On this page

Deploy Gloo-managed service meshes

Use Gloo’s Istio Lifecycle Manager to install and manage Solo distributions of Istio service meshes in your clusters for you.

By using Gloo-managed service meshes, you no longer need to manually install and manage the istiod control plane. Instead, you provide the Istio configuration in a Gloo custom resource (CR), and Gloo translates this configuration into managed istiod control plane and gateways in each workload cluster for you.

warning

The Istio lifecycle manager feature is updated in Gloo Mesh Core version 2.6. If you used the lifecycle manager in 2.5 and upgraded Gloo Mesh Core to 2.6, first review the changes to the feature before you make edits to your existing IstioLifecycleManager or GatewayLifecycleManager resources.

warning

In Istio 1.22.0-1.22.3, the ISTIO_DELTA_XDS environment variable must be set to false. For more information, see this upstream Istio issue. Note that this issue is resolved in Istio 1.22.4.

In Gloo Mesh Core version 2.6, ambient mode requires the Solo distribution of Istio version 1.22.3 or later (1.22.3-solo).

Istio 1.20 is supported only as patch version 1.20.1-patch1 and later. Do not use patch versions 1.20.0 and 1.20.1, which contain bugs that impact several Gloo Mesh Core features that rely on Istio ServiceEntries.

Before you begin

Follow the quickstart or advanced installation guide to install the Gloo Mesh Core components.
Review the following considerations for using the Istio lifecycle manager.
- Throughout this guide, you use example configuration files that have pre-filled values. You can update some of the values, but unexpected behaviors might occur. For example, if you change the default istio-ingressgateway name, you cannot also use Kubernetes horizontal pod autoscaling. For more information, see the Troubleshooting docs.
- If your organization restricts elevated Kubernetes RBAC permissions for security reasons, you might need to install the Istio CNI plug-in. The OpenShift steps provide an example. For more information, see the Istio docs.
Review Supported versions to choose the Solo distribution of Istio that you want to use, and save the version information in the following environment variables.
- REPO: The repo key for the Solo distribution of Istio that you can get by logging in to the Support Center and reviewing the Istio images built by Solo.io support article.
- ISTIO_IMAGE: The version that you want to use with the solo tag, such as 1.23.2-patch1-solo. You can optionally append other tags of Solo distributions of Istio as needed.
- REVISION: Take the Istio major and minor versions and replace the periods with hyphens, such as 1-23.
info
For testing environments only, you can deploy a revisionless installation. Revisionless installations permit in-place upgrades, which are quicker than the canary-based upgrades that revisioned installations require. To omit a revision, do not set a revision environment variable. Then in the following sections, you edit the sample IstioLifecycleManager and GatewayLifecycleManager files that you download to remove the revision and gatewayRevision fields. Note that if you deploy multiple Istio installations in the same cluster, only one installation can be revisionless.
```
  export REPO=<repo-key>
export ISTIO_IMAGE=1.23.2-patch1-solo
export REVISION=1-23
  
```
If you used the lifecycle manager in 2.5 and upgraded Gloo Mesh Core to 2.6, first review the changes to the feature before you make edits to your existing IstioLifecycleManager or GatewayLifecycleManager resources.
If other Istio installations already exist in your clusters, you must first uninstall any existing Istio installations. You currently cannot use the lifecycle manager alongside or to takeover unmanaged Istio installations that you install by using Helm, istioctl, or an IstioOperator.

Multicluster

Use Gloo Mesh Core to deploy and manage Istio service meshes in each workload cluster.

`istiod` control planes

Prepare an IstioLifecycleManager CR to manage istiod control planes.

Set the names of your clusters from your infrastructure provider. If your clusters have different names, specify those names instead.
```
  export REMOTE_CLUSTER1=<cluster1>
export REMOTE_CLUSTER2=<cluster2>
...
  
