Building and deploying to an AKS cluster using Terraform and Azure DevOps with Kubernetes and Helm providers – Thomas Thornton

1. 12/11/2022, 07:09 Building and deploying to an AKS cluster using Terraform and Azure DevOps with Kubernetes and Helm providers – Thomas Thornton
https://thomasthornton.cloud/2022/11/09/building-and-deploying-to-an-aks-cluster-using-terraform-and-azure-devops-with-kubernetes-and-helm-providers/ 1/7
Thomas Thornton 9 November 2022
Building and deploying to an AKS cluster using Terraform and Azure DevOps with
Kubernetes and Helm providers
thomasthornton.cloud/2022/11/09/building-and-deploying-to-an-aks-cluster-using-terraform-and-azure-devops-with-kubernetes-and-helm-providers
I have a few blogs now on deploying Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS) with different scenarios, such as deploying AKS with Application
Gateway Ingress, in this blog post I am going to be building and deploying to an AKS cluster using Terraform and Azure DevOps. You
will also have noticed in the title, it references both Kubernetes and Helm providers – we will be looking at how Terraform can be used
to deploy to AKS as well once deployed. I am huge fan of GitOps within AKS, but to test an application or small environment; this way
could certainly be useful!
What will Terraform be deploying?
Initially Terraform will be used to deploy the AKS environment:
Virtual Network
Log Analytics
AKS cluster
The initial terraform code for this, can be found [HERE]. In this blog post, I won’t go deeper into the deployment of AKS as I have
covered this more in various other blogs, feel free to check these out
Azure DevOps Pipeline
As with most my pipelines, I utilise the use of variables alot , review these [HERE]
The Azure DevOps pipeline will consists of 4 stages:
terraform_plan: Running the action: plan will run this stage and output a plan for the above terraform
terraform_apply: Running the action: apply will run this stage and apply the above terraform

2. 12/11/2022, 07:09 Building and deploying to an AKS cluster using Terraform and Azure DevOps with Kubernetes and Helm providers – Thomas Thornton
https://thomasthornton.cloud/2022/11/09/building-and-deploying-to-an-aks-cluster-using-terraform-and-azure-devops-with-kubernetes-and-helm-providers/ 2/7
bootstrap: Running the action: apply will run this stage and run the below Terraform using Kubernetes and Helm Providers
terraform_destroy: Running the action: destroy will destroy the environment
Full pipeline can be found [HERE]
Deploying to Kubernetes with Terraform using Kubernetes and Helm providers
Once this has been deployed, lets look at using Terraform with the Kubernetes & Helm providers to deploy an example namespace and
basic redis helm chart
The folder structure for this Terraform will be two files:
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terraform-module-example
└── main.tf
└── providers.tf
Lets look at providers.tf , notice the reference to the helm & kubernetes providers along with config_path ?

3. 12/11/2022, 07:09 Building and deploying to an AKS cluster using Terraform and Azure DevOps with Kubernetes and Helm providers – Thomas Thornton
https://thomasthornton.cloud/2022/11/09/building-and-deploying-to-an-aks-cluster-using-terraform-and-azure-devops-with-kubernetes-and-helm-providers/ 3/7
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provider "helm" {
kubernetes {
config_path = "/home/vsts/.kube/config"
}
}
provider "kubernetes" {
config_path = "/home/vsts/.kube/config"
config_context = "tamopsakstest-admin"
}
terraform {
backend "azurerm" {
}
}
To configure how the config_path is setup, it is the kubernetes context path – I have achieved this by using running some Azure CLI
within my aks_cluster_config stage here
Example output:
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/usr/bin/az account set --subscription 04109105-f3ca-44ac-a3a7-66b4936112c3
/usr/bin/bash /home/vsts/work/_temp/azureclitaskscript1667379970075 .sh
+ AKS_RG=tamopsakstest-rg
+ AKS_NAME=tamopsakstest
+ az aks get-credentials -g tamopsakstest-rg -n tamopsakstest --admin
WARNING: Merged "tamopsakstest-admin" as current context in /home/vsts/ .kube /config
Great! Now that the context is setup and config_path’s are setup, it’s time to deploy some example resources that can be deployed by
these providers. I will be deploying a example Kubernetes namespace & helm release as below:

