Deploy the metastore-operator helm chart on Rancher

Question

Pulumi · Accepted Answer

To deploy a Helm chart on a Rancher-managed Kubernetes cluster using Pulumi, you'll need to perform a series of steps:

1. **Set up the Pulumi project** - Make sure you have Pulumi installed and set up a project and a stack.
2. **Configure Rancher provider** - You'll need to authenticate Pulumi with your Rancher instance. This typically involves setting the Rancher server URL and an access token in your Pulumi configuration.
3. **Deploy the Helm chart** - Define the resources necessary to deploy the Helm chart, which includes specifying the chart name, version, and any values required for the configuration.

For this task, you'll be using the `rancher2` provider in Pulumi to interact with Rancher. As per the Pulumi Registry results, Rancher's specific resources like `CatalogV2` can be used to manage catalog apps, but they don't explicitly mention deploying Helm charts. Instead, we'll use the `helm.v3.Release` resource from the Pulumi Kubernetes (`@pulumi/kubernetes`) provider, which provides a natural way to deploy Helm charts.

*For the sake of the explanation, I am assuming you have a Pulumi project set up.*

Below is a TypeScript program that demonstrates how you might deploy the `metastore-operator` Helm chart to a Rancher-managed Kubernetes cluster:

```typescript
import * as k8s from "@pulumi/kubernetes";
import * as pulumi from "@pulumi/pulumi";
import * as rancher2 from "@pulumi/rancher2";

// First, you must configure your access to Rancher. This will be environment-specific and you need to replace
// the dummy values with your actual access information, like Rancher URL, token, cluster ID, etc.
const config = new pulumi.Config();
const rancherServerUrl = config.require('rancherServerUrl');
const rancherTokenKey = config.require('rancherTokenKey');
const rancherClusterId = config.require('rancherClusterId');

// Set up the Rancher2 provider using the values from your Pulumi configuration.
const rancherProvider = new rancher2.Provider("rancher-provider", {
    apiUrl: rancherServerUrl,
    tokenKey: rancherTokenKey,
});

// Next, you would target the specific cluster within Rancher you wish to deploy to. This snippet
// assumes you have passed the cluster ID into the Pulumi program through configuration as well.
const rancherCluster = rancher2.getCluster({
    id: rancherClusterId,
}, { provider: rancherProvider });

// This Provider uses the kubeconfig from the targeted cluster in Rancher.
const k8sProvider = new k8s.Provider("k8s-provider", {
    kubeconfig: rancherCluster.kubeConfig,
});

// Now you can begin defining the Helm chart deployment.
// We'll use the `helm.v3.Chart` resource which is a part of the `@pulumi/kubernetes` package.
const metastoreOperatorChart = new k8s.helm.v3.Chart("metastore-operator-chart", {
    // Replace with the actual chart repository information
    chart: "metastore-operator",
    version: "1.0.0", // replace with the specific chart version you wish to deploy
    fetchOpts:{
        repo: "https://charts.your-org.com/", // the actual Helm chart repository URL
    },
    // If the chart requires any values, you can specify them here.
    values: {
        // ... specify your values here ...
    },
}, { provider: k8sProvider });

// At this point, the metastore-operator Helm chart would begin deploying to your Rancher-managed cluster.
// You can export any necessary information, such as the release name or namespace it's deployed to.
export const releaseName = metastoreOperatorChart.releaseName;
export const namespace = metastoreOperatorChart.namespace;
```

Here's an explanation of what the code does:

- We import the necessary Pulumi packages for Kubernetes and Rancher.
- We set up the configuration to authenticate with the Rancher server using API URL and token.
- We retrieve the cluster information from Rancher to access its `kubeConfig`.
- We create a Kubernetes provider (`k8sProvider`) to interact with the Rancher-managed cluster. This provider uses the `kubeConfig` obtained from the Rancher cluster.
- We instantiate a `k8s.helm.v3.Chart` resource named `metastore-operator-chart`, specifying the chart name, version, chart repository, and any additional values that the Helm chart might require.
- The `metastore-operator-chart` will deploy the specified version of the Helm chart to the targeted Kubernetes cluster.
- Finally, we export some of the Helm chart's deployment details like the release name and namespace so you can easily retrieve them using the Pulumi CLI.

Before running this Pulumi program, replace the placeholder values with actual information from your environment. Then, run `pulumi up` to execute the program and deploy the Helm chart to your Rancher-managed Kubernetes cluster.

Keep in mind that you need to have the correct access to the Rancher instance and the cluster you are targeting. Make sure that the versions and Helm chart repository URL you use are accurate and accessible from your environment.