```
Save the kubeconfig contexts for your clusters. Run kubectl config get-contexts, look for your cluster in the CLUSTER column, and get the context name in the NAME column. Note: Do not use context names with underscores. The generated certificate that connects workload clusters to the management cluster uses the context name as a SAN specification, and underscores in SAN are not FQDN compliant. You can rename a context by running kubectl config rename-context "<oldcontext>" <newcontext>.
```
  export MGMT_CONTEXT=<management-cluster-context>
export REMOTE_CONTEXT1=<remote-cluster1-context>
export REMOTE_CONTEXT2=<remote-cluster2-context>
...
  
```

Download the example file, istiod.yaml, which contains a basic IstioLifecycleManager configuration for the control plane.

  curl -0L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/solo-io/gloo-mesh-use-cases/main/gloo-mesh-core/istio-install/managed/multi/istiod.yaml > istiod.yaml

Update the example file with the environment variables that you previously set. Save the updated file as istiod-values.yaml.
- For example, you can run a terminal command to substitute values:
```
  envsubst < istiod.yaml > istiod-values.yaml
  
```
Verify that the configuration is correct. For example, in spec.installations.clusters, verify that entries exist for each workload cluster name. You can also further edit the file to provide your own details. For more information, see the API reference.
```
  open istiod-values.yaml
  
```
check_circle
For testing environments only, you can deploy a revisionless installation by removing the revision fields.

Apply the IstioLifecycleManager CR to your management cluster.

  kubectl apply -f istiod-values.yaml --context $MGMT_CONTEXT

In each workload cluster, verify that the Istio pods have a status of Running.

     kubectl get pods -n istio-system --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT1
   kubectl get pods -n istio-system --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT2

Example output:

     NAME                            READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
   istiod-1-23-b65676555-g2vmr     1/1     Running   0          47s
   NAME                            READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
   istiod-1-23-7b96cb895-4nzv9     1/1     Running   0          43s

Optional: Ingress gateways

Prepare a GatewayLifecycleManager CR to deploy and manage ingress gateways.

Download the example file, ingress-gateway.yaml, which contains a basic GatewayLifecycleManager configuration for an ingress gateway.

  curl -0L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/solo-io/gloo-mesh-use-cases/main/gloo-mesh-core/istio-install/managed/multi/ingress-gateway.yaml > ingress-gateway.yaml

Update the example file with the environment variables that you previously set. Save the updated file as ingress-gateway-values.yaml.
- For example, you can run a terminal command to substitute values:
```
  envsubst < ingress-gateway.yaml > ingress-gateway-values.yaml
  
```

Verify that the configuration is correct. You can also further edit the file to provide your own settings. For more information, see the API reference.

  open ingress-gateway-values.yaml

You can add cloud provider-specific load balancer annotations to the istioOperatorSpec.components.ingressGateways.k8s section, such as the following AWS annotations:

          ...
          k8s:
            service:
              ...
            serviceAnnotations:
              service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-backend-protocol: ssl
              service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-cross-zone-load-balancing-enabled: "true"
              service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-nlb-target-type: instance
              service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-scheme: internet-facing
              service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-ssl-cert: "arn:aws:acm:<cert>"
              service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-type: external

For testing environments only, you can deploy a revisionless installation by removing the gatewayRevision field.

Apply the GatewayLifecycleManager CR to your management cluster.

  kubectl apply -f ingress-gateway-values.yaml --context $MGMT_CONTEXT

In each workload cluster, verify that the ingress gateway pod is running.

  kubectl get pods -n gloo-mesh-gateways --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT1
kubectl get pods -n gloo-mesh-gateways --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT2

Example output for one cluster:

  NAME                                    READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
istio-ingressgateway-665d46686f-nhh52   1/1     Running   0          106s

In each workload cluster, verify that the load balancer service has an external address.
```
  kubectl get svc -n gloo-mesh-gateways --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT1
kubectl get svc -n gloo-mesh-gateways --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT2
  
```
Example output for one cluster:
```
  NAME                       TYPE           CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)                                                                         AGE
istio-ingressgateway       LoadBalancer   10.96.252.49    <externalip>  15021:32378/TCP,80:30315/TCP,443:32186/TCP,31400:30313/TCP,15443:31632/TCP      2m2s
  
```
info
AWS clusters: For the Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) instance that is automatically created for you to back the ingress gateway service, verify that the health check shows a healthy state. Gloo Mesh Core configures the ingress gateway to listen on HTTPS port 15443. However, when the ELB is created, the first port that is defined in the Kubernetes service manifest is used to perform the health check. This port might be different from the port that Gloo configures. For your ELB health check to pass, you might need to configure the load balancer to run the health check on port 15443.

