Deploy the min-flask helm chart on AWS EKS

Question

Pulumi · Accepted Answer

In this program, we will deploy a Flask application to AWS EKS using a Helm chart. The Flask application will be packaged in a Helm chart called `min-flask`. We'll use Pulumi with AWS and Kubernetes providers to provision an EKS cluster and deploy our application onto it.

Here's a step-by-step breakdown of what we're going to do:

1. **Provision an EKS Cluster**: We will create an Amazon EKS cluster. This Kubernetes cluster will run on AWS and it's where our application will be deployed.
   
2. **Deploy the Flask Application**: Once the EKS cluster is up and running, we will deploy the `min-flask` Helm chart to this cluster. This will set up the Flask application in a Kubernetes environment.

3. **Expose the Application**: The Flask application will need to be exposed so that it's accessible from the internet. Typically, you do this with a Kubernetes service of type LoadBalancer or by creating an Ingress. In this example, we'll assume that our Helm chart will include a service definition to expose the app.

We are going to use the following resources from Pulumi:

- `eks.Cluster`: This Pulumi package will allow us to create and manage an AWS EKS cluster.
- `kubernetes.helm.v3.Chart`: This Pulumi resource enables us to deploy Helm charts onto a Kubernetes cluster.

First, you need to have Pulumi installed and AWS access configured properly. Assuming you have completed these prerequisites, let's set up the program.

### Detailed Explanation of the Program:

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

// Create an EKS cluster.
const cluster = new eks.Cluster("my-cluster", {
    instanceType: "t2.medium",
    desiredCapacity: 2,
    minSize: 1,
    maxSize: 3,
    storageClasses: "gp2",
    deployDashboard: false,
});

// Create a Kubernetes provider instance that uses our EKS cluster.
const provider = new k8s.Provider("k8s-provider", {
    kubeconfig: cluster.kubeconfig.apply(JSON.stringify),
});

// Deploy the min-flask Helm chart into the EKS cluster.
const flaskApp = new k8s.helm.v3.Chart("min-flask", {
    chart: "min-flask",
    version: "1.0.0",
    fetchOpts: {
        repo: "http://charts.example.com/", // Replace with the actual Helm chart repository URL
    },
}, { provider });

// Export the cluster's kubeconfig and the Flask application's service endpoint.
export const kubeconfig = cluster.kubeconfig;
export const frontend = flaskApp.getResource("v1/Service", "min-flask-min-flask").status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].hostname;
```

Let's explain some key parts of this TypeScript program:

- We start by importing the necessary Pulumi packages for EKS and Kubernetes.
- We instantiate an EKS cluster with the desired configuration, including instance types, capacity, and storage classes.
- The EKS cluster creation process will generate a `kubeconfig` file automatically, which is necessary to interact with the Kubernetes cluster.
- We then set up a Kubernetes provider, which uses the kubeconfig credentials to manage Kubernetes resources on the EKS cluster.
- Using the `kubernetes.helm.v3.Chart` resource, we deploy the `min-flask` Helm chart to the Kubernetes cluster. You need to replace the `repo` value with the URL where your Helm chart is located.
- Finally, we export the `kubeconfig` and the hostname of the Flask application's load balancer service. These are printed in the Pulumi output when the deployment is complete.

After running the program with Pulumi, it supports creating, updating, and managing all aspects of the AWS EKS cluster and deploying the Helm chart. If the Flask service in the Helm chart is of type LoadBalancer, it will provide us with a publicly accessible URL, which we're exporting as `frontend`.

This concludes the setup and deployment of the `min-flask` application on AWS EKS using Pulumi. If you need guidance on accessing the Flask application, you would typically check the value of the `frontend` output after deployment, which should give you the URL to access the running Flask app in your browser.