Deploy the contour-operator helm chart on Rancher

Question

Pulumi · Accepted Answer

To deploy the Contour Operator helm chart on a Kubernetes cluster managed by Rancher, you will need to perform several steps:

1. **Set up your Rancher Cluster**: Ensure you have a Kubernetes cluster imported into Rancher and you have access to it.
2. **Add a Catalog to Rancher**: You need to have a catalog that includes the Contour Operator helm chart. If it's not present in the default catalogs, you might need to add a custom catalog that contains the Contour Operator.
3. **Deploy the Helm Chart using Pulumi**: Once you have the catalog set up, you will write a Pulumi program to deploy the Contour Operator helm chart on the Kubernetes cluster managed by Rancher.

Below is a Pulumi TypeScript program that demonstrates how to add a custom catalog to your Rancher server and how to deploy a helm chart from that catalog to your Kubernetes cluster. This assumes you have already set up the Pulumi CLI, and you are logged into the Rancher server using `kubectl`.

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

// Replace these variables with the appropriate values for your Rancher setup
const rancherClusterId = 'your-rancher-cluster-id';
const helmChartName = 'contour';
const helmChartVersion = 'x.y.z'; // specify the chart version you want to deploy
const helmChartRepo = 'your-helm-chart-repository-url'; // the URL of the helm repo that hosts the Contour chart

// Create a Catalog. If your catalog with the Contour chart already exists, skip this step.
const catalog = new rancher2.CatalogV2("contour-catalog", {
    clusterId: rancherClusterId,
    url: helmChartRepo,
    // Add additional configuration if needed, e.g., custom CA, etc.
});

// As a prerequisite, make sure the `contour` namespace exists in your cluster.
const namespace = new k8s.core.v1.Namespace("contour-namespace", {
    metadata: {
        name: "contour", // The namespace in which to deploy Contour
    },
}, { provider: rancherClusterId }); // Provide your configured Kubernetes provider or the default one used by Pulumi.

// Deploy the Contour Operator helm chart.
const contourOperatorRelease = new k8s.helm.v3.Chart("contour-operator", {
    chart: helmChartName,
    version: helmChartVersion,
    fetchOpts: {
        repo: helmChartRepo,
    },
    namespace: namespace.metadata.name,
    // You can provide additional configuration here.
}, { provider: rancherClusterId }); // Provide your configured Kubernetes provider or the default one used by Pulumi.

// Export the endpoint of the Contour ingress controller if needed.
// This can vary based on how contour is set up and should be customized accordingly.
export const contourIngressEndpoint = pulumi.interpolate`http://${contourOperatorRelease.status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].hostname}`;

```

This program completes the following:

- Imports the Rancher 2 and Kubernetes Pulumi SDKs, which are required for interacting with a Rancher-managed Kubernetes cluster and deploying resources.
- Sets up variables with placeholder values that you'll need to replace with actual data from your environment.
- Optionally creates a `CatalogV2` resource in Rancher, which points to your Helm chart repository where the Contour chart is located, if it's not in the existing default catalogs.
- Creates a Kubernetes namespace `contour-namespace` where the Contour components will be deployed. You should have a namespace dedicated to Contour to isolate its resources.
- Deploys the Contour Operator using a `Chart` resource from the `@pulumi/kubernetes` package. This is the Helm chart that will install Contour in the specified namespace.
- Exports an endpoint as an example of how you can obtain information from the deployment, such as the address of the ingress that Contour sets up.

Before you run `pulumi up` to deploy this program, make sure to replace placeholder values like `'your-rancher-cluster-id'`, `'x.y.z'`, and `'your-helm-chart-repository-url'` with the actual values from your environment.

Keep in mind that deploying Contour to a Kubernetes cluster via Pulumi and Rancher assumes that you have permissions to manage resources in the Rancher cluster and that you have knowledge about Helm chart customization to properly configure Contour for your specific use case.