Deploy the nginx-logging-cw-demo helm chart on Rancher

Question

Pulumi · Accepted Answer

Deploying a Helm chart on Rancher involves a few steps:

1. **Provisioning a Kubernetes cluster**: Before deploying an application using Helm charts, you need a Kubernetes cluster managed by Rancher. You can provision a cluster within Rancher using providers such as AWS, GCP, Azure, or others.

2. **Installing Rancher**: You should have a running Rancher instance to manage Kubernetes clusters and deploy applications.

3. **Installing Helm**: Helm is a package manager for Kubernetes that allows you to define, install, and upgrade Kubernetes applications. Rancher incorporates Helm as part of its App Catalog feature.

4. **Deploying the Helm chart**: Once you have a Kubernetes cluster and Helm installed, you can deploy applications packaged as Helm charts.

Below is a Pulumi program written in TypeScript that illustrates how you could deploy a Helm chart on a Kubernetes cluster managed by Rancher. This is more of a hypothetical program as Pulumi doesn't provide direct integration with Rancher for Helm chart deployment. In a real-world scenario, after the cluster is provisioned with Pulumi, you would use Rancher's web interface or CLI tool to deploy the Helm chart.

The program will:

- Create a Kubernetes cluster inside Rancher using the `rancher2` Pulumi provider.
- Simulate Helm chart deployment by using the Kubernetes provider to illustrate how you could deploy a chart if you were deploying directly to the cluster.

Please ensure you have the necessary Pulumi and provider configuration in place such as appropriate credentials before running this program.

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

// Step 1: Provision a Kubernetes cluster managed by Rancher
// This example creates a cluster named "demo-cluster" using Rancher's node driver for Amazon EC2
const cluster = new rancher2.Cluster("demo-cluster", {
    name: "demo-cluster",
    rkeConfig: {
        kubernetesVersion: "v1.20.9-rancher1-1",
        network: {
            plugin: "canal",
        },
        nodes: [
            {
                address: "18.232.111.222", // Replace with your node's public IP
                user: "ubuntu", // User that has SSH access to the node
                role: ["etcd", "controlplane", "worker"],
                sshKey: "<YOUR_NODE_SSH_PRIVATE_KEY>", // SSH Private Key for user
            },
        ],
    },
});

// Step 2: Assuming Rancher is already installed, we will not cover this step in code.
// Rancher server would have typically been set up separately.

// Step 3: Install Helm. In Rancher, Helm is already available as part of the App Catalog.
// This step is also not needed in the code, but you would typically do this with the Helm CLI or via Rancher UI.

// Step 4: Deploy the nginx-logging-cw-demo Helm chart
// Assuming our cluster is up and running and Helm is installed, let's deploy a chart.
// In a real-world scenario, you would use Rancher's catalog app feature. 
// Here we simulate that using Pulumi's Kubernetes provider to apply a chart.
const nginxLoggingChart = new k8s.helm.v3.Chart("nginx-logging-cw-demo", {
    chart: "nginx",
    version: "1.12.0",
    namespace: "default", // Specify your target namespace
    fetchOpts: {
        repo: "https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami", // or the repository hosting your Helm chart
    },
    // Define the values for the Helm chart. These would be specific to the nginx-logging-cw-demo chart.
    values: {
        // Insert the values required by the chart here...
    },
}, { provider: cluster }); // Pass Rancher managed cluster provider

// Export the cluster's kubeconfig for further interaction with the cluster if needed
export const kubeconfig = cluster.kubeConfig;
```

This program shows the overall idea of defining Rancher resources with Pulumi, including a Kubernetes cluster. For deploying Helm charts within Rancher's UI or via Rancher's CLI, refer to the official [Rancher documentation](https://rancher.com/docs/rancher/v2.x/en/). The actual chart values and repository URL must be modified to suit the `nginx-logging-cw-demo` Helm chart in question.

Remember, this script expects you to fill in specific values where placeholders are indicated, and would be run after you have the Rancher infrastructure set up.

Pulumi's approach to infrastructure as code allows for provisioning of infrastructure components declaratively, making it suitable for creating complex cloud architectures and orchestrating deployment tasks.