Deploy the elastalert helm chart on Kubernetes

Question

Pulumi · Accepted Answer

To deploy the ElastAlert Helm chart on Kubernetes using Pulumi, we will need to write a Pulumi program in TypeScript. Pulumi allows you to declare infrastructure as code using general-purpose programming languages.

ElastAlert is a simple framework for alerting on anomalies, spikes, or other patterns of interest from data in Elasticsearch. Helm charts are packages for deploying applications on Kubernetes.

In the program below, we will use the Chart resource from the Pulumi Kubernetes package. This resource allows us to deploy Helm charts into a Kubernetes cluster. We have to specify the chart name, optionally the version, and the values that are to be passed in for the particular Helm chart.

Here's what we're going to do:

Start by importing the necessary Pulumi modules.
Create a Kubernetes provider if using a specific kubeconfig or context, else the default provider configured in Pulumi will be used.
Define a Helm chart from the stable repository (which typically hosts the ElastAlert chart) and provide the necessary configuration values, if any.
Perform the deployment action, sending the message to Kubernetes to spin up the resources defined by ElastAlert Helm chart.

Make sure you have configured your Kubernetes cluster access because Pulumi uses the Kubernetes configuration from your machine (i.e., ~/.kube/config), or you can pass a kubeconfig file explicitly to the provider.

Here's a simple Pulumi program to deploy the ElastAlert Helm chart on Kubernetes:

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

// Step 1: Setting up a Kubernetes provider (optional)
// If you are using a kubeconfig file that's not the default, or if you wish to specify a context, you'd set up a provider as follows:
const provider = new k8s.Provider("provider", {
    kubeconfig: "<Your Kubeconfig>",
    // context: "<Your Kubernetes Context>", // You can specify a context if you are working with multiple clusters.
});

// Step 2: Deploying the ElastAlert Helm chart
const elastAlertChart = new k8s.helm.v3.Chart("elastalert", {
    // Use the correct 'repo' and 'chart' values if they are different.
    // Sometimes, Helm charts are hosted in custom repositories; you'll need to provide the 'repo' property in such cases.
    chart: "elastalert",
    // You might also want to specify a version.
    // version: "<Version of the Helm chart if not using latest>",
    // 'values' is used to provide the configuration for the chart.
    values: {
        // Provide values for the chart as key-value pairs.
        // Example: if you need to set a replica count, you may include something like:
        // replicaCount: 3,
        // You should refer to the 'values.yaml' of the ElastAlert Helm chart for configurable options.
    },
}, { provider: provider }); // Omit 'provider' if using the default.

// Step 3: Exporting any useful information that you may want to connect with after deployment
export const elastAlertChartStatus = elastAlertChart.status;

Note the following about the program:

You must replace <Your Kubeconfig> and <Your Kubernetes Context> with your actual Kubernetes configuration and context if required.
You need to customize the values property of elastAlertChart based on the actual values that are acceptable by the ElastAlert Helm chart. These values are typically found in the values.yaml file with the chart. They allow you to customize the deployment to suit your needs (e.g., setting specific alert rules, Elasticsearch connection details, etc.)
The provider argument is optional and is only necessary if you want to target a Kubernetes cluster different from the one configured by default. If you use the default context of your Kubeconfig, you do not need to specify the provider.

After writing this program, run it using the Pulumi CLI to deploy the Helm chart:

pulumi up

After successful deployment, you can check the resources created by this chart using the kubectl command or pulumi stack output elastAlertChartStatus.

Remember, if you don't have the ElastAlert Helm chart in a public repository or your Helm chart has its repository, ensure you add the repo option with the URL of the Helm repository.