Deploy the stunnel helm chart on Kubernetes

Question

Pulumi · Accepted Answer

To deploy the `stunnel` Helm chart on Kubernetes using Pulumi, we'll take advantage of Pulumi's Kubernetes provider. The Kubernetes provider in Pulumi allows us to manage Kubernetes resources using familiar programming languages such as TypeScript.

Here, I'll guide you through deploying the `stunnel` Helm chart to a Kubernetes cluster using Pulumi and TypeScript. It's important to note that you should have Pulumi installed and configured with your Kubernetes cluster, and Helm should be initialized in your cluster if you are using Helm 2.x version.

The primary resource we'll use is `Chart`, which is an abstraction designed to facilitate Helm chart deployments into a Kubernetes cluster.

#### Step-by-step Guide

1. **Setup Pulumi Kubernetes Provider**

First, ensure you have access to a Kubernetes cluster via `kubectl` and your kubeconfig is correctly set up. This kubeconfig will be used by Pulumi to deploy resources to your cluster.

2. **Define the Helm Chart Resource**

The Pulumi resource we'll use is `kubernetes.helm.v3.Chart`. This Pulumi resource corresponds to a Helm chart that we want to deploy to our cluster.

3. **Customize Helm Chart Deployments**

Since Helm charts often require customization specific to an environment or deployment specifics, we can specify values in the `values` attribute of the resource to override defaults from the Helm chart.

4. **Deploy the Chart**

With the Pulumi program written, you can deploy the chart using the `pulumi up` command. Pulumi will show you a preview of the resources that will be created and, once accepted, will proceed to deploy the `stunnel` Helm chart to your configured Kubernetes cluster.

Now, let's see the Pulumi TypeScript program that accomplishes this:

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

// The name and version of the Helm chart you want to deploy.
// These will change depending on the specific chart you are deploying.
const chartName = "stunnel";
const chartVersion = "1.0.0"; // replace with the desired version

// Optionally, you can specify the repository URL for the Helm chart.
// This is needed if the chart is not in the stable repository.
const chartRepo = "http://example.com/helm-charts"; // replace with the actual repository URL

// Create an instance of the Helm chart.
// `kubernetes.helm.v3.Chart` is responsible for fetching the Helm chart from the repository
// and deploying it into the Kubernetes cluster with the specified configuration.
const stunnelChart = new k8s.helm.v3.Chart("stunnel-chart", {
    chart: chartName,
    version: chartVersion,
    fetchOpts: {
        repo: chartRepo,
    },
    // If you have custom values to specify for your Helm chart deployment,
    // you can add them in the `values` property here.
    values: {
        // Example of custom values:
        // image: {
        //     repository: "docker.io/stunnel",
        //     tag: "latest",
        // },
        // ... more custom values
    },
});

// Export relevant resources. For instance, the Helm chart might create a Service that you want to access.
// You should refer to the Helm chart's documentation or values file to find out what resources it creates and their names.
export const serviceUrl = stunnelChart.getResourceProperty("v1/Service", "stunnel-service", "status").apply(s => `http://${s.loadBalancer.ingress[0].ip}`);

```

**Explanation of the Program:**

- We import the Pulumi Kubernetes package that allows interaction with Kubernetes resources.
- We define the name and version of the Helm chart we wish to deploy. These need to be changed depending on the specific Helm chart you want to deploy and the chart repository URL if it is not a part of the default Helm repositories.
- We use `kubernetes.helm.v3.Chart` to create a Helm `Chart` resource. This will instruct Pulumi to deploy the Helm chart to your cluster.
- We specify `values` to configure our Helm chart deployment, if needed. These are key-value pairs corresponding to the configuration options provided by the Helm chart.
- We export the URL of the service created by the Helm chart if it is designed to be accessed publicly via a load balancer ingress. This URL can be used to interact with the deployed application.

Once you write and run this Pulumi program with `pulumi up`, it will deploy the specified `stunnel` Helm chart to your Kubernetes cluster, following the configuration specified in the `values`.

Remember to replace the `chartVersion`, `chartRepo`, and `values` with appropriate values for your specific `stunnel` Helm chart deployment. If the 'stunnel' chart requires additional setup like creating pre-requisites (such as ConfigMaps, Secrets, Persistent Volumes, etc.), you may need to define and manage those resources as well within your Pulumi program before deploying the chart.