Deploy Gloo Mesh Core across multiple clusters to gain valuable insights into your Istio service meshes.
Gloo Mesh Core deploys alongside your Istio installations in single or multicluster environments, and gives you instant insights into your Istio environment through a custom dashboard.
You can follow this guide to quickly get started with Gloo Mesh Core. To learn more about the benefits and architecture, see About. To customize your installation with Helm instead, see the advanced installation guide.
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>.
Set your Gloo Mesh Core license key as an environment variable. If you do not have one, contact an account representative. If you prefer to specify license keys in a secret instead, see Licensing. To check your license’s validity, you can run meshctl license check --key $(echo ${GLOO_MESH_CORE_LICENSE_KEY} | base64 -w0).
In a multicluster setup, you deploy the Gloo management plane into a dedicated management cluster, and the Gloo data plane into one or more workload clusters that run Istio service meshes.
Deploy the Gloo management plane into a dedicated management cluster.
Install Gloo Mesh Core in your management cluster. This command uses a basic profile to create a gloo-mesh namespace and install the Gloo management plane components, such as the management server and Prometheus server, in your management cluster. For more information, check out the CLI install profiles.
Save the external address and port that your cloud provider assigned to the Gloo OpenTelemetry (OTel) gateway service. The OTel collector agents in each workload cluster send metrics to this address.
Register each workload cluster with the Gloo management plane by deploying Gloo data plane components. A deployment named gloo-mesh-agent runs the Gloo agent in each workload cluster.
Register both workload clusters with the management server. These commands use a basic profile to create a gloo-mesh namespace and install the Gloo data plane components, such as the Gloo agent. For more information, check out the CLI install profiles.
🟢 Gloo deployment status
Namespace | Name | Ready | Status
gloo-mesh | gloo-mesh-agent | 1/1 | Healthy
gloo-mesh | gloo-telemetry-collector-agent | 3/3 | Healthy
Verify that your Gloo Mesh Core setup is correctly installed. If not, try debugging the relay connection. Note that this check might take a few seconds to verify that:
Your Gloo product licenses are valid and current.
The Gloo CRDs are installed at the correct version.
The management plane pods in the management cluster are running and healthy.
The agents in the workload clusters are successfully identified by the management server.
meshctl check --kubecontext $MGMT_CONTEXT
Example output:
🟢 License status
INFO gloo-mesh-core enterprise license expiration is 25 Aug 24 10:38 CDT
INFO No GraphQL license module found for any product
🟢 CRD version check
🟢 Gloo deployment status
Namespace | Name | Ready | Status
gloo-mesh | gloo-mesh-mgmt-server | 1/1 | Healthy
gloo-mesh | gloo-mesh-redis | 1/1 | Healthy
gloo-mesh | gloo-mesh-ui | 1/1 | Healthy
gloo-mesh | gloo-telemetry-collector-agent | 3/3 | Healthy
gloo-mesh | gloo-telemetry-gateway | 1/1 | Healthy
gloo-mesh | prometheus-server | 1/1 | Healthy
🟢 Mgmt server connectivity to workload agents
Cluster | Registered | Connected Pod
cluster1 | true | gloo-mesh/gloo-mesh-mgmt-server-65bd557b95-v8qq6
cluster2 | true | gloo-mesh/gloo-mesh-mgmt-server-65bd557b95-v8qq6
Connected Pod | Clusters
gloo-mesh/gloo-mesh-mgmt-server-65bd557b95-v8qq6 | 2
Check whether Istio control planes already exist in the workload clusters.
kubectl get pods -n istio-system --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT1
kubectl get pods -n istio-system --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT2
If istiod pods exist in each workload cluster, such as in this example output, you already installed Istio control planes. Continue to the next step.
NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE
istiod-1-22-b65676555-g2vmr 1/1 Running 0 8d
NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE
istiod-1-22-7b96cb895-4nzv9 1/1 Running 0 8d
If no istiod pods exist, you can use Gloo Mesh Core to quickly install and manage service meshes in each workload cluster for you. For more information about service mesh lifecycle management with Gloo, check out Service mesh lifecycle and Solo distributions of Istio.
Deploy your service mesh with the standard sidecar approach.
Download the gs-ilm-glm.yaml example file, which contains basic IstioLifecycleManager configuration for the istiod control plane and GatewayLifecycleManager configuration for an Istio ingress gateway. For more information about the custom resources, see the API reference.
Update the example file with the environment variables that you previously set, and save the updated file as gs-ilm-glm-values.yaml. For example, you can run a terminal command to substitute values:
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-1-22-b65676555-g2vmr 1/1 Running 0 47s
NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE
istiod-1-22-7b96cb895-4nzv9 1/1 Running 0 43s
In each workload cluster, verify that the ingress gateway pods have a status of RUNNING and that the load balancer services have external addresses.
kubectl get pods,svc -n gloo-mesh-gateways --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT1
kubectl get pods,svc -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
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
Simplify your service mesh with a sidecarless approach by installing Istio in ambient mode. Note that Istio in ambient mode is currently supported only for single clusters. However, you can still use your management cluster to deploy separate ambient service meshes to multiple, individual workload clusters. For more information, see About ambient mesh.
Save the repository for the Solo ditribution of Istio 1.22. You can find this value in the Istio images built by Solo.io support article.
export REPO=<repo-key>
If you use Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) clusters, create the following ResourceQuota in the istio-system namespace of the workload cluster. For more information about this requirement, see the community Istio documentation.
