Deploy the whitelist helm chart on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Question

Pulumi · Accepted Answer

To deploy a Helm chart on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), you need to perform a series of steps which include creating an AKS cluster, setting up a Helm chart, and deploying that chart to your AKS cluster. Below is a detailed explanation followed by a TypeScript program that achieves this task using Pulumi.

Firstly, you need to create an AKS cluster, which is a managed Kubernetes service hosted on Azure. It reduces the complexity of deploying and managing Kubernetes and provides tools to help build and scale your applications. In this program, we will use the `azure-native.containerservice.ManagedCluster` resource to create an AKS cluster. You can find the documentation for this resource [here](https://www.pulumi.com/registry/packages/azure-native/api-docs/containerservice/managedcluster/).

Once you have an AKS cluster, you'll use the `kubernetes.helm.v3.Chart` class from Pulumi's Kubernetes provider to deploy your Helm chart. This class is a high-level API that allows you to express Helm Chart deployment in code. This chart could be either one you have created yourself or one that is available in a public/private Helm repository. It's worth noting that you can customize your chart deployment by modifying the `values` object, which represents the Helm values.yaml file. The documentation for this class can be found [here](https://www.pulumi.com/registry/packages/kubernetes/api-docs/helm/v3/chart/).

Now, let's move to the TypeScript program that demonstrates these steps:

```typescript
import * as azure from '@pulumi/azure-native';
import * as pulumi from '@pulumi/pulumi';
import * as k8s from '@pulumi/kubernetes';

// Step 1: Create an AKS cluster
const aksCluster = new azure.containerservice.ManagedCluster("aksCluster", {
    resourceGroupName: "myResourceGroup",
    // Define other properties as necessary, including agent pool profiles,
    // network profiles, etc.
});

// Export the AKS cluster's kubeconfig
export const kubeconfig = aksCluster.kubeConfig.apply((c) => Buffer.from(c, 'base64').toString());

// Step 2: Setup the Helm chart on AKS, assuming the Helm chart is available in a public repo
const whitelistHelmChart = new k8s.helm.v3.Chart("whitelistHelmChart", {
    // Ensure we use the right kubeconfig to connect to our AKS cluster
    kubeconfig: kubeconfig,
    chart: "whitelist",
    version: "1.0.0", // Replace with the desired chart version
    fetchOpts: {
        repo: "http://your-helm-chart-repository/", // Replace with the Helm chart's repository URL
    },
    // You can set resource values here to configure your Helm chart as required
    values: {
        // Key-value pairs go here to customize the helm chart
        // Example:
        // service: {
        //     type: "LoadBalancer",
        // },
    },
    // Define other properties such as namespace, transformation functions, etc.
}, { provider: clusterProvider });

// Export the endpoint of the service that the Helm chart provides (if applicable)
export const helmChartEndpoint = whitelistHelmChart.getResourceProperty("v1/Service", "whitelist-service", "status").apply(s => s.loadBalancer.ingress[0].ip);
```

This program does the following:

1. Creates an Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster with a specified resource group and additional properties that you may need to define according to your requirements, such as node pool profile and network profile.
   
2. Exports the Kubeconfig of the AKS cluster. This is the configuration needed by Kubernetes clients (like kubectl) to connect to your cluster.

3. Deploys a Helm chart named "whitelist" using the Kubernetes provider. In the `chart` property, you must specify the name of your Helm chart (in this case, "whitelist"). You'll also need to define the version and repository by replacing placeholder values with those of the actual chart you wish to deploy.
   
4. Optionally exports the public IP endpoint of a LoadBalancer service if your Helm chart defines one. This lets you access the service deployed by the Helm chart from outside the cluster.

Remember to replace placeholders like `"myResourceGroup"`, `"http://your-helm-chart-repository/"`, `"whitelist-service"`, and chart values with real values that pertain to your deployment.

After you've written your code, to deploy it using Pulumi, run `pulumi up`. This command will execute the code, providing you with an output showing what resources will be created. If everything looks good, you can then confirm the deployment, and Pulumi will provision the resources as described in your code.