Deploy the fintech helm chart on Linode Kubernetes Engine

Question

Pulumi · Accepted Answer

To deploy a fintech Helm chart on Linode Kubernetes Engine (LKE), we need to create a Kubernetes cluster on LKE and then deploy the Helm chart to the cluster. This involves several high-level steps:

1. **Provision a Linode Kubernetes Engine Cluster**: This step involves creating the Kubernetes cluster itself using LKE, which provides managed Kubernetes clusters.

2. **Deploy the Helm Chart to the Cluster**: Once we have a Kubernetes cluster running, we can use a Helm chart to deploy our fintech application. Helm is a package manager for Kubernetes that allows us to define, install, and upgrade complex Kubernetes applications. Helm charts can be found for a variety of applications and services in the Helm repository or other third-party repositories.

For this guide, we'll assume that you have already set up Pulumi and have the necessary access to the Linode cloud.

Here's how you can use Pulumi in TypeScript to create a Linode Kubernetes Cluster and deploy a fintech Helm chart to it:

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

// Step 1: Provision a Linode Kubernetes Engine Cluster

// Create a Kubernetes cluster on Linode
const cluster = new linode.LkeCluster("my-fintech-cluster", {
    k8sVersion: "1.20", // Specify your desired Kubernetes version
    label: "my-fintech-cluster",
    region: "us-central", // Specify your desired region
    tags: ["fintech"],
    nodePools: [{
        count: 2, // Specify the number of nodes
        type: "g6-standard-1" // Specify the node type
    }]
});

// Export the Kubeconfig
export const kubeconfig = cluster.kubeconfig;

// Step 2: Deploy Helm Chart to Cluster

// Use a kubernetes provider to connect to the Linode Kubernetes Cluster
const provider = new kubernetes.Provider("lke-provider", {
    kubeconfig: cluster.kubeconfig,
});

// Deploy a fintech Helm chart to the Kubernetes cluster
const fintechChart = new kubernetes.helm.v3.Chart("fintech", {
    chart: "fintech", // Specify the name of the Helm chart
    version: "1.0.0", // Specify the chart version, if necessary
    // Specify the Helm chart values here, for example:
    values: {
        // Chart-specific values to customize the deployment
        // serviceType: "LoadBalancer",
        // replicaCount: 3,
        // image: { repository: "my-fintech-app", tag: "latest" },
    },
}, { provider });

// Export the endpoint of the fintech application
export const fintechEndpoint = fintechChart.getResourceProperty("v1/Service", "fintech", "status").apply(status => status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].ip);
```

Let's walk through what each part of this code is doing:

1. We start by importing the necessary Pulumi packages for Linode and Kubernetes.

2. We create an instance of `LkeCluster` from the Linode Pulumi provider, which provisions a new Kubernetes cluster for us on LKE. We specify the Kubernetes version, the region where the cluster should be deployed, the number of nodes, and the type of nodes.

3. We export the kubeconfig which will be used to interact with our Kubernetes cluster programmatically.

4. We define a `Provider` resource which Pulumi uses to connect to our Linode Kubernetes cluster using the generated kubeconfig.

5. We create a Helm chart resource named `fintech`. We specify the chart name and optionally its version and any values that are necessary to customize the installation according to the Helm chart's documentation.

6. Lastly, we export the `fintechEndpoint`, which is the endpoint where we can access our deployed fintech application. This will only work if the `(status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].ip)` is properly exposed, which is typical for a LoadBalancer service in Kubernetes.

**Note**: Replace `"fintech"` chart and version with the actual name and version of your Helm chart. Also, you may need to adjust the values as per your helm chart.

After running this Pulumi program, you will have a Kubernetes cluster hosted on Linode Kubernetes Engine with your fintech application deployed to it. You can use the `fintechEndpoint` export to access your application, though remember that depending on your application's configuration, you may need to set up DNS and other networking configurations for production use.