Apply the following resource in your management cluster, which contains IstioLifecycleManager configuration for the istiod ambient control plane and GatewayLifecycleManager configuration for an Istio ingress gateway. For more information about the custom resources, see the API reference. Note: Do not specify a named revision in the spec.installations.revision or spec.installations.gatewayRevision fields, as named revisions are currently unsupported.
Verify that the components of the Istio ambient mesh and the Istio CNI pods are successfully installed. Because the ztunnel and the CNI are deployed as daemon sets, the number of ztunnel pods and CNI pods each equal the number of nodes in your cluster. Note that it might take a few seconds for the pods to become available.
kubectl get pods -A --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT1 | grep istio
kubectl get pods -A --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT2 | grep istio
Verify that the load balancer service for the ingress gateways have external addresses.
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
To analyze your service mesh with Gloo Mesh Core, be sure to include your services in the mesh.
If you already deployed apps that you want to include in the mesh, you can run the following command to label the service namespaces for Istio sidecar injection.
If you don’t have any apps yet, you can deploy Bookinfo, the Istio sample app.
Create the bookinfo namespace in each cluster, and label the workload cluster namespaces for Istio injection so that the services become part of the service mesh.
Deploy Bookinfo with the details, productpage, ratings, reviews-v1, and reviews-v2 services in cluster1.
# deploy bookinfo application components for all versions less than v3
kubectl -n bookinfo apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/istio/istio/1.20.1/samples/bookinfo/platform/kube/bookinfo.yaml -l 'app,version notin (v3)' --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT1
# deploy an updated product page with extra container utilities such as 'curl' and 'netcat'
kubectl -n bookinfo apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/solo-io/gloo-mesh-use-cases/main/policy-demo/productpage-with-curl.yaml
# deploy all bookinfo service accounts --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT1
kubectl -n bookinfo apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/istio/istio/1.20.1/samples/bookinfo/platform/kube/bookinfo.yaml -l 'account' --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT1
Deploy Bookinfo with the ratings and reviews-v3 services in cluster2.
# deploy reviews and ratings services
kubectl -n bookinfo apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/istio/istio/1.20.1/samples/bookinfo/platform/kube/bookinfo.yaml -l 'service in (reviews)' --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT2
# deploy reviews-v3
kubectl -n bookinfo apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/istio/istio/1.20.1/samples/bookinfo/platform/kube/bookinfo.yaml -l 'app in (reviews),version in (v3)' --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT2
# deploy ratings
kubectl -n bookinfo apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/istio/istio/1.20.1/samples/bookinfo/platform/kube/bookinfo.yaml -l 'app in (ratings)' --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT2
# deploy reviews and ratings service accounts
kubectl -n bookinfo apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/istio/istio/1.20.1/samples/bookinfo/platform/kube/bookinfo.yaml -l 'account in (reviews, ratings)' --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT2
Verify that the Bookinfo app deployed successfully.
kubectl get pods -n bookinfo --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT1
kubectl get pods -n bookinfo --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT2
If you already deployed apps that you want to include in the mesh, you can run the following command to add all pods in the service namespace to the ambient mesh.
Use the Gloo UI to evaluate the health and efficiency of your service mesh. You can review the analysis and insights for your service mesh, such as recommendations to harden your Istio environment and steps to implement them in your environment.
Review your Dashboard for an at-a-glance overview of your Gloo Mesh Core environment. Environment insights, health, status, inventories, security, and more are summarized in the following cards:
Analysis and Insights: Gloo Mesh Core recommendations for how to improve your Istio setups.
Gloo and Istio health: A status check of the Gloo Mesh Core and Istio installations in each cluster.
Certificates Expiry: Validity timelines for your root and intermediate Istio certificates.
Cluster Services: Inventory of services across all clusters in your Gloo Mesh Core setup, and whether those services are in a service mesh or not.
Istio FIPS: FIPS compliance checks for the istiod control planes and Istio data plane workloads.
Zero Trust: Number of service mesh workloads that receive only mutual TLS (mTLS)-encrypted traffic, and number of external services that are accessed from the mesh.
Review the insights for your environment. Gloo Mesh Core comes with an insights engine that automatically analyzes your Istio setups for health issues. Then, Gloo shares these issues along with recommendations to harden your Istio setups. The insights give you a checklist to address issues that might otherwise be hard to detect across your environment.
On the Analysis and Insights card of the dashboard, you can quickly see a summary of the insights for your environment, including how many insights are available at each severity level, and the type of insight.
Figure: Insights and analysis card
View the list of insights by clicking the Details button, or go to the Insights page.
On the Insights page, you can view recommendations to harden your Istio setup, and steps to implement them in your environment. Gloo Mesh Core analyzes your setup, and returns individual insights that contain information about errors and warnings in your environment, best practices you can use to improve your configuration and security, and more.
Figure: Insights page
On an insight that you want to resolve, click Details. The details modal shows more data about the insight, such as the time when it was last observed in your environment, and if applicable, the extended settings or configuration that the insight applies to.
Figure: Example insight
Click the Target YAML tab to see the resource file that the insight references, and click the View Resolution Steps tab to see guidance such as steps for fixing warnings and errors in your resource configuration or recommendations for improving your security and setup.
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.