June 2018 Summaries

The blog post provides a detailed guide on deploying Jenkins on Kubernetes using Pulumi, emphasizing the benefits of abstracting configuration complexity into reusable components. The example involves adapting a Helm template to create a Jenkins instance that can be easily reused with minimal implementation code. The process includes setting up Pulumi and Kubernetes, configuring the necessary credentials, and deploying the Jenkins application using a stack. The deployment is tested and verified through commands like `pulumi preview` and `pulumi update`, with instructions for accessing the Jenkins instance via a web browser. The guide highlights the importance of reusable components in enhancing productivity and understanding in cloud infrastructure development, suggesting further resources for exploring these concepts.

Pulumi, a tool for managing cloud infrastructure, is used extensively by its own team to streamline the deployment and management of cloud services and applications, particularly on AWS. By authoring infrastructure with strongly-typed programming languages, Pulumi facilitates the use of software engineering practices like abstraction and versioning, which enhance the ability to deliver new features and maintain infrastructure patterns. The tool is employed at various abstraction levels to provision core networking layers, deploy application services, and manage static content, while also supporting the creation of reusable libraries for common patterns. Integration with CI/CD pipelines allows for the seamless promotion of changes across development, staging, and production environments. The approach of treating infrastructure as code extends to defining and versioning metrics, alarms, and dashboards, ensuring a comprehensive and consistent deployment process. Pulumi's capabilities in managing both infrastructure and application code simplify workflows, and the tool's ability to create high-level APIs makes it easier to deploy new services.

Pulumi provides a framework for building serverless applications by defining infrastructure and application code using JavaScript, Python, or Go, targeting platforms like AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, or Kubernetes. In this tutorial, a REST API is created to count route hits, implemented using AWS's API Gateway, Lambda, and DynamoDB. Users begin by setting up Pulumi, configuring their AWS account, and ensuring Node.js is installed. A new Pulumi project is initiated, defining infrastructure with code that creates a REST API endpoint and a counter table in DynamoDB to track route counts. The project is deployed with Pulumi commands, and users can view deployment details and logs via the Pulumi Service. The tutorial concludes with instructions on cleaning up resources and provides links to additional sample applications in the Pulumi GitHub repository.

Pulumi facilitates the creation of cloud applications that integrate containers, serverless functions, and data services, exemplified by a Colada app that processes video thumbnails. In this setup, a Lambda function triggers when a video uploads to an S3 bucket, initiating an AWS Fargate task that uses FFmpeg to extract a thumbnail. Another Lambda function logs the creation of the thumbnail. Users can build this application entirely in code using Pulumi, configuring infrastructure with JavaScript, and employing Docker for container management. The process, inspired by a Serverless, Inc. blog post, involves creating a Pulumi project, setting up AWS and Docker environments, and deploying the app with Pulumi's CLI, which automates the provisioning of resources like an ECR repository. Once deployed, users can monitor logs with Pulumi commands and clean up resources using Pulumi destroy. The method highlights Pulumi's ability to blend containers and serverless functions, offering flexibility without the need to choose between serverless and containerized approaches.

Pulumi simplifies the process of deploying Docker containers to the cloud using AWS services, such as AWS Fargate, by automating tasks like creating a container registry in ECR, defining tasks in ECS, and configuring load balancers. The blog post details the steps for setting up a Pulumi project to deploy a Docker container running NGINX, requiring users to configure their AWS accounts, install necessary tools like Node.js and Docker, and define infrastructure in JavaScript. Users create a Dockerfile and static webpage, configure Pulumi to use AWS Fargate, and deploy the application using the `pulumi update` command, which automatically sets up resources like an ECR repository, ECS service, and IAM roles. The post also explains how to view application logs using the `pulumi logs` command, allowing users to monitor traffic and identify potential security vulnerabilities. Finally, it provides guidance on cleaning up resources with `pulumi destroy` and references additional examples in the Pulumi GitHub repository for further exploration.

Pulumi has launched as an open-source cloud development platform that introduces a new programming model using real programming languages to modernize how software is designed and built for the cloud. It aims to bridge the gap between current software creation practices using configuration YAML and templating languages and the needs of today's cloud developers by integrating traditional programming concepts such as IDEs, abstraction, and encapsulation into cloud program creation. Pulumi supports immutable infrastructure across major cloud services like AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and Kubernetes in various cloud settings. With an open ecosystem of packages, Pulumi encourages best practice sharing and reduces redundancy within teams and the broader community, marking over a year of development with an enthusiastic team ready to see its impact.