4. 12/11/2022, 07:09 Building and deploying to an AKS cluster using Terraform and Azure DevOps with Kubernetes and Helm providers – Thomas Thornton
https://thomasthornton.cloud/2022/11/09/building-and-deploying-to-an-aks-cluster-using-terraform-and-azure-devops-with-kubernetes-and-helm-providers/ 4/7
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resource "kubernetes_namespace" "test" {
metadata {
name = "test"
}
}
resource "helm_release" "redis" {
name = "redis"
repository = "https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami"
chart = "redis"
namespace = "test"
}
Reviewing the apply stage, we can see its planning to create these two resources (log output)
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Terraform will perform the following actions :
+ resource "helm_release" "redis" {
+ atomic = false
+ chart = "redis"
+ cleanup_on_fail = false
+ create_namespace = false
+ dependency_update = false
+ disable_crd_hooks = false
+ disable_openapi_validation = false
+ disable_webhooks = false
+ force_update = false
+ id = (known after apply)
+ lint = false
+ manifest = (known after apply)
+ max_history = 0
+ metadata = (known after apply)
+ name = "redis"
+ namespace = "test"
+ pass_credentials = false
+ recreate_pods = false

5. 12/11/2022, 07:09 Building and deploying to an AKS cluster using Terraform and Azure DevOps with Kubernetes and Helm providers – Thomas Thornton
https://thomasthornton.cloud/2022/11/09/building-and-deploying-to-an-aks-cluster-using-terraform-and-azure-devops-with-kubernetes-and-helm-providers/ 5/7
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+ render_subchart_notes = true
+ replace = false
+ repository = "https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami"
+ reset_values = false
+ reuse_values = false
+ skip_crds = false
+ status = "deployed"
+ timeout = 300
+ verify = false
+ version = "17.3.7"
+ resource_version = (known after apply)
+ uid = (known after apply)
}
}
Output of log:

6. 12/11/2022, 07:09 Building and deploying to an AKS cluster using Terraform and Azure DevOps with Kubernetes and Helm providers – Thomas Thornton
https://thomasthornton.cloud/2022/11/09/building-and-deploying-to-an-aks-cluster-using-terraform-and-azure-devops-with-kubernetes-and-helm-providers/ 6/7
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kubernetes_namespace. test : Creating...
kubernetes_namespace. test : Creation complete after 0s [ id = test ]
helm_release.redis: Creating...
helm_release.redis: Still creating... [10s elapsed]
helm_release.redis: Still creating... [20s elapsed]
helm_release.redis: Still creating... [30s elapsed]
helm_release.redis: Still creating... [40s elapsed]
helm_release.redis: Still creating... [50s elapsed]
helm_release.redis: Still creating... [1m0s elapsed]
helm_release.redis: Still creating... [1m10s elapsed]
helm_release.redis: Still creating... [1m20s elapsed]
helm_release.redis: Still creating... [1m30s elapsed]
helm_release.redis: Still creating... [1m40s elapsed]
helm_release.redis: Still creating... [1m50s elapsed]
helm_release.redis: Still creating... [2m0s elapsed]
helm_release.redis: Still creating... [2m10s elapsed]
helm_release.redis: Still creating... [2m20s elapsed]
helm_release.redis: Still creating... [2m30s elapsed]
helm_release.redis: Creation complete after 2m38s [ id =redis]
Great! We have successfully deployed a Kubernetes environment in Azure along with using the Helm & Kubernetes terraform providers
to deploy an example namespace & Helm Chart!
Finally, logging into the AKS cluster , we can see both the namespace & redis helm released has been deployed successfully
Namespace:
redis helm release:

7. 12/11/2022, 07:09 Building and deploying to an AKS cluster using Terraform and Azure DevOps with Kubernetes and Helm providers – Thomas Thornton
https://thomasthornton.cloud/2022/11/09/building-and-deploying-to-an-aks-cluster-using-terraform-and-azure-devops-with-kubernetes-and-helm-providers/ 7/7
Although this is a concept – depending on your environment, I do recommend looking at GitOps for your Kubernetes cluster; especially
when deploying at scale!
Thanks for reading, another one of my blogs – as always, any queries do reach out!