Deploy the kimai-helmchart helm chart on Kubernetes

Question

Pulumi · Accepted Answer

To deploy a Helm chart on Kubernetes using Pulumi, you will use the Chart resource from Pulumi's Kubernetes provider. The Chart resource allows you to specify the chart to be deployed, the repository where the chart is located, and any custom values you wish to provide for the chart's configuration.

Before starting, you should have the following prerequisites ready:

Pulumi CLI installed and configured for use.
Kubectl configured to communicate with your Kubernetes cluster.
Helm command-line tool if you wish to customize the Helm chart or understand its content outside of Pulumi.
Access to Kubernetes cluster where you can deploy resources.

Below is a TypeScript program that demonstrates how to deploy the "kimai" Helm chart to a Kubernetes cluster. Kimai is a free and open-source time tracking software that you would typically deploy for use within your organization. Assuming that the helm chart for Kimai is available in a Helm repository, you can deploy it using the code below.

Please replace the <REPO_URL> with the actual URL of the Helm repository where the "kimai-helmchart" is located and <NAMESPACE> with the Kubernetes namespace you wish to deploy to.

import * as pulumi from "@pulumi/pulumi";
import * as kubernetes from "@pulumi/kubernetes";

const chartName = "kimai";
const chartVersion = "x.y.z"; // Replace with the actual chart version you want to deploy
const namespace = "<NAMESPACE>"; // Replace with the target Kubernetes namespace
const repoUrl = "<REPO_URL>"; // Replace with the URL of the Helm repository hosting the kimai chart

const kimaiChart = new kubernetes.helm.v3.Chart(chartName, {
    chart: chartName,
    version: chartVersion,
    namespace: namespace,
    fetchOpts: {
        repo: repoUrl,
    },
    // Specify custom values by uncommenting the following line and adding the desired values
    // values: {},
});

// Export the base URL so that you can access the deployed application
export const kimaiBaseUrl = kimaiChart.getResourceProperty("v1/Service", `${namespace}/${chartName}`, "status").apply(status => {
    if (status.loadBalancer?.ingress) {
        const ingress = status.loadBalancer.ingress[0];
        return ingress.hostname || ingress.ip;
    }
});

In this code, we import the @pulumi/pulumi and @pulumi/kubernetes packages. We first define the chart name, chart version, target namespace, and repository URL. We then create an instance of the Chart provided by Pulumi’s Kubernetes Helm package to deploy the kimai chart from the specified repository to the Kubernetes cluster.

Optionally, if there are custom configurations that you need to apply to the chart, you can pass them via the values field as an object.

Finally, the program exports the base URL for the Kimai application, which is useful for accessing the application once it's deployed. The exported URL retrieves the ingress details from the Kubernetes service created by the Helm chart deployment, which is used for external access to the application.

Make sure you have authenticated access to your Kubernetes cluster and have set the context for kubectl correctly so that Pulumi can deploy resources to the right cluster.

Remember that Helm charts often require specific configurations and values to be set based on the environment and custom requirements. The placeholder for values can be used to provide such configurations, and you would typically construct this based on the Kimai Helm chart's documentation or values.yaml file.