Install on Kubernetes

The official Helm chart deploys the bundled Nginx UI container, including its own Nginx instance. It is an application deployment, not a Kubernetes Ingress Controller.

Requirements

• Kubernetes 1.25 or newer
• Helm 3
• A default StorageClass, or existing PersistentVolumeClaims
• At least 2 GiB of persistent storage for the default configuration

Nginx UI is a single-writer workload. The chart enforces one replica and uses a Recreate deployment strategy so two pods never write the same configuration or SQLite database concurrently.

Install from the self-hosted repository

helm repo add nginx-ui https://cloud.nginxui.com/helm
helm repo update nginx-ui
helm install nginx-ui nginx-ui/nginx-ui \
  --namespace nginx-ui \
  --create-namespace

Wait for the Deployment and both PersistentVolumeClaims:

kubectl get deployment,pod,pvc -n nginx-ui
kubectl rollout status deployment/nginx-ui -n nginx-ui

For local access, forward the HTTP Service port:

kubectl port-forward -n nginx-ui service/nginx-ui 8080:80

Open http://127.0.0.1:8080. Read the one-time installation secret from the persistent Nginx UI data volume:

kubectl exec -n nginx-ui deployment/nginx-ui -- \
  cat /etc/nginx-ui/.install_secret

Ingress

The chart can create a standard Kubernetes Ingress that forwards to the bundled Nginx HTTP port:

ingress:
  enabled: true
  className: nginx
  hosts:
    - host: nginx-ui.example.com
      paths:
        - path: /
          pathType: Prefix
  tls:
    - secretName: nginx-ui-tls
      hosts:
        - nginx-ui.example.com

Save the values as values.yaml and install with --values values.yaml. The Ingress Controller and TLS Secret must already exist in the cluster.

Persistence

The chart creates and retains these claims by default:

Claim	Container path	Purpose
nginx	/etc/nginx	Bundled Nginx configuration
nginxUI	/etc/nginx-ui	Database, application settings, and install secret

An optional www claim mounts at /var/www. Set a StorageClass per claim with persistence.<name>.storageClass, or reuse a pre-provisioned claim with persistence.<name>.existingClaim.

Claims created by the chart carry helm.sh/resource-policy: keep by default. Uninstalling the release therefore leaves user configuration and the database intact. Delete retained claims manually only after backing up their contents.

Upgrade

helm repo update nginx-ui
helm upgrade nginx-ui nginx-ui/nginx-ui \
  --namespace nginx-ui \
  --reuse-values

The release pipeline tests a fresh install, writes a marker to the Nginx UI data claim, performs an upgrade that recreates the pod, and verifies that the marker and /healthz endpoint remain available.