Gloo Mesh Core deploys alongside your Istio installation in a single-cluster environment, and gives you instant insights into your Istio service mesh 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.

Before you begin

  1. Install the following command-line (CLI) tools.

    • kubectl, the Kubernetes command line tool. Download the kubectl version that is within one minor version of the Kubernetes clusters you plan to use.
    • meshctl, the Solo command line tool.
        curl -sL https://run.solo.io/meshctl/install | GLOO_MESH_VERSION=v2.7.0-beta1 sh -
export PATH=$HOME/.gloo-mesh/bin:$PATH

  2. Create or use an existing Kubernetes cluster, and save the cluster name in an environment variable.

    • The cluster name must be alphanumeric with no special characters except a hyphen (-), lowercase, and begin with a letter (not a number).
      export CLUSTER_NAME=<cluster_name>

  3. 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).

      export GLOO_MESH_CORE_LICENSE_KEY=<license_key>

Install Gloo Mesh Core

Install all Gloo Mesh Core components in the same cluster as your Istio service mesh.

  1. Install Gloo Mesh Core in your cluster. This command uses a basic profile to create a gloo-mesh namespace and install the Gloo control and data plane components. For more information, check out the CLI install profiles.

      meshctl install --profiles gloo-core-single-cluster \
  --set common.cluster=$CLUSTER_NAME \
  --set licensing.glooMeshCoreLicenseKey=$GLOO_MESH_CORE_LICENSE_KEY

  2. 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 license is 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 Gloo agent is running and connected to the management server.
      meshctl check

    Example output:

      🟢 License status

INFO  gloo-mesh-core enterprise license expiration is 25 Aug 24 10:38 CDT

🟢 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 | prometheus-server              | 1/1   | Healthy

🟢 Mgmt server connectivity to workload agents

Cluster | Registered | Connected Pod                                   
test    | true       | gloo-mesh/gloo-mesh-mgmt-server-558cddbbd7-rf2hv

Connected Pod                                    | Clusters
gloo-mesh/gloo-mesh-mgmt-server-558cddbbd7-rf2hv | 1

Deploy Istio

Check whether an Istio control plane already exists.

  kubectl get pods -n istio-system
  • If an istiod pod exists, such as in this example output, you already installed an Istio control plane. Continue to the next step.
      NAME                            READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
istiod-1-24-b65676555-g2vmr     1/1     Running   0          57s
  • If no istiod pod exists, you can use Gloo Mesh Core to quickly install and manage a service mesh 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.

    1. 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.

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

    2. 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:

        envsubst < gs-ilm-glm.yaml > gs-ilm-glm-values.yaml

    3. Apply the IstioLifecycleManager and GatewayLifecycleManager CRs to your cluster.

        kubectl apply -f gs-ilm-glm-values.yaml

    4. Verify that the istiod pod has a status of Running.

        kubectl get pods -n istio-system

      Example output:

        NAME                            READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
istiod-1-24-b65676555-g2vmr     1/1     Running   0          47s

    5. Verify that the ingress gateway pod has a status of Running and that the load balancer service has an external address.

        kubectl get pods,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

    Simplify your service mesh with a sidecarless approach by installing Istio in ambient mode. For more information, see About ambient mesh.

    1. Save the repository for the Solo distribution of Istio 1.22. You can find this value in the Istio images built by Solo.io support article.

        export REPO=<repo-key>

    2. If you use Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) clusters, create the following ResourceQuota in the istio-system namespace. For more information about this requirement, see the community Istio documentation.

        kubectl create namespace istio-system
kubectl -n istio-system apply -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: v1
kind: ResourceQuota
metadata:
  name: gcp-critical-pods
  namespace: istio-system
spec:
  hard:
    pods: 1000
  scopeSelector:
    matchExpressions:
    - operator: In
      scopeName: PriorityClass
      values:
      - system-node-critical
EOF

    3. Apply the following resource, 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.

        kubectl apply -f- <<EOF
apiVersion: admin.gloo.solo.io/v2
kind: IstioLifecycleManager
metadata:
  name: istiod-control-plane
  namespace: gloo-mesh
spec:
  installations:
    - clusters:
        - name: $CLUSTER_NAME
      istioOperatorSpec:
        hub: $REPO
        tag: 1.23.3-solo
        profile: ambient
        components:
          cni:
            namespace: istio-system
            enabled: true
        values:
          ztunnel:
            env:
              L7_ENABLED: true
---
apiVersion: admin.gloo.solo.io/v2
kind: GatewayLifecycleManager
metadata:
  name: istio-ingressgateway
  namespace: gloo-mesh
spec:
  installations:
    - clusters:
        - name: $CLUSTER_NAME
      istioOperatorSpec:
        hub: $REPO
        tag: 1.23.3-solo
        profile: empty
        components:
          ingressGateways:
          - enabled: true
            k8s:
              service:
                ports:
                  # Port for health checks on path /healthz/ready.
                  # For AWS ELBs, must be listed as the first port
                  - name: status-port
                    port: 15021
                    targetPort: 15021
                  - name: http2
                    port: 80
                    targetPort: 8080
                  - name: https
                    port: 443
                    targetPort: 8443
                  - name: tls
                    port: 15443
                    targetPort: 15443
                selector:
                  istio: ingressgateway
                type: LoadBalancer
            label:
              app: istio-ingressgateway
              istio: ingressgateway
            name: istio-ingressgateway
            namespace: gloo-mesh-gateways   
EOF

