Deploy the open-vpn helm chart on Linode Kubernetes Engine

Question

Pulumi · Accepted Answer

To deploy the OpenVPN helm chart on Linode Kubernetes Engine (LKE), you need to follow a few steps. We'll go through these steps in sequence.

First, you'll need to set up the Linode Kubernetes cluster if you haven't done so already. The Linode Kubernetes Engine provides a managed Kubernetes service that makes it relatively easy to deploy and manage Kubernetes clusters.

Once you have a Kubernetes cluster running on LKE, you'll need to ensure you have kubectl configured correctly to interact with your Kubernetes cluster. Linode provides a kubeconfig file that you can use to set up `kubectl`.

After configuring `kubectl`, the next step is to deploy the OpenVPN helm chart. Helm is a package manager for Kubernetes that allows you to manage applications through Helm Charts, which are packages containing pre-configured Kubernetes resources.

To use Helm with Pulumi, we will utilize the `kubernetes.helm.v3.Chart` resource from the Pulumi Kubernetes provider, which allows us to deploy Helm charts into our cluster programmatically.

Here is a Pulumi program written in TypeScript that demonstrates how to deploy the OpenVPN helm chart on LKE:

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

// Create an OpenVPN Helm Chart resource
const openVpnChart = new k8s.helm.v3.Chart('openvpn-chart', {
    // Assuming you want the latest chart from the 'stable' repo
    repo: 'https://charts.helm.sh/stable',
    chart: 'openvpn',
    // Specify the namespace where you want to deploy if needed (optional)
    namespace: 'default',
    // Specify any values here to customize the OpenVPN chart installation
    // More information is available in the OpenVPN chart documentation
    values: {
        // For example, you might want to set service type to LoadBalancer
        // service: {
        //     type: 'LoadBalancer',
        // },
    },
});

// Optional: Export the service name
export const serviceName = openVpnChart.getResourceProperty('v1/Service', 'openvpn', 'metadata').apply(m => m.name);

// Optional: Export the service external IP
// Keep in mind that it may take some time for the LoadBalancer IP to become available
export const serviceExternalIp = openVpnChart.getResourceProperty('v1/Service', 'openvpn', 'status').apply(s => s.loadBalancer?.ingress[0]?.ip);
```

In this program:

- We import the `@pulumi/kubernetes` package, which gives us access to Kubernetes resources within Pulumi.
- We create a `Chart` resource named `openvpn-chart`, specifying the OpenVPN chart from the stable Helm repository. Replace the `repo` URL with the appropriate repository if your chart is located elsewhere.
- The `namespace` option specifies the Kubernetes namespace into which the OpenVPN chart will be deployed. If you don't provide this option, it defaults to the `default` namespace.
- Inside the `values` object, you can customize your Helm chart deployment with settings specific to OpenVPN. Check the OpenVPN Helm chart's documentation for the available settings.

The code includes two optional exports:

- `serviceName` export will provide the name of the OpenVPN service created, which can be helpful for reference.
- `serviceExternalIp` export will give you the external IP address assigned to the service by the LoadBalancer, which you can use to access the OpenVPN server once deployed. Note that retrieving the external IP is asynchronous and might not be immediately available after the deployment; the load balancer needs time to provision the IP.

Keep in mind that to run this program, you'll need to have Pulumi installed, along with the Pulumi CLI configured for your Linode account. The Kubernetes context should also be set to the cluster where you wish to deploy OpenVPN.

Remember to check the official documentation of the OpenVPN chart for the necessary values and configurations you may need to set based on your requirements.