Deploy the forklift helm chart on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

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Pulumi · Accepted Answer

In order to deploy the "forklift" Helm chart on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), we will go through a process which involves creating an AKS cluster and then deploying the chart onto it. This will be done using Pulumi, an infrastructure as code tool, which allows us to define our infrastructure in TypeScript (a typed superset of JavaScript) and apply it to a cloud provider—in this case, Azure.

Here's a step-by-step guide followed by the Pulumi program written in TypeScript:

1. **Set up Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)**: We'll first create a new AKS cluster, which is a managed Kubernetes service provided by Azure. We'll specify the necessary configurations such as the node size, the number of nodes, etc.

2. **Deploy the Helm Chart**: Once the AKS cluster is provisioned, we'll deploy the "forklift" Helm chart to the cluster. Helm helps manage Kubernetes applications through Helm charts, which are packages of pre-configured Kubernetes resources.

Below is the TypeScript program that defines the infrastructure. When you run this program with Pulumi, it will provision an AKS cluster and deploy the forklift Helm chart to it:

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

// Step 1: Create an AKS cluster.
const cluster = new azure.containerservice.KubernetesCluster("aksCluster", {
    // Specify the location, resource group, and cluster properties here.
    // ...
});

// Export the AKS cluster's kubeconfig.
export const kubeconfig = cluster.kubeConfigRaw;

// Step 2: Deploy the forklift Helm chart to the AKS cluster.
const forkliftChart = new k8s.helm.v3.Chart("forklift", {
    // When creating Helm charts, the `apiVersion`, `name`, and `version` fields are often
    // required depending on the chart's requirements.
    chart: "forklift",
    version: "0.1.0", // Use the appropriate chart version.
    fetchOpts: {
        // Specify the repository or specify the chart location here.
        // ...
    },
    // Use the `values` field to specify values needed for `forklift` chart.
    values: {
        // The values depend on the specific chart. They could be the number of replicas,
        // image versions, resource requests/limits, etc.
        // ...
    },
}, { provider: new k8s.Provider("k8sProvider", { kubeconfig: cluster.kubeConfigRaw }) });

// Export the forklift chart's resources.
export const forkliftResources = forkliftChart.resources;
```

Explanation:
- We start by importing the necessary Pulumi packages. They represent the Azure cloud (`@pulumi/azure`) and Kubernetes (`@pulumi/kubernetes`).
- We create an AKS cluster using the `azure.containerservice.KubernetesCluster` class. The specifics such as location, resource group, and detailed configurations will be dependent on your requirements and preferences. You would replace the `// ...` comments with actual property values.
- The `kubeconfig` of the cluster is exported as a stack output so it can be used to interact with the Kubernetes cluster via `kubectl`.
- We then declare a new Helm chart using `k8s.helm.v3.Chart`. The `chart` argument specifies the name of the Helm chart (`forklift`), and `version` specifies the chart version that you want to deploy.
- `fetchOpts` may include the location of the Helm chart if it's not in a public repository or additional fetch options required for your environment.
- `values` is an object that represents the settings you want to customize for the Helm chart, such as application configuration or resource requests/limits.
- We pass a new Kubernetes provider to the Helm chart that utilizes the `kubeconfig` of the newly created AKS cluster. This tells Pulumi to deploy the Helm chart in this AKS cluster.
- Lastly, we export the resources created by the forklift chart to view them as outputs from our Pulumi stack.

Before running this Pulumi program, ensure you have the Azure credentials configured on your system and the Pulumi CLI installed. After that, run `pulumi up` to create or update your cloud resources according to the definitions in this program.