Deploy the pritunl-vpn helm chart on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Question

Pulumi · Accepted Answer

To deploy the Pritunl VPN Helm chart on an Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster with Pulumi and TypeScript, you'll go through a multi-step process:

1. **Set up your AKS cluster:** You'll need an existing AKS cluster or you'll have to create one using Pulumi.
2. **Install the Pritunl VPN Helm chart:** This involves using Pulumi's Helm chart resource to deploy Pritunl VPN onto your AKS cluster.

Here's how you can accomplish this:

### 1. Setting Up AKS Cluster

If you don't already have an AKS cluster, you can create one with Pulumi. I'll use the `azure-native` package because it allows us to work directly with Azure resources in a way that's consistent with other native Azure tools and frameworks.

Below is a script that defines an AKS cluster. Note that I'm simplifying configurations for brevity, but in a real-world scenario, you'll want to configure networking, security, and other details as per your requirements.

### 2. Deploying Pritunl VPN with Helm Chart

Once you have an AKS cluster, you would configure `kubectl` to communicate with it and then use Pulumi's Helm chart resource to deploy Pritunl VPN. Pulumi's standard Helm chart resource can deploy Helm charts from any source, including the official Pritunl repository.

Now, let's go to the TypeScript code that completes these steps.

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

// Step 1: Create an AKS cluster (if one doesn't exist)
const resourceGroup = new azure_native.resources.ResourceGroup("myResourceGroup");

const aksCluster = new azure_native.containerservice.ManagedCluster("myAksCluster", {
    resourceGroupName: resourceGroup.name,
    // Minimal configuration for example purposes; tune these according to your needs.
    kubernetesVersion: "1.21.9",
    // Define the properties of the default node pool.
    agentPoolProfiles: [{
        count: 2,       // Specifies the number of nodes for the pool
        vmSize: "Standard_B2s",  // Specifies the size of the VMs
        name: "nodepool1",
        mode: "System"   // Mode to differentiate between user node pools and system node pools
    }],
    dnsPrefix: "myakscluster" // A prefix for the hostnames of the cluster
});

// Export the kubeconfig
export const kubeconfig = aksCluster.kubeConfig;

// Step 2: Install Pritunl VPN Helm chart on AKS cluster

// Instantiate a Pulumi Kubernetes provider that points to the AKS cluster.
const k8sProvider = new k8s.Provider("k8sProvider", {
    kubeconfig: kubeconfig,
});

// Deploy Pritunl using the Helm Chart.
const pritunlChart = new k8s.helm.v3.Chart("pritunl-vpn", {
    chart: "pritunl",
    version: "1.0.0",  // The version number of the chart to deploy
    fetchOpts:{
        repo: "https://helm.pritunl.com/",  // The repository where the Pritunl chart is hosted
    },
}, { provider: k8sProvider });

// Export any other necessary stack information, like URLs or IPs to access Pritunl VPN.
export const pritunlServiceUrl = pritunlChart.getResourceProperty("v1/Service", "pritunl-vpn", "status").apply(status => status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].ip);

```

In the above program, we're first defining an Azure resource group and then using it as a part of the AKS cluster definition. This is achieved using the `azure_native.containerservice.ManagedCluster` class. Please ensure to use your preferred node size, count, DNS prefix, and Kubernetes version when defining your cluster.

Once you've created your AKS cluster, we set up a Pulumi Kubernetes provider that references the `kubeconfig` associated with the cluster. This provider is used to interact with your AKS cluster.

Next, we're deploying a Helm chart by creating an instance of `k8s.helm.v3.Chart`, pointing it to the official Pritunl Helm chart repository, and specifying the chart name (`pritunl`) and version.

Finally, we expose the `kubeconfig` and potentially the Pritunl service URL for direct access to the VPN service outside the cluster.

Remember to replace placeholders (like the version number) with actual values specific to your scenario. Furthermore, due to the nature of cloud resources and Helm charts, it's important to verify the current configuration options for both the AKS cluster and the Pritunl Helm chart, as these values can change over time.

Run the program with Pulumi's CLI tools to create the cluster and deploy Pritunl VPN:

```sh
pulumi up
```

Please, ensure you have Pulumi installed and configured with your Azure account before running this command.