Deploy the u4a-component helm chart on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Question

Pulumi · Accepted Answer

To deploy a Helm chart on an Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster, you generally need to take the following steps:

Create an AKS cluster or use an existing one.
Configure your local machine to communicate with the AKS cluster (typically via kubectl).
Ensure Helm is installed on your local machine.
Add the Helm repository that contains the u4a-component chart.
Install the u4a-component chart using Helm.

Since we are focusing on Pulumi to automate this process, I will show you how to:

Provision an AKS cluster in Azure using Pulumi's azure-native package.
Deploy the u4a-component Helm chart to the created AKS cluster using Pulumi's kubernetes package.

Here's a Pulumi program written in TypeScript that creates an AKS cluster and deploys a Helm chart to it:

import * as pulumi from "@pulumi/pulumi";
import * as azure_native from "@pulumi/azure-native";
import * as kubernetes from "@pulumi/kubernetes";

// Replace these variables with actual values or retrieve them from configuration
const environment = "dev";
const location = "WestUS";
const resourceGroupName = `aks-rg-${environment}`;
const aksClusterName = `aks-cluster-${environment}`;

// Create an Azure Resource Group if it doesn't exist
const resourceGroup = new azure_native.resources.ResourceGroup(resourceGroupName, {
    location,
});

// Create an Azure AD application for the AKS cluster
const adApp = new azure_native.graphrbac.Application(`aks-app-${environment}`, {
    displayName: `aksApp${environment}`,
});

// Create a service principal for the Azure AD application
const adSp = new azure_native.graphrbac.ServicePrincipal(`aks-sp-${environment}`, {
    applicationId: adApp.applicationId,
});

// Create the AKS cluster
const aksCluster = new azure_native.containerservice.ManagedCluster(aksClusterName, {
    resourceGroupName: resourceGroup.name,
    location,
    agentPoolProfiles: [{ name: "agentpool", count: 2, vmSize: "Standard_DS2_v2" }],
    dnsPrefix: `${environment}-aks`,
    linuxProfile: {
        adminUsername: "aksuser",
        ssh: {
            publicKeys: [{
                keyData: "ssh-rsa ...", // replace with your SSH public key
            }],
        },
    },
    servicePrincipalProfile: {
        clientId: adApp.applicationId,
        secret: "<client-secret>", // specify the client secret
    },
    // Enable RBAC
    enableRBAC: true,
});

// Export the Kubeconfig
export const kubeconfig = pulumi.
    all([aksCluster.name, resourceGroup.name]).
    apply(([clusterName, rgName]) => {
        return aksCluster.name.apply(name => {
            const creds = pulumi.all([rgName, name]).apply(([rg, cluster]) =>
                azure_native.containerservice.listManagedClusterUserCredentials({
                    resourceGroupName: rg,
                    resourceName: cluster,
                })
            );
            return creds.kubeconfigs[0].value.apply(enc =>
                Buffer.from(enc, 'base64').toString()
            );
        });
    });

// Create a Kubernetes provider instance using the generated kubeconfig
const k8sProvider = new kubernetes.Provider(`k8sprovider-${environment}`, {
    kubeconfig: kubeconfig,
});

// Deploy the `u4a-component` Helm chart
const u4aComponentChart = new kubernetes.helm.v3.Chart(`u4a-component-chart-${environment}`, {
    chart: "u4a-component",
    version: "1.2.3", // specify the chart version
    fetchOpts: {
        repo: "https://example.com/helm-charts", // specify the Helm chart repository URL
    },
}, { provider: k8sProvider });

// Export the Kubernetes provider's kubeconfig
export const k8skubeconfig = k8sProvider.kubeconfig;

This program performs the following steps:

It starts by importing dependencies, which include Pulumi SDK, the Azure Native Pulumi package for working with Azure resources, and the Kubernetes Pulumi package for deploying Helm charts.
Next, it creates a new resource group specific to our environment (in this case, dev).
An Azure AD application and service principal for AKS are created. These are used by AKS for interactions with other Azure resources.
Then it defines an AKS cluster with a default node pool. Note that you should supply your own SSH key and client secret.
It exports the cluster's kubeconfig, which is required for configuring the Kubernetes client (kubectl) to interact with the AKS cluster.
A Kubernetes provider is set up with the exported kubeconfig. This provider is used by Pulumi to communicate with the AKS cluster.
Finally, it uses the Helm (v3) component in Pulumi to deploy the u4a-component Helm chart to the AKS cluster, specifying the chart version and Helm repository.
It exports a kubeconfig from the Kubernetes provider, if you need to interact with your AKS cluster using kubectl directly.

To use this Pulumi program:

Replace <client-secret> and the SSH public key data with your own.
If the u4a-component Helm chart is hosted at a different location, update the repository URL.
You might also want to customize the AKS cluster parameters such as its name, node size, and count per your requirements.
Run pulumi up to deploy these resources. Pulumi will automatically handle the dependency chaining.

Make sure you have Azure CLI and Pulumi CLI installed and logged in.