    4. 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 | grep istio

      Example output:

        istio-ingressgateway-665d46686f-nhh52   1/1     Running   0          106s
istio-cni-node-6q26l                    1/1     Running   0          1m43s
istio-cni-node-7gg8k                    1/1     Running   0          1m43s
istio-cni-node-lcrcd                    1/1     Running   0          1m43s
istiod-d765ff7cf-46dbm                  1/1     Running   0          2m4s
ztunnel-648wc                           1/1     Running   0          2m8s
ztunnel-6rhp5                           1/1     Running   0          2m8s
ztunnel-hllxg                           1/1     Running   0          2m8s

    5. Verify that the load balancer service for the ingress gateway has an external address.

        kubectl get svc -n gloo-mesh-gateways

      Example output:

        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

Deploy a sample app

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 namespace for Istio sidecar injection.

  kubectl label ns <namespace> istio-injection=enabled

If you don’t have any apps yet, you can deploy Bookinfo, the Istio sample app.

  1. Create the bookinfo namespace and label it for Istio injection so that the services become part of the service mesh.
      kubectl create ns bookinfo
kubectl label ns bookinfo istio-injection=enabled
  2. Deploy the Bookinfo app.
      # deploy bookinfo application components for all versions less than v3
kubectl -n bookinfo apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/istio/istio/1.24.1/samples/bookinfo/platform/kube/bookinfo.yaml -l 'app,version notin (v3)'
# 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
kubectl -n bookinfo apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/istio/istio/1.24.1/samples/bookinfo/platform/kube/bookinfo.yaml -l 'account'
  3. Verify that the Bookinfo app deployed successfully.
      kubectl get pods -n bookinfo
kubectl get svc -n bookinfo

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.

  kubectl label ns <namespace> istio.io/dataplane-mode=ambient

If you don’t have any apps yet, you can deploy Bookinfo, the Istio sample app.

  1. Create the bookinfo namespace and label it so that the services become part of the ambient service mesh.
      kubectl create ns bookinfo
kubectl label ns bookinfo istio.io/dataplane-mode=ambient
  2. Deploy the Bookinfo app.
      # deploy bookinfo application components for all versions less than v3
kubectl -n bookinfo apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/istio/istio/1.24.1/samples/bookinfo/platform/kube/bookinfo.yaml -l 'app,version notin (v3)'
# 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
kubectl -n bookinfo apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/istio/istio/1.24.1/samples/bookinfo/platform/kube/bookinfo.yaml -l 'account'
  3. Verify that the Bookinfo app deployed successfully.
      kubectl get pods -n bookinfo
kubectl get svc -n bookinfo

Explore the UI

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.

Launch the dashboard

  1. Open the Gloo UI. The Gloo UI is served from the gloo-mesh-ui service on port 8090. You can connect by using the meshctl or kubectl CLIs.

    • meshctl: For more information, see the CLI documentation.
        meshctl dashboard
    • kubectl:
      1. Port-forward the gloo-mesh-ui service on 8090.
          kubectl port-forward -n gloo-mesh svc/gloo-mesh-ui 8090:8090
      2. Open your browser and connect to http://localhost:8090.

  2. 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 setup.
    • Gloo and Istio health: A status check of the Gloo Mesh Core and Istio installations in your cluster.
    • Certificates Expiry: Validity timelines for your root and intermediate Istio certificates.
    • Cluster Services: Inventory of services 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 plane 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.


    Figure: Gloo UI dashboard
    Figure: Gloo UI dashboard
    Figure: Gloo UI dashboard
    Figure: Gloo UI dashboard

Check insights

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.

  1. 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
    Figure: Insights and analysis card
    Figure: Insights and analysis card
    Figure: Insights and analysis card

  2. View the list of insights by clicking the Details button, or go to the Insights page.

  3. 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
    Figure: Insights page
    Figure: Insights page
    Figure: Insights page

  4. 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
    Figure: Example insight
Figure: Example insight
Figure: Example insight
  1. 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.

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:

Gloo Mesh Core:

  • Customize your Gloo Mesh Core installation with a Helm-based setup.
    • Explore insights to review and improve your setup’s health and security posture.
    • When it’s time to upgrade Gloo Mesh Core, see the upgrade guide.

    Help and support:

    Cleanup

    If you no longer need this quick-start Gloo Mesh Core environment, you can follow the steps in the uninstall guide.