Deploy the castlemock helm chart on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Question

Pulumi · Accepted Answer

To deploy the Castlemock Helm chart on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), we will need to accomplish a few main tasks:

1. Provision an AKS cluster where our applications will run.
2. Install and configure Helm, the package manager for Kubernetes, to facilitate the installation of Castlemock.
3. Deploy the Castlemock Helm chart onto the AKS cluster.

We utilize the Pulumi `kubernetes` and `azure-native` packages for these tasks. The `azure-native` package provides classes and functions that create and manage resources on Azure natively, while the `kubernetes` package is used for deploying and managing Kubernetes resources, including Helm charts.

Below is a Pulumi TypeScript program that sets up an AKS cluster and deploys the Castlemock application using its Helm chart. Comments in the code will guide you through what each part does.

```typescript
import * as pulumi from "@pulumi/pulumi";
import * as azure_native from "@pulumi/azure-native";
import * as k8s from "@pulumi/kubernetes";
import * as azuread from "@pulumi/azuread";

// Create a resource group
const resourceGroup = new azure_native.resources.ResourceGroup("myResourceGroup");

// Create an AKS cluster
const cluster = new azure_native.containerservice.ManagedCluster("myAKSCluster", {
    resourceGroupName: resourceGroup.name,
    agentPoolProfiles: [{
        count: 1, // The number of worker nodes for the cluster
        vmSize: "Standard_DS2_v2", // The size of the worker nodes
        name: "agentpool" // Name of the default node pool
    }],
    dnsPrefix: "myakscluster", // A DNS prefix that is used to create the FQDN for the AKS cluster
    // Grant the AKS service principal the Network Contributor role for the virtual network.
    servicePrincipalProfile: {
        clientId: process.env["ARM_CLIENT_ID"], // Application ID
        secret: process.env["ARM_CLIENT_SECRET"], // Application Secret
    },
});

// Create a provider for the AKS cluster
const k8sProvider = new k8s.Provider("myK8sProvider", {
    kubeconfig: cluster.kubeConfigRaw,
});

// Deploy the Castlemock Helm chart into the AKS cluster
const castlemock = new k8s.helm.v3.Chart("castlemock", {
    repo: "https://kubernetes-charts.storage.googleapis.com/",
    chart: "castlemock",
    version: "1.0", // Specify the version of the Helm chart
    // Values to configure the Helm chart.
    values: {
        service: {
            type: "LoadBalancer",
        },
        // Include additional configurations here if needed
    },
}, { provider: k8sProvider }); // Ensure the Helm chart uses the AKS cluster as its Kubernetes provider

// Export the Kubernetes cluster name and Kubeconfig
export const clusterName = cluster.name; // The name of your AKS cluster will be exported as an output
export const kubeConfig = cluster.kubeConfigRaw; // The raw Kubeconfig will be exported as an output
```

Make sure you save this code in a TypeScript (.ts) file in a new Pulumi project.

### Explanation

- We begin by importing the necessary Pulumi packages for managing Azure and Kubernetes resources.
- A new resource group is created in Azure to contain our AKS cluster.
- We then define the AKS cluster. It includes a single node pool with one node (which can be scaled according to your needs), and provides the credentials for the service principal.
- We create a Kubernetes provider that uses the kubeconfig of the AKS cluster. This allows Pulumi to communicate with your AKS cluster.
- The Castlemock Helm chart is then deployed using Pulumi's `Chart` resource. Note that we use the `provider` option to specify that this Helm chart should be deployed to the AKS cluster we created earlier.
- Finally, we export the name of the AKS cluster and its kubeconfig, which could be used to manage the cluster using `kubectl` outside of Pulumi.

### Next Steps

- Before running `pulumi up` to create the resources, you should authenticate to Azure with the Azure CLI and set your environment variables `ARM_CLIENT_ID` and `ARM_CLIENT_SECRET` with the appropriate credentials.
- After finishing the deployment, Castlemock should be accessible through the LoadBalancer service it creates. You can run `kubectl get services` to find the IP address or hostname.
- To manage the lifecycle of the AKS cluster and Castlemock Helm chart using Pulumi, you can use `pulumi destroy` to clean up resources when they're no longer needed.