Deploy the alert-stream-broker helm chart on Linode Kubernetes Engine

Question

Pulumi · Accepted Answer

To deploy a Helm chart to a Kubernetes cluster using Pulumi, you need to ensure that you have a Kubernetes cluster up and running. In this example, we are working with Linode Kubernetes Engine (LKE), Linode's managed Kubernetes service.

First, you'll need to have the Linode CLI and kubectl installed and configured for your Linode account. Specifically, for Pulumi to manage resources on Linode Kubernetes Engine, you'll need to use the Pulumi Linode Provider which allows Pulumi to create and manage Linode resources, including K8s clusters.

Given that you have your Kubernetes cluster on Linode set up, we’ll use the `kubernetes` package in Pulumi to deploy a Helm chart. The `kubernetes.helm.v3.Chart` resource is utilized to manage Helm chart resources.

Here is a detailed explanation followed by the TypeScript code to deploy the `alert-stream-broker` Helm chart on LKE:

1. **Set up Pulumi Kubernetes Provider**: Establish Pulumi's connection to your Kubernetes cluster.
2. **Deploy the Helm Chart**: Use the `Chart` resource to deploy `alert-stream-broker` on your Kubernetes cluster.

Here’s what the code will look like:

```typescript
import * as k8s from "@pulumi/kubernetes";

// Assuming you've already configured Pulumi to work with your Linode account
// and have the kubeconfig file necessary to authenticate with your Kubernetes cluster.

// Define a Helm chart from a remote repository
const alertStreamBrokerChart = new k8s.helm.v3.Chart("alert-stream-broker", {
    // Replace with the specific repo where the alert-stream-broker chart is located
    repo: "alert-stream-broker-repo", 
    chart: "alert-stream-broker",
    // If it's a private repo, you'll also need to provide `fetchOpts` including auth information.
    // You may specify a specific version of the chart and values to customize the installation.
    version: "1.0.0", // Set the version of the chart
    // Here you can set the values according to your chart's requirements.
});

// Note that if the Helm chart `alert-stream-broker` requires specific values to be set,
// you can use the `values` property of the ChartArgs to include necessary configuration.

// Export the base URL for the broker once it's deployed
export const brokerUrl = alertStreamBrokerChart.getResourceProperty(
    "v1/Service", "alert-stream-broker", "status"
).apply(status => `http://${status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].hostname}`);
```

In this code, `alertStreamBrokerChart` is a Pulumi resource representing your Helm chart deployment. The properties inside of `new k8s.helm.v3.Chart` indicate the chart to be used (`alert-stream-broker`), the version you want, and can be augmented with any custom values your chart accepts.

The last part of the code is exporting `brokerUrl`, which assumes that the Helm chart you're deploying creates a LoadBalancer service that exposes your alert stream broker. It retrieves the LoadBalancer's hostname to provide a connection point for your services.

Please replace `"alert-stream-broker-repo"` with the actual repository where the Helm chart is hosted. If you have a custom values YAML file you wish to deploy with, you could use the `values` property to pass in custom chart values.

Remember to handle secrets (like access tokens for private repositories) securely by using Pulumi's secret handling abilities if needed.

After writing this code in a `index.ts` file, you can deploy it using the Pulumi CLI by running `pulumi up` in the same directory as your Pulumi program. Ensure you have the correct Kubernetes context set that points to your Linode Kubernetes Engine cluster.