Deploy the cdn-remote helm chart on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

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Pulumi · Accepted Answer

Deploying a Helm chart on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) using Pulumi involves several steps:

1. **Setting up the AKS Cluster**: First, create an AKS cluster where your application will run. You'll need to define the required resources, including the Kubernetes cluster itself and any required supporting resources such as networking components.

2. **Deploying the Helm Chart**: Once the cluster is running, you can deploy applications into it. Helm is a package manager for Kubernetes that simplifies the process of deploying and managing Kubernetes applications. Using Helm charts, which are packages containing pre-configured Kubernetes resources, makes it easy to install and manage applications on your Kubernetes cluster.

3. **Monitoring and Management**: After deployment, monitor the application and potentially manage its lifecycle with updates or rollbacks as necessary.

Below is a Pulumi TypeScript program to achieve this. The program will:

- Provision an Azure Kubernetes Service using the `azure-native` provider.
- Deploy a Helm chart to the AKS cluster.

First, ensure you have:
- Azure account credentials configured for Pulumi, using Azure CLI or Azure Service Principal.
- Azure CLI installed and authenticated to your Azure account if you wish to interact with created resources.
- Pulumi CLI installed.
- Helm CLI installed if you want to manage helm packages outside of Pulumi.

Now, the detailed TypeScript program with explanations:

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

// Create an Azure Resource Group
const resourceGroup = new azureNative.resources.ResourceGroup("aksResourceGroup");

// Create an AKS cluster
const aksCluster = new azure.containerservice.KubernetesCluster("aksCluster", {
    resourceGroupName: resourceGroup.name,
    defaultNodePool: {
        name: "default",
        nodeCount: 2,
        vmSize: "Standard_D2_v2",
    },
    dnsPrefix: `${pulumi.getStack()}-kube`,
    identity: {
        type: "SystemAssigned",
    },
});

// Expose a kubeconfig output for the Kubernetes cluster that we can use to connect to the cluster later
const creds = pulumi.all([resourceGroup.name, aksCluster.name]).apply(([rgName, clusterName]) =>
    azure.containerservice.listKubernetesClusterUserCredentials({
        resourceGroupName: rgName,
        resourceName: clusterName,
    }),
);
const kubeconfig = creds.apply(creds => creds.kubeconfigs[0].value);

// Create a k8s provider instance using the kubeconfig
const k8sProvider = new k8s.Provider("k8sProvider", {
    kubeconfig: kubeconfig,
});

// Deploy the helm chart into the AKS cluster
const helmChart = new k8s.helm.v3.Chart("cdn-remote-chart", {
    chart: "cdn-remote",
    version: "1.0.0", // Replace with the specific chart version
    fetchOpts: {
        repo: "https://charts.example.com/", // Replace with the actual Helm chart repository
    },
}, { provider: k8sProvider });

// Export the kubeconfig to stdout to manage Kubernetes resources
export const kubeConfigOut = kubeconfig;
```

This program will do the following:

1. Import necessary Pulumi modules.
2. Create an Azure resource group to organize all the resources.
3. Set up an AKS cluster using `azure.containerservice.KubernetesCluster`.
   - Configure it with two nodes using the size "Standard_D2_v2",
   - Apply an Azure identity for security measures,
   - Generate a DNS prefix based on the Pulumi stack.
4. Retrieve the kubeconfig file which is used to access your AKS cluster with `listKubernetesClusterUserCredentials`.
5. Instantiate a Kubernetes provider that is connected to your AKS cluster.
6. Use `k8s.helm.v3.Chart` to deploy the Helm chart `cdn-remote` to your AKS cluster.
   - Specify version and Helm repo URL for your chart.
7. Export `kubeconfig` which can be used outside of Pulumi to interact with your Kubernetes cluster.

You can run the above Pulumi program by saving it to a file, for example `index.ts`, and then running `pulumi up` from the same directory. Pulumi will perform the deployment as described, and you'll end up with the `cdn-remote` helm chart deployed on Azure Kubernetes Service.

Once you have run the Pulumi program and confirmed the deployment, you can interact with your Kubernetes cluster using standard Kubernetes tools like `kubectl` by setting your `KUBECONFIG` environment variable to the output of the `kubeConfigOut` value or by directly using the exported kubeconfig in your program.