   Modify this as needed to reflect your Tenant requirements.

6. The following Helm command creates a Silo Tenant using the pinned local chart and reviewed values:

   helm install \
   --namespace TENANT-NAMESPACE \
   --create-namespace \
   --values values.yaml \
   TENANT-NAME tenant-7.1.1.tgz

   To deploy more than one Tenant, create a Helm chart with the details of the new Tenant and repeat the deployment steps. Redeploying the same chart updates the previously deployed Tenant.

7. Expose the Tenant MinIO port

   To test the MinIO Client mc from your local machine, forward the MinIO port and create an alias.

   • Forward the Tenant’s MinIO port:

     kubectl port-forward svc/TENANT-NAME-hl 9000 -n TENANT-NAMESPACE

   • Create an alias for the Tenant service:

     mc alias set myminio https://localhost:9000 minio minio123 --insecure

     This example uses HTTPS with a certificate that the local client may not trust, so it includes --insecure. If the Tenant presents a certificate trusted by the client, omit that flag. Confirm the service name generated for your Tenant instead of assuming a fixed svc/minio name.

   You can use mc mb to create a bucket on the Tenant:

   mc mb myminio/mybucket --insecure

See Connect to the Tenant for additional documentation on external connectivity to the Tenant.