Optional for OpenShift: Expose the gateways by using OpenShift routes.

  oc -n gloo-mesh-gateways expose svc istio-ingressgateway --port=http2 --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT1
oc -n gloo-mesh-gateways expose svc istio-ingressgateway --port=http2 --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT2

Optional: Egress gateways

Optional: Prepare a GatewayLifecycleManager CR to deploy and manage egress gateways.

Download the example file, egress-gateway.yaml, which contains a basic GatewayLifecycleManager configuration for an egress gateway.

  curl -0L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/solo-io/gloo-mesh-use-cases/main/gloo-mesh-core/istio-install/managed/multi/egress-gateway.yaml > egress-gateway.yaml

Update the example file with the environment variables that you previously set. Save the updated file as egress-gateway-values.yaml.
- For example, you can run a terminal command to substitute values:
```
  envsubst < egress-gateway.yaml > egress-gateway-values.yaml
  
```
Verify that the configuration is correct. For example, in spec.installations.clusters, verify that entries exist for each workload cluster name. You can also further edit the file to provide your own settings. For more information, see the API reference.
```
  open egress-gateway-values.yaml
  
```
check_circle
For testing environments only, you can deploy a revisionless installation by removing the revision field.

Apply the GatewayLifecycleManager CR to your management cluster.

  kubectl apply -f egress-gateway-values.yaml --context $MGMT_CONTEXT

In each workload cluster, verify that the egress gateway pods are running.

  kubectl get pods -n gloo-mesh-gateways --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT1
kubectl get pods -n gloo-mesh-gateways --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT2

Example output for one cluster:

  NAME                                    READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
istio-egressgateway-665d46686f-nhh52    1/1     Running   0          106s

In each workload cluster, verify that the load balancer service has an external address.

  kubectl get svc -n gloo-mesh-gateways --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT1
kubectl get svc -n gloo-mesh-gateways --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT2

Example output for one cluster:

  NAME                       TYPE           CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)                                                                         AGE
istio-egressgateway        LoadBalancer   10.96.252.49    <externalip>  15021:32378/TCP,80:30315/TCP,443:32186/TCP,31400:30313/TCP,15443:31632/TCP      2m2s

info

AWS clusters: For the Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) instance that is automatically created for you to back the ingress gateway service, verify that the health check shows a healthy state. Gloo Mesh Core configures the ingress gateway to listen on HTTPS port 15443. However, when the ELB is created, the first port that is defined in the Kubernetes service manifest is used to perform the health check. This port might be different from the port that Gloo configures. For your ELB health check to pass, you might need to configure the load balancer to run the health check on port 15443.

Add services to the mesh

Now that Istio is up and running, you can create service namespaces for your teams to run app workloads in. For any namespaces that you want to deploy apps to, be sure to follow these steps to include your services in the service mesh.

Label the namespace with the Istio revision so that Istio sidecars deploy to your app pods.
```
  export REVISION=$(kubectl get pod -L app=istiod -n istio-system --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT -o jsonpath='{.items[0].metadata.labels.istio\.io/rev}')
kubectl label ns <namespace> istio.io/rev=$REVISION --overwrite --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT
  
```
check_circle
If you deployed revisionless installations in testing environments, you can instead label your workload namespaces with kubectl label ns istio-injection=enabled --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT.
If you already deployed app pods to the namespace, restart the workloads so that sidecars are injected into the pods. For example, you might roll out a restart to each deployment by using a command similar to the following.
```
  kubectl rollout restart deployment -n <namespace> <deployment> --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT
  
```

Single cluster

Use Gloo Mesh Core to install a managed service mesh that runs a hardened Solo distribution of Istio in your cluster.

