Managing your project management software (like, OpenProject) in a cloud-native environment allows you to customize your instance with the added security benefit.

Deploying OpenProject on Kubernetes using Helm offers several advantages, particularly for organizations and teams looking for a scalable, manageable, and efficient way to run their project management software.

20 reasons to deploy OpenProject with Kubernetes via Helm:

Comprehensive Feature Set: OpenProject provides a wide range of features that cater to various aspects of project management. This includes task management, time tracking, project planning, and Gantt charts. It also supports agile methodologies with features like Kanban boards and Scrum management. The tool's flexibility allows it to be used for different types of projects, from simple task tracking to complex project portfolios.

Open Source and Customizable: As an open source platform, OpenProject allows organizations to customize the software to fit their specific needs. This flexibility is a significant advantage for businesses that require tailored solutions. Additionally, because it is open-source, there are no licensing fees, making it a cost-effective option for organizations looking to manage projects without incurring high software costs.

Scalability: Kubernetes can scale OpenProject horizontally (adding more instances) or vertically (increasing resources per instance) based on demand. This ensures that the application can handle varying loads efficiently.

High Availability: Kubernetes can manage multiple instances of OpenProject, ensuring the application remains available even if some instances fail. Helm charts can be configured to deploy OpenProject in a highly available setup, distributing workloads across different nodes.

Simplified Deployment with Helm: Helm is a package manager for Kubernetes that simplifies the deployment process. It allows you to define, install, and upgrade complex applications like OpenProject using charts, which are collections of Kubernetes resources.

Version Control and Rollbacks: Helm tracks the version history of your deployments, making it easy to roll back to a previous version if something goes wrong during an update. This version control is handy in maintaining stable environments.

Consistent Deployments: Helm charts encapsulate all the necessary Kubernetes resources, ensuring that deployments are consistent across different environments (development, staging, production). This Infrastructure as Code (IaC) approach reduces the risk of configuration drift.

Repeatable Deployments: With Helm, you can easily replicate the deployment process across different clusters or environments, ensuring consistency and reducing manual errors.

Parameterization: Helm allows easy customization through values files, where you can override default settings to match your specific requirements. This includes configuring storage, databases, networking, and other critical components of OpenProject.

Centralized Management: By using Helm, you can manage all your Kubernetes resources for OpenProject in a single place, simplifying updates, configuration changes, and monitoring.

Optimized Resource Usage: Kubernetes can optimize resource usage by efficiently scheduling pods across the cluster, ensuring that OpenProject uses only the necessary resources. This helps reduce operational costs, especially in cloud environments where resource utilization directly impacts billing.

Cost Control: With Kubernetes, you can set resource limits and requests for OpenProject, ensuring that it doesn't consume more resources than allocated. This is particularly important for managing costs in a shared environment.

Seamless Integration: Deploying OpenProject on Kubernetes allows easy integration with other cloud-native tools and services, such as monitoring with Prometheus, logging with Elasticsearch, and security management with Vault. Helm charts often include pre-configured options for these integrations.

Multi-Cloud and Hybrid Deployments: Kubernetes supports multi-cloud and hybrid cloud environments, giving flexibility in where and how to deploy OpenProject. Helm facilitates deploying OpenProject across different cloud providers with consistent configurations.

Enhanced Security: Kubernetes provides robust security features like role-based access control (RBAC), network policies, and secrets management. Helm charts can be configured to leverage these features, ensuring OpenProject is securely deployed.

Compliance Management: Kubernetes and Helm allow for detailed control over the deployment environment for organizations with strict compliance requirements, making it easier to meet regulatory standards.

Open Source Ecosystem: OpenProject and Kubernetes are both open source projects with strong community support. Helm charts for OpenProject are often maintained by the community, providing access to updates, patches, and best practices.

Continuous Improvement: By deploying OpenProject on Kubernetes with Helm, you benefit from the continuous improvements and innovations in both the Kubernetes ecosystem and the OpenProject software.

Adapting to Growth: As your organization grows, so will your project management needs. Deploying OpenProject on Kubernetes using Helm ensures that your deployment can scale and adapt over time, avoiding the limitations of traditional, static environments.

Flexibility: Kubernetes and Helm provide a flexible deployment framework that can accommodate changes in infrastructure, technology, or business requirements, helping you stay agile in a rapidly evolving environment.

Tutorial: How to deploy OpenProject with Kubernetes and Helm

We will store attachments via an S3-compatible Object Storage system and automatically generate a TLS certificate via Let's Encrypt. To get started, create a Kubernetes cluster and connect to it with kubectl.

Follow along in this video with our engineering team:

Or, follow along via our GitHub documentation.