Deploy the ts-server helm chart on Kubernetes

Question

Pulumi · Accepted Answer

To deploy a Helm chart on Kubernetes using Pulumi, you will use the Chart resource from the Pulumi Kubernetes provider. The Chart resource is a high-level component that encapsulates a group of Kubernetes resources represented by a Helm chart. In this example, I will show you how to deploy a Helm chart named ts-server to a Kubernetes cluster.

Firstly, ensure you have the following prerequisites in place:

A configured Kubernetes cluster
Pulumi CLI installed and set up
kubectl configured to access your Kubernetes cluster
Node.js and npm installed to run the TypeScript program

I'll provide you with a Pulumi program written in TypeScript to deploy the ts-server Helm chart. We will use the Pulumi Kubernetes provider which internally uses the Helm client to deploy the chart from a Helm repository.

Here is a step-by-step Pulumi program to deploy the ts-server Helm chart:

Import the Necessary Libraries: Begin by importing @pulumi/pulumi and @pulumi/kubernetes.
Create a Chart Resource: Declare a new Helm chart resource, referencing the ts-server chart. You need to specify the repository URL where the chart is located if it's not a chart from the official Helm stable repository.
Deploy the Chart: Run pulumi up to deploy your Helm chart as part of your Pulumi stack. This operation will install the Helm chart on your Kubernetes cluster using the current kubeconfig context.
Export any Required Outputs: If you need to export any outputs, such as service URLs or other resource properties, you can do so using pulumi.export.

Below is the TypeScript program demonstrating these steps:

import * as pulumi from "@pulumi/pulumi";
import * as kubernetes from "@pulumi/kubernetes";

// Step 1: Create a new instance of the Chart class pointing to the ts-server Helm chart.
// In this example, you would replace `<YOUR-HELM-CHART-REPO-URL>` with the URL to your ts-server Helm chart repository.
// You can also specify the namespace and version if required.
const tsServerChart = new kubernetes.helm.v3.Chart("ts-server-chart", {
    chart: "ts-server", // The name of the chart in the repository.
    version: "1.0.0", // Specify the version of the chart you want to deploy.
    namespace: "default", // The Kubernetes namespace where to deploy the chart. Default is used if not specified.
    fetchOpts: {
        repo: "<YOUR-HELM-CHART-REPO-URL>", // The repository URL where your Helm chart is located.
    },
    values: {
        // Place any configuration options for your chart here.
        // For example, if your chart allows setting the replica count, you can configure it like this:
        // replicaCount: 3,
    },
});

// Optional: Exporting the Kubernetes resources created by the Helm chart.
// For instance, if the chart includes a Kubernetes Service, you might want to export its URL.
const service = tsServerChart.getResourceProperty("v1/Service", "ts-server", "status");
export const serviceUrl = service.apply(s => `http://${s.loadBalancer.ingress[0].ip}`);

// Note: Make sure to replace `<YOUR-HELM-CHART-REPO-URL>` with the actual URL to the repository where your Helm chart is hosted.
// You can remove the `version` key if you want to install the latest version of the chart by default.

To run this program, navigate to the folder containing this TypeScript file and run the following commands:

Initialize a new Pulumi project if you don't already have one:

pulumi new kubernetes-typescript
Install the necessary node modules using npm:

npm install @pulumi/pulumi @pulumi/kubernetes
Run pulumi up to preview and deploy the changes:

pulumi up

The pulumi up command will show you a preview of the resources that will be created. After you confirm, Pulumi will proceed to deploy the Helm chart to your Kubernetes cluster.

Keep in mind that the above program assumes you're deploying to a pre-configured Kubernetes cluster. If you also need to provision a Kubernetes cluster, you would have additional steps to set up the cluster using Pulumi before deploying the ts-server Helm chart.