Deploy the james-mailserver helm chart on AWS EKS

Question

Pulumi · Accepted Answer

To deploy the `james-mailserver` Helm chart on AWS EKS using Pulumi, we need to accomplish several tasks: create an EKS cluster, integrate it with a container registry if necessary, and then deploy the Helm chart to the cluster.

Let's go step by step:

1. **Create an EKS Cluster**: We will use the `aws.eks.Cluster` resource to create a new EKS cluster. This resource provisions an EKS cluster with the specified settings, like the Kubernetes version, VPC configuration, and IAM roles are necessary for the cluster to manage resources.

2. **Deploy Helm chart to EKS Cluster**: Once the cluster is up and running, we will use the `kubernetes.helm.sh/v3.Chart` resource to deploy the `james-mailserver` Helm chart. This requires having Helm charts available in a repository. If the repository is private, you would need to configure the access credentials.

Below is a TypeScript program that creates an EKS cluster and deploys the `james-mailserver` chart. Ensure you've configured Pulumi with the appropriate AWS credentials.

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

// Create an EKS cluster with the default configuration.
const cluster = new eks.Cluster("my-cluster", {});

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

// Create a Kubernetes provider instance that uses our EKS cluster from above.
const k8sProvider = new k8s.Provider("k8s-provider", {
    kubeconfig: cluster.kubeconfig.apply(JSON.stringify),
});

// Deploy james-mailserver Helm chart to the EKS cluster.
const mailserverChart = new k8s.helm.v3.Chart("james-mailserver", {
    // Assuming the james-mailserver is in a Helm repository that requires no authentication.
    // Replace the 'repo' and 'chart' values if your chart's repository is different.
    chart: "james-mailserver",
    fetchOpts:{
        repo: "http://path.to.your/helm/repo/",
    },
    // Specify the namespace where you want to deploy the chart, if needed.
    namespace: "mailserver",
}, { provider: k8sProvider });

// Export the mail server's endpoint for easy access.
export const mailserverEndpoint = pulumi.interpolate`http://$(mailserverChart.getResourceProperty("v1/Service", "mailserver", "status")).loadBalancer.ingress[0].hostname`;

```

- The `eks.Cluster` constructor is initializing a new cluster using the default settings. Exposing `kubeconfig` makes it possible to interact with the cluster via `kubectl` and other Kubernetes tools.

- The `k8s.Provider` is used to create a provider that knows how to communicate with your EKS cluster.

- The `k8s.helm.v3.Chart` resource is deploying the `james-emailserver` Helm chart into the EKS cluster within the "mailserver" namespace.

- Lastly, we export the `mailserverEndpoint` which will contain the hostname that can be used to access the James Mail Server once it is deployed.

Please adjust the repository path to point to where your Helm chart is located. This program assumes that the Helm chart does not require any additional configuration values; you might likely need to provide configuration specific to your environment and needs.

Remember to install all necessary Pulumi packages by running `npm install` or `yarn add` for the `@pulumi/pulumi`, `@pulumi/eks`, and `@pulumi/kubernetes` packages before running `pulumi up` to deploy this program.