Deploy the helm-state-metrics helm chart on Rancher

Question

Pulumi · Accepted Answer

To deploy the kube-state-metrics Helm chart on a Rancher managed Kubernetes cluster using Pulumi, we first need to ensure that we have a Kubernetes cluster managed by Rancher and have installed the Rancher2 provider for Pulumi.

In Pulumi, we can use the `rancher2` package to interact with a Rancher server, which includes deploying Helm charts to a Kubernetes cluster managed by Rancher. As of my knowledge cutoff in early 2023, Pulumi does not have a dedicated resource for deploying Helm charts directly within the `rancher2` provider, so we would need to set up the Kubernetes provider and use it to deploy charts once we have configured the Kubernetes context to point to our Rancher-managed cluster.

First, we will need to set up the provider configuration for Rancher2 and Kubernetes. This configuration will be specific to your Rancher setup and will usually include the Rancher API URL, an access token, and the cluster ID that you want to work with. If you're using a non-public Rancher server, you may also need to include details necessary to authenticate to the server.

Once we have our providers configured, we can use the `helm.v3.Chart` resource from Pulumi's Kubernetes provider to deploy kube-state-metrics. The example below assumes you have your Kubernetes configuration set up to point towards the desired Rancher-managed cluster.

Below is a detailed TypeScript program that deploys the `kube-state-metrics` Helm chart to a Kubernetes cluster managed by Rancher:

```typescript
import * as pulumi from '@pulumi/pulumi';
import * as k8s from '@pulumi/kubernetes';
import * as rancher2 from '@pulumi/rancher2';

// Replace these variables with the appropriate values for your Rancher setup.
const rancherUrl = 'https://your-rancher-server-url';
const rancherAccessToken = 'token-xxxx'; // Your Rancher API token.
const rancherClusterId = 'c-xxxxx'; // Your cluster ID in Rancher.

// Configure the Rancher2 provider with the necessary credentials.
const rancherProvider = new rancher2.Provider('rancherProvider', {
    apiURL: rancherUrl,
    tokenKey: rancherAccessToken,
});

// Use the cluster ID to retrieve the cluster kubeconfig.
const cluster = rancher2.getCluster({
    clusterId: rancherClusterId,
}, { provider: rancherProvider });

// Configure the Kubernetes provider to use the kubeconfig from Rancher.
const k8sProvider = new k8s.Provider('k8sProvider', {
    kubeconfig: cluster.kubeConfig,
});

// Deploy the kube-state-metrics Helm chart using the Kubernetes provider.
const kubeStateMetricsChart = new k8s.helm.v3.Chart('kube-state-metrics', {
    chart: 'kube-state-metrics',
    version: '3.1.1', // Specify the version of kube-state-metrics you wish to deploy.
    fetchOpts: {
        repo: 'https://kubernetes.github.io/kube-state-metrics',
    },
}, { provider: k8sProvider });

// Export the namespace where kube-state-metrics is deployed.
export const kubeStateMetricsNamespace = kubeStateMetricsChart.namespace;
```

Here's a breakdown of what each part of the program is doing:

- We import the necessary Pulumi modules: `@pulumi/pulumi`, `@pulumi/kubernetes`, and `@pulumi/rancher2`.
- We declare variables `rancherUrl`, `rancherAccessToken`, and `rancherClusterId` that should be filled with your specific Rancher configuration values.
- We create a new `rancher2.Provider` instance configured with the Rancher server URL and access token.
- We retrieve the kubeconfig for the Rancher-managed cluster using the `getCluster` function.
- We create a `k8s.Provider` instance with the kubeconfig of the Rancher cluster to allow Pulumi to deploy resources to it.
- We define a `kube-state-metrics` Helm chart using Pulumi's Kubernetes provider by creating a `k8s.helm.v3.Chart` resource. We specify the chart name, version, and the repository where the chart can be found.
- Finally, we export the namespace where the `kube-state-metrics` chart will be deployed for later reference.

Run this Pulumi program using `pulumi up` after you have set up Pulumi and have the correct access configured to your Rancher and Kubernetes clusters. This will deploy the kube-state-metrics chart to your cluster. You can then use `kubectl` or the Rancher Dashboard to inspect the deployments and manage the Helm release.