Deploy the nautobot helm chart on Linode Kubernetes Engine

Question

Pulumi · Accepted Answer

To deploy the Nautobot Helm chart on Linode Kubernetes Engine (LKE) using Pulumi, we'll leverage the `kubernetes` package that provides the necessary resources to interact with Kubernetes and Helm charts. The `kubernetes.helm.sh/v3.Chart` resource is specifically designed to work with Helm charts, which is what we'll use to deploy Nautobot.

First, we need to set up and configure access to your Linode Kubernetes cluster. This usually involves obtaining the kubeconfig file for your LKE cluster which can be generated from the Linode Cloud Manager. Pulumi uses this configuration to communicate with your cluster.

We'll perform the following steps in our Pulumi TypeScript program:
1. Import the necessary packages.
2. Use `kubernetes.helm.sh/v3.Chart` to deploy the Nautobot Helm chart.
3. Export any necessary kubeconfig information or other outputs.

The following program demonstrates how you can deploy the Nautobot Helm chart to an LKE cluster:

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

// This is the entry point for your Pulumi program.
export async function main() {
    // Configure access to your LKE cluster by specifying the kubeconfig. For the sake of this example,
    // it's read from a local kubeconfig file. In actual practice, it would be more secure to handle this
    // using Pulumi secrets or environment variables.
    const kubeconfig = 'path-to-your-kubeconfig.yaml';

// Create a kubernetes provider instance that uses your LKE kubeconfig
    const provider = new k8s.Provider("lke-k8s", { kubeconfig: kubeconfig });

// Deploying Nautobot using its Helm Chart. You would replace `repo` and `chart` with their correct values.
    // Additionally, you can specify `values` to configure your Nautobot deployment according to your needs.
    const nautobotChart = new k8s.helm.v3.Chart("nautobot", {
        repo: "nautobot-repo", // Specify the repository that hosts the Nautobot Helm chart
        chart: "nautobot",    // Make sure this is the correct chart name for Nautobot
        // Specify values to configure the chart. These would be specific to the Nautobot Helm chart and what
        // you want to configure (e.g., persistence, service type, resource limits, ingress settings, etc.)
        values: { 
            // This is an example value. You'll want to look up the specific values needed for the Nautobot chart
            service: {
                type: "ClusterIP"
            }
        },
    }, { provider: provider });

// If you have specific outputs you'd like to export upon deployment, you can do so here.
    // For example, if you wanted to export the service endpoint to access Nautobot, you would
    // need to refer to the specific service or ingress resources created by the Helm chart and export
    // those values.

// The below line is a placeholder. Replace `serviceName` with the actual resource name
    // and the `status` to the actual status field that provides the endpoint information.
    // const serviceInfo = nautobotChart.getResourceProperty('v1/Service', 'serviceName', 'status');
    // export const nautobotEndpoint = serviceInfo.apply(status => status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].ip);
}

main();
```

Here's what each part of the program does:
- The `k8s` package is imported to use Kubernetes-related resources in Pulumi.
- A `Provider` resource is instantiated with your LKE cluster's kubeconfig, so Pulumi knows where and how to deploy your resources.
- The `Chart` resource from the `k8s.helm.v3` namespace is used to deploy the Nautobot Helm chart to your Kubernetes cluster. You specify the chart name, the repository, and optional values that customize the deployment to your needs.
- Optionally, you can export information such as service endpoints using the `getResourceProperty` method though this will require knowing the actual resource names and status fields created by the Helm chart.

Make sure to replace placeholder values like `path-to-your-kubeconfig.yaml`, `nautobot-repo`, and `serviceName` with actual information from your setup. Also, ensure that the chart version you want to use is available in the specified Helm repository.

You will need to run `pulumi up` to deploy the resources defined by this program after setting up your Pulumi environment and logging into Pulumi.

Before running the program, make sure you have Pulumi and its CLI installed, and you're authenticated to your Linode account with the necessary privileges to manage LKE clusters.