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• STATUS: deployed, superseded, failed, pending-install, pending-upgrade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