Deploy the uistio helm chart on Oracle Kubernetes Engine (OKE)

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Pulumi · Accepted Answer

To deploy the Istio Helm chart on Oracle Kubernetes Engine (OKE), we will use the Pulumi Kubernetes SDK, which enables us to manage Kubernetes resources, including deploying Helm charts. The main resource we will be working with is kubernetes.helm.v3.Chart, a Pulumi class that represents a Helm chart installation in a Kubernetes cluster. Here is how the resource is defined and what it does:

kubernetes.helm.v3.Chart: Represents a Helm chart which can be applied to your Kubernetes cluster. Pulumi will manage the lifecycle of the Helm chart, just like it does with other resources.

Before deploying anything, make sure you have the following prerequisites:

Pulumi CLI installed on your local machine.
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) CLI configured with the required credentials and permissions.
Kubernetes configuration pointing to your OKE cluster.

Assuming you have your OCI CLI configured and have connectivity to your OKE cluster, below is a TypeScript program that you can use to deploy the Istio Helm chart to your OKE cluster using Pulumi.

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

// Create a provider resource that specifies the Kubernetes cluster configuration.
const provider = new kubernetes.Provider('oke-k8s', {
    kubeconfig: '<YOUR_KUBECONFIG>',
    // You can also load the kubeconfig from a file like this:
    // kubeconfig: fs.readFileSync('/path/to/your/kubeconfig/file.yaml').toString(),
});

// Deploy the Istio Helm chart using the Kubernetes provider.
const istio = new kubernetes.helm.v3.Chart('istio', {
    // Assuming 'istio' is the name of the chart in the Helm repository
    chart: 'istio',
    // Add the Helm repository that contains the Istio chart if required.
    fetchOpts: { 
        repo: 'https://helm.istio.io/'
    },
    // Specify the namespace where you want to deploy the chart,
    // or remove it to use the default namespace.
    namespace: 'istio-system', 
    // You can customize the Istio installation by passing values to the `values` property
    // For example, to enable Istio's default profile, set the `profile` value as shown below.
    values: {
        profile: 'default'
    },
}, { provider });

// Export the resources created
export const istioName = istio.metadata.apply(m => m.name);

Let's walk through the code:

First, we import the necessary modules from Pulumi's SDK so that we can work with Kubernetes resources.
We create a Kubernetes provider indicating Pulumi which cluster to interact with by providing the kubeconfig data (usually you get this from when you configured your kubectl to interact with your OKE cluster).
Then we define the istio Helm chart resource. We give it a name, 'istio', and pass chart-specific configuration, like the chart name, the Helm repository URL, a namespace, and values for customization. Here I assumed 'istio' as the chart name and used the official Istio Helm repository.
The values are parameters that correspond to the variable values in the Helm chart, which can be adjusted to customize your Istio installation.
Finally, we export the chart name istioName, making it obtainable from the Pulumi stack outputs for reference.

After you copy this program into a index.ts file, you can deploy your infrastructure by running:

pulumi up

This command will prompt you to review the changes and confirm them. After confirmation, Pulumi will handle the rest, deploying the Istio Helm chart to your OKE cluster. This will output the name of the Istio deployment once completed. You can see this output by running:

pulumi stack output istioName

Please remember to replace <YOUR_KUBECONFIG> with the actual kubeconfig data of your Oracle Kubernetes Engine cluster. If you have that configuration stored in a file, you can use the commented section to read the config directly from a file path.

By following these steps and using this program, you should be able to deploy the Istio Helm chart to your OKE cluster successfully.