`istiod` control plane

Prepare an IstioLifecycleManager CR to manage the istiod control plane.

Save the name of your cluster as an environment variable.
```
  export CLUSTER_NAME=<cluster_name>
  
```

Download the example file, istiod.yaml, which contains a basic IstioLifecycleManager configuration for the control plane.

  curl -0L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/solo-io/gloo-mesh-use-cases/main/gloo-mesh-core/istio-install/managed/single/istiod.yaml > istiod.yaml

Update the example file with the environment variables that you previously set. Save the updated file as istiod-values.yaml.
- For example, you can run a terminal command to substitute values:
```
  envsubst < istiod.yaml > istiod-values.yaml
  
```
Verify that the configuration is correct. You can also further edit the file to provide your own details. For more information, see the API reference.
```
  open istiod-values.yaml
  
```
check_circle
For testing environments only, you can deploy a revisionless installation by removing the revision field.
Apply the IstioLifecycleManager CR to your cluster.
```
  kubectl apply -f istiod-values.yaml
  
```

Verify that the istiod pod has a status of Running.

     kubectl get pods -n istio-system

Example output:

     NAME                            READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
   istiod-1-23-b65676555-g2vmr     1/1     Running   0          47s

Optional: Ingress gateway

Prepare a GatewayLifecycleManager CR to deploy and manage ingress gateways.

Download the example file, ingress-gateway.yaml, which contains a basic GatewayLifecycleManager configuration for an ingress gateway.

  curl -0L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/solo-io/gloo-mesh-use-cases/main/gloo-mesh-core/istio-install/managed/single/ingress-gateway.yaml > ingress-gateway.yaml

Update the example file with the environment variables that you previously set. Save the updated file as ingress-gateway-values.yaml.
- For example, you can run a terminal command to substitute values:
```
  envsubst < ingress-gateway.yaml > ingress-gateway-values.yaml
  
```

Verify that the configuration is correct. You can also further edit the file to provide your own settings. For more information, see the API reference.

  open ingress-gateway-values.yaml

You can add cloud provider-specific load balancer annotations to the istioOperatorSpec.components.ingressGateways.k8s section, such as the following AWS annotations:

          ...
          k8s:
            service:
              ...
            serviceAnnotations:
              service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-backend-protocol: ssl
              service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-cross-zone-load-balancing-enabled: "true"
              service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-nlb-target-type: instance
              service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-scheme: internet-facing
              service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-ssl-cert: "arn:aws:acm:<cert>"
              service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-type: external

For testing environments only, you can deploy a revisionless installation by removing the gatewayRevision field.

Apply the GatewayLifecycleManager CR to your cluster.

  kubectl apply -f ingress-gateway-values.yaml

Verify that the ingress gateway pod is running and that the load balancer service has an external address.
```
  kubectl get pods -n gloo-mesh-gateways
kubectl get svc -n gloo-mesh-gateways
  
```
Example output:
```
  NAME                                    READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
istio-ingressgateway-665d46686f-nhh52   1/1     Running   0          106s
  
```
```
  NAME                        TYPE           CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)                                                                         AGE
istio-ingressgateway        LoadBalancer   10.96.252.49    <externalip>  15021:32378/TCP,80:30315/TCP,443:32186/TCP,31400:30313/TCP,15443:31632/TCP      2m2s
  
```
info
AWS clusters: For the Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) instance that is automatically created for you to back the ingress gateway service, verify that the health check shows a healthy state. Gloo Mesh Core configures the ingress gateway to listen on HTTPS port 15443. However, when the ELB is created, the first port that is defined in the Kubernetes service manifest is used to perform the health check. This port might be different from the port that Gloo configures. For your ELB health check to pass, you might need to configure the load balancer to run the health check on port 15443.

Optional for OpenShift: Expose the ingress gateway by using an OpenShift route.

  oc -n gloo-mesh-gateways expose svc istio-ingressgateway --port=http2

Optional: Egress gateway

Prepare a GatewayLifecycleManager resource to deploy and manage an egress gateway.

