Deploy the best-practice-policies helm chart on Rancher

Question

Pulumi · Accepted Answer

To deploy the best-practice-policies helm chart on a Rancher-managed Kubernetes cluster using Pulumi, you will need to interact with the Rancher2 provider. The provider allows you to manage resources within a Rancher v2.x installation, such as deploying Helm charts. Below, I will guide you through a program that leverages Pulumi and the Rancher2 provider to deploy a Helm chart onto a Rancher cluster.

Firstly, you need to set up the Rancher provider. Ensure that you have installed the Pulumi CLI, and you are logged in to a Pulumi backend where your state will be stored. You should also have access to a Rancher server with appropriate credentials.

The program will consist of these steps:

Setting up the Pulumi provider for Rancher: Before you can deploy any resources to Rancher, you need to configure the provider with the necessary credentials and endpoint information for your Rancher server.
Defining the Rancher Cluster: Though typically your Rancher cluster would already exist, for completeness, I'll show you how you might define a cluster. In a real-world scenario, you would likely omit this and use an existing cluster.
Deploying the Helm Chart: Finally, you will define a resource to deploy a Helm chart on Rancher. Pulumi allows deploying Helm charts into Kubernetes clusters managed by Rancher directly.

Here is a TypeScript program that shows how to do this.

import * as pulumi from "@pulumi/pulumi";
import * as rancher2 from "@pulumi/rancher2";

// Initialize Pulumi program
async function main() {
    // Step 1: Configure Rancher provider
    // Specify the Rancher API endpoint and access credentials.
    // These should be set outside the program for security reasons, perhaps as environment variables.
    const rancherProvider = new rancher2.Provider("rancher", {
        apiUrl: "https://<RANCHER_API_ENDPOINT>",
        accessKey: "<RANCHER_ACCESS_KEY>",
        secretKey: "<RANCHER_SECRET_KEY>",
    });

    // Step 2: Define the Rancher Cluster (if not already existing)
    // This is an example definition of a Rancher cluster.
    // Replace it with your actual existing Rancher cluster details or provide your own configuration.
    const cluster = new rancher2.Cluster("cluster", {
        name: "pulumi-cluster",
        // ... Other necessary cluster configurations go here
    }, { provider: rancherProvider });

    // Step 3: Deploy the Helm Chart onto the cluster
    // Deploy the `best-practice-policies` Helm chart from the desired repository into the specified Rancher cluster.
    const helmChart = new rancher2.AppV2("best-practice-policies", {
        clusterId: cluster.id,
        namespace: "<TARGET_NAMESPACE>",   // Replace with the namespace where you want to install the chart.
        repoName: "best-practice-repo",   // Replace with the name of the Helm chart repository if different.
        chartName: "best-practice-policies",
        chartVersion: "1.0.0",            // Replace with the desired chart version.
        // Values for the Helm chart can be provided here.
        values: `
          policy:
            option1: value1
            option2: value2
          # ... Further custom values
        `,
    }, { provider: rancherProvider });

    // Export the name of the cluster
    pulumi.export("clusterName", cluster.name);
    // You could optionally export the Helm chart's release name
    pulumi.export("helmReleaseName", helmChart.name);
}

main();

Explanation:

We import both pulumi and rancher2 modules to interact with the Pulumi engine and Rancher2 provider.
The main function encapsulates the deployment sequence and allows us to use async/await where necessary.
We set up the rancherProvider with the necessary API details. Replace https://<RANCHER_API_ENDPOINT>, <RANCHER_ACCESS_KEY>, and <RANCHER_SECRET_KEY> with your Rancher API URL and access credentials.
The Cluster resource defines a Rancher cluster. Usually, this will precede the Helm chart deployment, as clusters are often long-lived and managed separately from applications.
AppV2 is the resource representing a Helm chart deployment in Rancher Pulumi provider. We point to the cluster's ID, specify the namespace for the deployment, and provide the chart's name and other details.

The values YAML can be inserted directly as a string, but a better practice would be to manage these values in separate files or variables for better maintainability.

Finally, we export some of the outputs, such as the cluster's name and Helm release name.

Remember, to successfully run this Pulumi program, you must replace placeholders with your actual values, and ensure that you have the appropriate permissions to create resources within your Rancher and Kubernetes environments.