Deploy the variant-service-deployments helm chart on AWS EKS

Question

Pulumi · Accepted Answer

To deploy a Helm chart on an AWS Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) cluster using Pulumi, you'll need to follow these steps:

1. Set up an EKS cluster.
2. Configure Kubernetes provider to connect to the EKS cluster.
3. Deploy the Helm chart to the EKS cluster.

Let's break down each of these steps with accompanying Pulumi code, using the TypeScript language.

### Step 1: Setting up an EKS Cluster

We use the `eks.Cluster` resource from the `@pulumi/eks` package, which simplifies creating and managing an EKS cluster.

```typescript
import * as eks from "@pulumi/eks";

// Create an EKS cluster.
const cluster = new eks.Cluster("my-cluster", {
    desiredCapacity: 2,
    minSize: 1,
    maxSize: 3,
    storageClasses: "gp2",  // Specify the storage class.
    deployDashboard: false,  // EKS dashboard is optional.
});

export const kubeconfig = cluster.kubeconfig;
```
In the example above, we're creating an EKS cluster with the desired capacity of worker nodes. The `storageClasses` option specifies the storage class for the cluster's volumes, and `deployDashboard` indicates we're not deploying the Kubernetes dashboard.

### Step 2: Configuring the Kubernetes Provider

The Kubernetes provider needs to be configured to connect to the EKS cluster. We use the kubeconfig output from the EKS cluster to achieve this.

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

// Create a Kubernetes provider instance that uses our EKS cluster's kubeconfig.
const k8sProvider = new k8s.Provider("k8s-provider", {
    kubeconfig: cluster.kubeconfig.apply(JSON.stringify),
});
```

Here, `cluster.kubeconfig.apply(JSON.stringify)` is converting the kubeconfig output to a JSON string, which the Kubernetes provider can use.

### Step 3: Deploying the Helm Chart

With the Kubernetes provider configured, you can now deploy your Helm chart to the EKS cluster using the `helm.v3.Chart` resource from the `@pulumi/kubernetes` package.

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

// Deploy a Helm chart.
const helmChart = new k8s.helm.v3.Chart("variant-service", {
    chart: "variant-service-deployments",
    version: "1.0.0",  // Specify the version of the chart.
    fetchOpts: {
        repo: "http://myhelmrepo.com",  // Specify the Helm repository URL.
    },
}, { provider: k8sProvider });
```

In this example, we're deploying the `variant-service-deployments` Helm chart, which is presumed to be version `1.0.0` and located in a custom Helm repository at `http://myhelmrepo.com`.

### Bringing it all together

Combining all the steps above, here is the entire Pulumi program for deploying a Helm chart to an EKS cluster:

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

// Step 1: Create an EKS cluster.
const cluster = new eks.Cluster("my-cluster", {
    desiredCapacity: 2,
    minSize: 1,
    maxSize: 3,
    storageClasses: "gp2",
    deployDashboard: false,
});

// Export the cluster's kubeconfig.
export const kubeconfig = cluster.kubeconfig;

// Step 2: Configure the Kubernetes provider using the generated kubeconfig.
const k8sProvider = new k8s.Provider("k8s-provider", {
    kubeconfig: cluster.kubeconfig.apply(JSON.stringify),
});

// Step 3: Deploy the Helm chart to the EKS cluster with the Kubernetes provider.
const helmChart = new k8s.helm.v3.Chart("variant-service", {
    chart: "variant-service-deployments",
    version: "1.0.0",
    fetchOpts: {
        repo: "http://myhelmrepo.com",
    },
}, { provider: k8sProvider });

// Optionally, if you need to pass specific config values to your Helm chart you can do so as follows:
// const helmChart = new k8s.helm.v3.Chart("variant-service", {
//     ...
//     values: {
//         serviceType: "LoadBalancer",
//         replicaCount: 3,
//     },
// }, { provider: k8sProvider });
```

Make sure you replace `"http://myhelmrepo.com"` with the actual URL of your Helm repository and adjust the `version`, `chart`, and `values` as needed for your specific Helm chart.

To run this program, save it to a `index.ts` file, set up your Pulumi stack and AWS credentials, and then execute it using `pulumi up`. It will provision the necessary resources on AWS and deploy the Helm chart to your EKS cluster.