Deploy the telemetry-e2e helm chart on Rancher

Question

Pulumi · Accepted Answer

Deploying a Helm chart on Rancher using Pulumi involves several steps. To achieve this task, you generally need to:

1. Set up the Rancher2 provider to communicate with your Rancher instance.
2. Create a Kubernetes cluster or use an existing one within Rancher.
3. Install the Helm chart onto the cluster.

Here's a detailed breakdown followed by a Pulumi program written in TypeScript which will guide you through the deployment process:

### Prerequisites
Before you begin, make sure that:

- You have a running Rancher instance, and you have access to it.
- You have installed Pulumi CLI and configured it with appropriate credentials.

### Step 1: Set up the Rancher2 provider
This configuration requires the API URL of your Rancher instance, the access key, and the secret key. These credentials enable Pulumi to authenticate with your Rancher instance.

```typescript
import * as pulumi from "@pulumi/pulumi";
import * as rancher2 from "@pulumi/rancher2";
import * as k8s from "@pulumi/kubernetes";

// Set up the Rancher2 provider to communicate with your Rancher instance.
const rancherProvider = new rancher2.Provider("rancher-provider", {
  apiUrl: "https://your-rancher-api-url", // Replace with your Rancher API URL
  accessKey: "your-access-key",           // Replace with your Rancher Access Key
  secretKey: "your-secret-key",           // Replace with your Rancher Secret Key
});
```

### Step 2: Create/Select a Cluster on Rancher
For deploying a Helm chart, you'll need a Kubernetes cluster. You can either create a new cluster using Pulumi or select an existing one managed by Rancher.

```typescript
// Create a new Kubernetes cluster or use an existing one.
// For an existing cluster, you would reference it like so:
const cluster = rancher2.getCluster({
  name: "existing-cluster-name",
}, { provider: rancherProvider });

// When creating a new cluster, you would define it instead.
// This is commented out and serves as an example.
/*
const newCluster = new rancher2.Cluster("new-cluster", {
  // ... cluster configuration ...
}, { provider: rancherProvider });
*/
```

### Step 3: Deploy the Helm Chart
After setting up the provider and having your cluster ready, the next step would be deploying your `telemetry-e2e` Helm chart onto the cluster.

```typescript
// Deploy the `telemetry-e2e` Helm chart onto the Rancher-managed Kubernetes cluster.
const telemetryE2eChart = new k8s.helm.v3.Chart("telemetry-e2e", {
  chart: "telemetry-e2e",
  version: "chart-version",        // Replace with the desired chart version
  namespace: "target-namespace",   // Replace with the namespace to deploy into
}, { provider: // You need to provide a Kubernetes provider instance connected to your cluster });
```

### Full Program
Now, combining all the steps above, here’s the full program written in TypeScript to deploy the Helm chart on Rancher:

```typescript
import * as pulumi from "@pulumi/pulumi";
import * as rancher2 from "@pulumi/rancher2";
import * as k8s from "@pulumi/kubernetes";

// Providing Rancher API access details.
const rancherProvider = new rancher2.Provider("rancher-provider", {
  apiUrl: "https://your-rancher-api-url", // Replace with your Rancher API URL
  accessKey: "your-access-key",           // Replace with your Rancher Access Key
  secretKey: "your-secret-key",           // Replace with your Rancher Secret Key
});

// Reference an existing Kubernetes cluster managed by Rancher.
const cluster = rancher2.getCluster({
  name: "existing-cluster-name",
}, { provider: rancherProvider });

// Assuming that the Kubernetes Provider is already set up to point to the chosen cluster.
// Please ensure that you have a kubeconfig file pointing to the correct cluster
// if you are reusing a Kubernetes provider.
const k8sProvider = new k8s.Provider("k8s-provider", {
  kubeconfig: cluster.kubeConfig, // This will use the kubeconfig from the imported cluster.
});

// Deploy the `telemetry-e2e` Helm chart onto the Kubernetes cluster.
const telemetryE2eChart = new k8s.helm.v3.Chart("telemetry-e2e", {
  chart: "telemetry-e2e",
  version: "chart-version",      // Replace with the desired Helm chart version
  namespace: "target-namespace", // Replace with the namespace where you want to deploy your chart
}, { provider: k8sProvider });

// Exporting relevant data.
export const chartName = telemetryE2eChart.metadata.name;
export const chartNamespace = telemetryE2eChart.metadata.namespace;
```

In the provided Pulumi program:
- Replace `https://your-rancher-api-url` with the API URL of your Rancher instance.
- Replace `your-access-key` and `your-secret-key` with your Rancher access and secret keys.
- Replace `existing-cluster-name` with the name of the cluster you wish to deploy the chart on.
- Replace `chart-version` with the version of the `telemetry-e2e` Helm chart you want to install.
- Replace `target-namespace` with the Kubernetes namespace you wish to deploy the Helm chart into.

Make sure you have the `telemetry-e2e` Helm chart available in your chart repository or Helm hub for Pulumi to fetch and install it on your Kubernetes cluster. After running the Pulumi program with `pulumi up`, the Helm chart will be deployed to the specified Kubernetes cluster managed by Rancher.