Deploy the desktop-vnc helm chart on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Question

Pulumi · Accepted Answer

To deploy a Helm chart on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) using Pulumi, you would typically follow these steps:

1. **Set Up Azure Kubernetes Service**: Begin by provisioning an AKS cluster where your applications will be deployed.

2. **Install the Pulumi Kubernetes Provider**: This provider allows you to work with Kubernetes resources, including deploying Helm charts.

3. **Deploy the Helm Chart**: Use Pulumi's Kubernetes provider to deploy the `desktop-vnc` Helm chart to your AKS cluster.

Below is a detailed Pulumi program written in TypeScript that accomplishes this. It assumes that you have already set up and logged into Azure and have installed the necessary Pulumi CLI and required plugins. You should also have Helm and the Kubernetes command line tool (`kubectl`) installed on your machine.

### Detailed Explanation

#### Part 1: Setting Up AKS

First, we need to create an AKS cluster. To do this, we use the `KubernetesCluster` resource from the `azure.containerservice` Pulumi package. We specify details like node count, node size, and the Kubernetes version.

#### Part 2: Kubernetes Provider Configuration

After the cluster is created, we need to configure the Kubernetes provider for Pulumi. This provider connects to the AKS cluster using the credentials provided by Azure, enabling us to deploy resources into the cluster.

#### Part 3: Deploying the Helm Chart

Finally, we deploy the `desktop-vnc` Helm chart. To do this, we use the `Chart` class from the `@pulumi/kubernetes/helm/v3` package, providing it with the name of the chart and configuration details such as the repository where the chart is located. If the chart requires specific values, they can be supplied through the `values` parameter.

### Pulumi Program

Here's the Pulumi program that automates this process:

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

// Step 1: Create an AKS cluster
const resourceGroupName = new azure.core.ResourceGroup("myResourceGroup", { location: "WestUS" });

const aksCluster = new azure.containerservice.KubernetesCluster("myAksCluster", {
    // Use azure-native when using real Azure provider, this example uses classic provider
    resourceGroupName: resourceGroupName.name,
    defaultNodePool: {
        name: "aksagentpool",
        nodeCount: 2,
        vmSize: "Standard_DS2_v2",
    },
    dnsPrefix: "mykube",
    identity: {
        type: "SystemAssigned",
    },
});

// Step 2: Set up the Pulumi Kubernetes Provider to deploy helm charts to the AKS cluster.
const k8sProvider = new k8s.Provider('k8sProvider', {
    kubeconfig: aksCluster.kubeConfigRaw,
});

// Step 3: Deploy the desktop-vnc helm chart
const chart = new k8s.helm.v3.Chart('desktop-vnc-chart', {
    chart: 'desktop-vnc',
    // The repository hosting the desktop-vnc Helm chart.
    fetchOpts: {
        repo: 'http://myhelmrepo.org/charts',
    },
    // Specify the values file or individual values for chart customizations.
    values: {
        // Example value. Each chart has unique values you can configure.
        service: {
            type: 'LoadBalancer',
        }
    },
}, { provider: k8sProvider });

// Export the Cluster's kubeconfig.
export const kubeConfig = aksCluster.kubeConfigRaw;
```

The `values` field in the helm chart deployment is hypothetical and stands in for whatever configuration is needed to be passed to your particular helm chart.

Please refer to the [Pulumi Azure documentation](https://www.pulumi.com/docs/intro/cloud-providers/azure/) for setting up Pulumi with Azure, and the [Pulumi Kubernetes documentation](https://www.pulumi.com/docs/intro/cloud-providers/kubernetes/) for specific Pulumi Kubernetes configurations.

Once you run this Pulumi program with `pulumi up`, it will provision an AKS cluster and deploy the `desktop-vnc` Helm chart onto it. Please ensure that you replace `'http://myhelmrepo.org/charts'` with the URL of the actual repository that hosts the `desktop-vnc` chart. Additionally, you would replace the placeholder values with the actual values required by the `desktop-vnc` chart.