How to debug "helm install Error: failed to preinstall, ensure crds are installed"

Hello @lili zhang

The Helm chart is failing because it defines custom resource resources (from the Azure AD Pod Identity solution) that aren’t recognized by the cluster.

In particular, the Fabrikam Drone Delivery workload charts create Azure AD Pod Identity custom resources for each microservice’s MI. These require corresponding CustomResourceDefinition (CRD) objects to exist in the cluster before you install the chart.

If the CRDs aren’t pre-installed, Helm can’t create those custom resources.

To fix it, you'd have to install the CRDs from https://github.com/Azure/aad-pod-identity/blob/master/charts/aad-pod-identity/README.md#aad-pod-identity

which can be done using manifest install using below command:

kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Azure/aad-pod-identity/master/deploy/infra/deployment-rbac.yaml

or you can use Helm to install same:

helm repo add azure-pod-identity https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Azure/aad-pod-identity/master/charts
helm install aad-pod-identity azure-pod-identity/aad-pod-identity --version 1.8.13

The secondary error “cannot re-use a name that is still in use" occurs because the first Helm install attempt created a release entry (and possibly some Kubernetes objects) even though it failed.

This is likely due to partially failed install residue metadata and so the subsequent help install threw error.

To resolve this: You can cleanup the failed release and delete any leftover secrets then afer new CRDs installed, you can re-run helm install as per the tutorial.

Let me know if this works out for you or if you hit any snags further in it.