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

Question

Pulumi · Accepted Answer

To deploy the Kiali helm chart on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), we need to follow these high-level steps:

1. **Create an AKS cluster**: We'll start by provisioning an AKS cluster using Pulumi with the `azure-native` package, which provides native Azure resource management.

2. **Install Kiali Helm Chart**: Once the AKS cluster is up and running, we'll use Pulumi's `kubernetes` package to deploy the Kiali Helm chart to the cluster.

Let's break down each step and see the corresponding Pulumi code:

### Step 1: Create an AKS Cluster

In this step, we will create an AKS cluster. We'll need to specify the required properties, such as the resource group name, the AKS cluster name, the node count, and the VM size we want to use for the AKS nodes.

### Step 2: Install Kiali Helm Chart

After the cluster is provisioned, we can configure Pulumi to use the kubeconfig generated by AKS to connect to our cluster. With that connection in place, we can then deploy the Kiali Helm chart. Kiali is an observability console for Istio with service mesh configuration capabilities. It provides dashboards, observability, and lets you control your Istio service mesh.

Below is the TypeScript program that accomplishes both steps:

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

// Step 1: Creating the AKS cluster
const resourceGroupName = new azure.resources.ResourceGroup("myResourceGroup");

const aksCluster = new azure.containerservice.ManagedCluster("myAksCluster", {
    resourceGroupName: resourceGroupName.name,
    agentPoolProfiles: [{
        count: 2, // Number of nodes
        maxPods: 110,
        mode: "System",
        name: "agentpool",
        osType: "Linux",
        vmSize: "Standard_DS2_v2", // Virtual machine size
    }],
    dnsPrefix: "myakscluster",
    enableRBAC: true,
    kubernetesVersion: "1.18.14",
    linuxProfile: {
        adminUsername: "adminuser",
        ssh: {
            publicKeys: [{
                keyData: "ssh-rsa PUBLIC_KEY_HERE admin@mydomain.com"
            }],
        },
    },
});

const creds = pulumi.all([resourceGroupName.name, aksCluster.name]).apply(([rgName, clusterName]) => {
    return azure.containerservice.listManagedClusterUserCredentials({
        resourceGroupName: rgName,
        resourceName: clusterName,
    });
});

const kubeconfig = creds.kubeconfigs[0].value.apply(v => Buffer.from(v, "base64").toString());

// Export the kubeconfig so that we can easily connect to our cluster
export const kubeconfigOutput = kubeconfig;

// Step 2: Deploy the Kiali Helm chart on the AKS cluster
const kialiChart = new k8s.helm.v3.Chart("kiali", {
    chart: "kiali",
    version: "1.29.0", // Specify the version of the chart
    fetchOpts: {
        repo: "https://kiali.org/helm-charts", // Kiali's Helm chart repository
    },
}, { provider: new k8s.Provider("k8s-provider", { kubeconfig }) });

// Export the Kiali endpoint for easy access
export const kialiEndpoint = kialiChart.getResourceProperty("v1/Service", "kiali-server", "status").apply(status => status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].ip);
```

In the code above:

- We defined a ResourceGroup which is a logical container for the AKS resources.
- We provisioned an AKS cluster with two nodes using the DS2_v2 size VMs.
- We obtained the kubeconfig for the cluster, which is necessary for Kubernetes to communicate with your AKS cluster.
- We exported the kubeconfig as an output for potential use outside of Pulumi.
- We deployed the Kiali Helm chart using the `k8s.helm.v3.Chart` class provided by Pulumi's Kubernetes package.
- We specified the chart name, version, and repository where the Helm chart is located.
- Finally, we exported the IP address of the Kiali service to allow us to access the Kiali dashboard.

This program should be placed in a Pulumi project, and after installing the necessary npm packages by running `npm install` in the project directory, the program can be deployed using the `pulumi up` command. Make sure to replace `PUBLIC_KEY_HERE` with your own SSH public key for connecting to the nodes securely.

Remember to configure your authentication with Azure using the Azure CLI, and set up the necessary Pulumi stack and settings before running `pulumi up`.