Download the example file, egress-gateway.yaml, which contains a basic GatewayLifecycleManager configuration for an egress gateway.

  curl -0L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/solo-io/gloo-mesh-use-cases/main/gloo-mesh-core/istio-install/managed/single/egress-gateway.yaml > egress-gateway.yaml

Update the example file with the environment variables that you previously set. Save the updated file as egress-gateway-values.yaml.
- For example, you can run a terminal command to substitute values:
```
  envsubst < egress-gateway.yaml > egress-gateway-values.yaml
  
```
Verify that the configuration is correct. You can also further edit the file to replicate the settings in your existing Istio installation. For more information, see the API reference.
```
  open egress-gateway-values.yaml
  
```
check_circle
For testing environments only, you can deploy a revisionless installation by removing the revision field.
Apply the GatewayLifecycleManager resource to your cluster.
```
  kubectl apply -f egress-gateway-values.yaml
  
```
In the gloo-mesh-gateways namespace, verify that the egress gateway pod for the new revision is running and that the load balancer service has an external address.
```
  kubectl get pods -n gloo-mesh-gateways
kubectl get svc -n gloo-mesh-gateways
  
```
Example output for one cluster:
```
  NAME                                    READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
istio-egressgateway-665d46686f-nhh52    1/1     Running   0          106s
  
```
```
  NAME                       TYPE           CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)                                                                         AGE
istio-egressgateway        LoadBalancer   10.96.252.49    <externalip>  15021:32378/TCP,80:30315/TCP,443:32186/TCP,31400:30313/TCP,15443:31632/TCP      2m2s
  
```
info
AWS clusters: For the Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) instance that is automatically created for you to back the ingress gateway service, verify that the health check shows a healthy state. Gloo Mesh Core configures the ingress gateway to listen on HTTPS port 15443. However, when the ELB is created, the first port that is defined in the Kubernetes service manifest is used to perform the health check. This port might be different from the port that Gloo configures. For your ELB health check to pass, you might need to configure the load balancer to run the health check on port 15443.

Add services to the mesh

Label the namespace with the Istio revision so that Istio sidecars deploy to your app pods.
```
  export REVISION=$(kubectl get pod -L app=istiod -n istio-system -o jsonpath='{.items[0].metadata.labels.istio\.io/rev}')
kubectl label ns <namespace> istio.io/rev=$REVISION --overwrite
  
```
check_circle
If you deployed revisionless installations in testing environments, you can instead label your workload namespaces with kubectl label ns istio-injection=enabled.
If you already deployed app pods to the namespace, restart the workloads so that sidecars are injected into the pods. For example, you might roll out a restart to each deployment by using a command similar to the following.
```
  kubectl rollout restart deployment -n <namespace> <deployment>
  
```

Next steps

Now that you have Gloo Mesh Core and Istio up and running, check out some of the following resources to learn more about Gloo Mesh Core and expand your service mesh capabilities.

Istio:

Find out more about hardened Istio n-4 version support built into Solo distributions of Istio.
Check out the Istio docs to configure and deploy Istio routing resources.
Monitor and observe your Istio environment with Gloo Mesh Core’s built-in telemetry tools.
When it’s time to upgrade Istio, use Gloo Mesh Core to upgrade managed Istio installations.
For ambient installations, see Upgrade ambient service meshes.

Help and support:

Talk to an expert to get advice or build out a proof of concept.
Join the #gloo-mesh channel in the Solo.io community slack.
Try out one of the Gloo workshops.

Deploy Gloo-managed service meshes

Before you begin link

Multicluster link

istiod control planes link

Optional: Ingress gateways link

Optional: Egress gateways link

Add services to the mesh link

Single cluster link

istiod control plane link

Optional: Ingress gateway link

Optional: Egress gateway link

Add services to the mesh link

Next steps link

Before you begin

Multicluster

`istiod` control planes

Optional: Ingress gateways

Optional: Egress gateways

Add services to the mesh

Single cluster

`istiod` control plane

Optional: Ingress gateway

Optional: Egress gateway

Add services to the mesh

Next steps