Deploy the tyk-operator helm chart on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)

Question

Pulumi · Accepted Answer

To deploy the Tyk Operator on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) using Pulumi, you'll need to follow these steps:

1. **Set up a GKE cluster**: This will be your Kubernetes environment where the Tyk Operator will run.
2. **Install the Helm chart**: With Helm, you'll deploy the Tyk Operator Helm chart to the GKE cluster.

Let's step through these tasks using Pulumi and TypeScript.

Firstly, make sure you have Pulumi installed, and you are authenticated with Google Cloud. Additionally, you should have `kubectl` and `helm` CLI tools installed to interact with your Kubernetes cluster and manage Helm charts.

### 1. Set Up GKE Cluster

To create a GKE cluster, we'll use the `@pulumi/gcp` package. You'll need to define the GKE cluster resource within your Pulumi program. Here's how you could do it:

```typescript
import * as gcp from "@pulumi/gcp";

// Create a GKE cluster
const cluster = new gcp.container.Cluster("tyk-operator-cluster", {
    initialNodeCount: 2,
    nodeVersion: "latest",
    minMasterVersion: "latest",
    nodeConfig: {
        preemptible: false,
        machineType: "n1-standard-1",
        oauthScopes: [
            "https://www.googleapis.com/auth/compute",
            "https://www.googleapis.com/auth/devstorage.read_only",
            "https://www.googleapis.com/auth/logging.write",
            "https://www.googleapis.com/auth/monitoring",
        ],
    },
});

// Export the Kubeconfig so that 'kubectl' can connect to the new Kubernetes cluster
export const kubeconfig = cluster.masterAuth.apply(masterAuth => {
    const context = `${gcp.config.project}_${gcp.config.zone}_${cluster.name}`;
    return `apiVersion: v1
clusters:
- cluster:
    certificate-authority-data: ${masterAuth.clusterCaCertificate}
    server: https://${masterAuth.endpoint}
  name: ${context}
contexts:
- context:
    cluster: ${context}
    user: ${context}
  name: ${context}
current-context: ${context}
kind: Config
preferences: {}
users:
- name: ${context}
  user:
    auth-provider:
      config:
        cmd-args: config config-helper --format=json
        cmd-path: gcloud
        expiry-key: '{.credential.token_expiry}'
        token-key: '{.credential.access_token}'
      name: gcp
`;
});

// Use the new Kubernetes cluster as the provider for subsequent resources
const k8sProvider = new kubernetes.Provider("k8sProvider", {
    kubeconfig: kubeconfig,
});
```

Here's what's happening in this code:

- We're creating a basic GKE cluster named `tyk-operator-cluster` with two nodes.
- The `kubeconfig` is being exported so that you can interact with the cluster using `kubectl`.
- Finally, we are initializing a Pulumi Kubernetes provider which allows Pulumi to deploy Kubernetes resources to our newly created GKE cluster.

### 2. Install the Helm Chart

Next, we'll deploy the Tyk Operator Helm chart into the cluster we've just created. Pulumi has a Helm provider available in the `@pulumi/kubernetes` package that we can use. It simplifies Helm chart management on Kubernetes clusters managed by Pulumi.

To deploy the Helm chart, you would add the following lines to your Pulumi program:

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

// Deploy the Tyk Operator Helm chart
const tykOperatorChart = new k8s.helm.v3.Chart("tyk-operator", {
    chart: "tyk-operator",
    version: "0.9", // use the version that suits your requirements
    fetchOpts:{ 
        repo: "https://helm.tyk.io/public/helm/charts/", 
    },
}, { provider: k8sProvider });

// Export the Helm chart's status
export const tykOperatorStatus = tykOperatorChart.status;
```

This snippet deploys the `tyk-operator` Helm chart to the GKE cluster. We specify the chart name, version, and the repository URL. We tell Pulumi to use our GKE cluster for this deployment by passing the Kubernetes provider we initialized earlier.

Once you have configured your `index.ts` with the code above, you can run the following commands to create the resources:

```bash
pulumi up
```

This will start the deployment process. Once completed, you should have a GKE cluster with the Tyk Operator running on it.

To inspect the Helm release or interact with your GKE cluster, you can use `kubectl` with the `kubeconfig` outputted by Pulumi:

```bash
pulumi stack output kubeconfig > kubeconfig.yaml
export KUBECONFIG=./kubeconfig.yaml
kubectl get all -n tyk-operator
```

This sets the `KUBECONFIG` environment variable to the path of the kubeconfig file that Pulumi outputs and then uses `kubectl` to get all resources in the `tyk-operator` namespace.

Remember, this program creates real resources in your GCP account and may incur costs.

This is a high-level overview and should be adjusted based on the specific requirements, the size and configuration details of your GKE cluster, and any specific configurations you want for the Tyk Operator deployment.