Deploy the backyards-sre-alert-exporter helm chart on AWS EKS

Question

Pulumi · Accepted Answer

To deploy the `backyards-sre-alert-exporter` helm chart on an Amazon EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service) cluster using Pulumi, you need to follow these steps:

1. Provision an EKS cluster.
2. Install a Helm chart into the EKS cluster.

We will use the following Pulumi resources to achieve this:

- `aws.eks.Cluster`: This resource creates an EKS cluster on AWS. EKS is a managed Kubernetes service that makes it easier for you to run Kubernetes on AWS without needing to install and operate your own Kubernetes control plane or worker nodes.
- `kubernetes.helm.v3.Chart`: This resource is used to deploy a Helm chart into a Kubernetes cluster. Helm charts help you define, install, and upgrade even the most complex Kubernetes applications.

Below is a program written in TypeScript that demonstrates how to create an EKS cluster and then deploy the `backyards-sre-alert-exporter` helm chart to it using Pulumi.

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

// Create an EKS cluster.
const cluster = new eks.Cluster("my-cluster", {
    // Specify the desired version of Kubernetes.
    version: "1.22",
    // Specify the instance size of the cluster.
    instanceType: "t2.medium",
    // Specify the desired capacity (number of nodes) for the cluster.
    desiredCapacity: 2,
    // Set the minimum size for the auto-scaling group.
    minSize: 1,
    // Set the maximum size for the auto-scaling group.
    maxSize: 3,
});

// Export the cluster's kubeconfig.
export const kubeconfig = cluster.kubeconfig;

// Create a Kubernetes Provider instance with the kubeconfig from EKS cluster.
const k8sProvider = new k8s.Provider("k8s-provider", {
    kubeconfig: cluster.kubeconfig,
});

// Deploy the backyards-sre-alert-exporter helm chart to the EKS cluster.
const helmChart = new k8s.helm.v3.Chart("sre-alert-exporter", {
    chart: "backyards-sre-alert-exporter",
    // You can specify the chart version here, but we'll use the default version for simplicity.
    // version: "<chart version>",
    // Replace with the actual Helm repo URL or name where the chart is hosted.
    // fetchOpts: {
    //     repo: "https://charts.example.com/",
    // },
    // You can specify custom values for the Helm chart via the `values` field.
    // For example:
    // values: {
    //     service: {
    //         type: "ClusterIP",
    //     },
    // },
}, { provider: k8sProvider });

// Export the status of the deployed helm chart.
export const helmChartStatus = helmChart.status;
```

Explanation:

- The `eks.Cluster` resource creates an EKS cluster with a specified number of nodes (`desiredCapacity`), minimum size (`minSize`), maximum size (`maxSize`), and instance type (`instanceType`). EKS automatically manages the underlying infrastructure like the control plane and the worker nodes according to these specifications.

- After creating the cluster, we export the generated `kubeconfig`, which is used to communicate with the EKS cluster.

- We then create a `k8s.Provider` resource with the `kubeconfig`, which allows Pulumi to perform Kubernetes operations such as deploying applications into the EKS cluster.

- Finally, we use the `k8s.helm.v3.Chart` resource to deploy the `backyards-sre-alert-exporter` helm chart into the cluster. Helm is a package manager for Kubernetes, and it helps in simplifying the deployment of applications. The chart will be installed with default values unless specified otherwise in the `values` field.

To apply the above Pulumi program:

1. Save the code in a file named `index.ts`.
2. Run `pulumi up` to preview and deploy the changes.
3. After confirming the deployment, Pulumi will provision the resources and output the status of the Helm chart.

Remember to replace the placeholder values with actual information regarding the Helm repository and chart version where necessary. If you need to pass specific configurations to the Helm chart, you can do so using the `values` property of the `k8s.helm.v3.Chart` resource.