Deploy the laravel-helm helm chart on Rancher

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Pulumi · Accepted Answer

Deploying a Helm chart on Rancher through Pulumi involves several steps. These include setting up the Rancher provider, creating a Kubernetes cluster if one does not already exist, and then deploying the Helm chart on that cluster. Below, I’ll lay out the steps to accomplish this with a focus on deploying the laravel-helm chart. For the purpose of this example, I’ll assume that you already have a Rancher instance running and that you’ve installed Pulumi and set up your Rancher provider.

Step 1: Set Up the Rancher2 Pulumi Provider

First, you will need to import and configure the Rancher2 provider in your index.ts file. The provider uses the API endpoint of your Rancher instance along with an access token for authentication.

import * as rancher2 from "@pulumi/rancher2";

const rancherProvider = new rancher2.Provider("rancherProvider", {
  apiURL: "<RANCHER_API_URL>",
  accessToken: "<RANCHER_ACCESS_TOKEN>",
});

Make sure to replace <RANCHER_API_URL> with your Rancher server's API endpoint and <RANCHER_ACCESS_TOKEN> with your Rancher API access token. For security reasons, you should not hard-code sensitive credentials directly into your code. Instead, use Pulumi configuration secrets or environment variables.

Step 2: Create a Kubernetes Cluster Through Rancher

Once the provider is configured, if you need to create a new Kubernetes cluster to deploy the Helm chart on, you would do so using resources such as rancher2.Cluster. For example, if you were creating a custom Kubernetes cluster with RKE (Rancher Kubernetes Engine):

const kubeCluster = new rancher2.Cluster("kubeCluster", {
  // Define cluster specifications according to your needs
});

This would be where you specify the version of Kubernetes, the node configuration, and any other necessary cluster configurations. Detailed configuration can be found in the cluster resource documentation.

Step 3: Deploy the Laravel Helm Chart

Finally, you will use the Pulumi Kubernetes provider to deploy the laravel-helm chart to your Kubernetes cluster managed by Rancher.

First, you need to configure the Kubernetes provider to use the kubeconfig from your Rancher instance.

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

// Assume that kubeCluster is the cluster created with Rancher that you wish to deploy the Helm chart to.
// You will need to obtain the kubeconfig from Rancher for this cluster.
const kubeconfig = kubeCluster.kubeConfig.raw;  // Example; this line will vary based on your actual setup

// Finally, set up the Kubernetes provider using the kubeconfig from Rancher
const k8sProvider = new k8s.Provider("k8sProvider", {
  kubeconfig: kubeconfig,
});

Once you have the Kubernetes provider set up, you can deploy the Helm chart using helm.v3.Chart from the Kubernetes Pulumi provider.

const laravelChart = new k8s.helm.v3.Chart("laravel-helm", {
  chart: "laravel",
  // You will need to find the chart in a repo, for this example we'll assume it's in a fictional "charts" repo
  fetchOpts: {
    repo: "http://charts.example.com/",
  },
  // Include any custom values you need for your Laravel deployment
  values: {
    // … your Laravel chart values …
  },
}, { provider: k8sProvider });

This code snippet assumes that laravel is the name of the chart within the Helm repository located at http://charts.example.com/. You will need to adjust the repo URL and possibly the chart field to point to the actual location and name of the Laravel Helm chart you intend to deploy. The values field should include any values you want to override from the chart's default configuration.

This program will deploy a Laravel application on a Kubernetes cluster managed by Rancher. Always be sure to review the Helm chart values and documentation to ensure they meet your deployment requirements and that you understand the configurations being set.