About the Extension

The AKS Container extension reduces the effort required to deploy Istio in Ambient mode on your AKS cluster. Microsoft Azure validates the extension to ensure seamless compatibility with AKS, giving you confidence in using a secure and stable release. The extension does not require any additional settings or flags, providing a sidecar-less service mesh architecture out of the box.

Your organization might prefer using the extension to comply with internal compliance policies or budgetary requirements.

For more information, refer to the Azure documentation.

Before you begin

  1. Create or use existing AKS clusters. Keep in mind the following points:

    • The cluster must be able to run Istio, such as meeting the performance, and application requirements.
    • The cluster must run on a supported Kubernetes version. You can enable Istio extension on an AKS cluster that runs the corresponding supported version of Kubernetes.
    • AKS Clusters that run on Azure Linux nodes are validated and supported.
    • The cluster name must be alphanumeric with no special characters except a hyphen (-), lowercase, and begin with a letter (not a number).
    • If you plan to use Gloo Mesh, you typically install Istio in data plane clusters that run your workloads. You don’t need to install Istio in the cluster that you plan to use for the Gloo Mesh management plane.

  2. Install any CLI tools that you might need to work with your cluster, such as the following:

    • az, the Azure command line tool.
    • kubectl, the Kubernetes command line tool. Download the kubectl version that is within one minor version of the Kubernetes clusters you plan to use.
    • istioctl, the Istio command line tool. Download the istioctl version that matches the Istio version that you plan to install.

Install the AKS Extension

Install the AKS Extension by using the Azure Portal. For complete AKS Extension instructions, see the Azure documentation.

  1. Open the Azure Portal.

  2. Find the Solo.io extension from the Azure home page or Marketplace.

    In the search bar on the Azure home page, enter ambient.

    Figure: Search for Solo Extension from Azure Portal Home Page
    Figure: Search for Solo Extension from Azure Portal Home Page
    Figure: Search for Solo Extension from Azure Portal Home Page
    Figure: Search for Solo Extension from Azure Portal Home Page

    1. From the Azure home page, click Marketplace.

    2. In the search bar, enter Solo.io Ambient.

      Figure: Search for Solo Extension in Azure Marketplace
      Figure: Search for Solo Extension in Azure Marketplace
      Figure: Search for Solo Extension in Azure Marketplace
      Figure: Search for Solo Extension in Azure Marketplace

  3. Click Istio in Ambient mode (provided by Solo.io), and then click Create.

  4. From the Basics tab, configure the details for an existing or new cluster.

    1. For the Project details, select the Subscription and Resource group that you want to use.

    2. For the Instance details, select the Region that your existing cluster is in, and then select your cluster.

      • Make sure that the Kubernetes version is supported by the Istio version that you plan to install. For supported versions, see the Istio docs.
      Figure: Basics page of AKS Extension
      Figure: Basics page of AKS Extension
      Figure: Basics page of AKS Extension
      Figure: Basics page of AKS Extension

    1. For the Project details, select the Subscription and Resource group that you want to use.

    2. For the Instance details, select the Region that you want to create the cluster in.

    3. Select Yes to create a new dev cluster.

    4. From the Cluster details tab, fill out your desired cluster details.

      • Make sure that the Kubernetes version is supported by the Istio version that you plan to install. For supported versions, see the Istio docs.
      • For the OS, note that the Solo.io extension is certified to run on both AzureLinux (including version 3) and Ubuntu.
      Figure: Cluster Details page of AKS Extension
      Figure: Cluster Details page of AKS Extension
      Figure: Cluster Details page of AKS Extension
      Figure: Cluster Details page of AKS Extension

  5. From the Application Details tab, enter a unique name for the extension. Note that the unique name fulfills an Azure requirement, but is not used by the Solo.io extension (for example, the extension name does not set the name of the Kubernetes deployment of Istio in your cluster).

    Figure: Application Details page of AKS Extension
    Figure: Application Details page of AKS Extension
    Figure: Application Details page of AKS Extension
    Figure: Application Details page of AKS Extension

  6. Click Next or Review + create. Azure begins a validation process.

  7. Review the details, such as the automation template, terms, and extension information that you previously configured. Then, click Create.

    Figure: Review + create page of AKS Extension
    Figure: Review + create page of AKS Extension
    Figure: Review + create page of AKS Extension
    Figure: Review + create page of AKS Extension

  8. Wait as Azure deploys the extension to your AKS cluster (and creates the cluster if you chose to create a new cluster). Azure takes you to the deployment monitoring page. The process takes around 10 minutes.

    Figure: Monitor the deployment progress
    Figure: Monitor the deployment progress
    Figure: Monitor the deployment progress
    Figure: Monitor the deployment progress

Verify your installation

After the AKS deployment is completed, verify that Istio is working.

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

      kubectl get pods -n istio-system

    Example output:

      NAME                      READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
istio-cni-node-c6744      1/1     Running   0          12m
istio-cni-node-xrncb      1/1     Running   0          12m
istiod-678bfd9897-76tth   1/1     Running   0          12m
ztunnel-khprc             1/1     Running   0          12m
ztunnel-v9mg7             1/1     Running   0          12m

  2. Verify that istiod uses the solo-io distribution of Istio.

      kubectl describe pod -n istio-system -l app=istiod | grep -i image:

    Example output: Note solo-io in the image repository.

      Image:         arcmktplaceprod.azurecr.io/sologloo/com.nonmicrosoft.istio/images/pilot@sha256:c8ac4894f2e667eb439d1c960a47ac7fbc80aad3f0adb98f5fd9330d9c515696

Next steps

Now that Istio is installed in your cluster, review the following next steps you can take.

Uninstall the extension

You can uninstall the Istio Ambient extension provided by Solo.io by using the Azure Portal. Keep in mind that this action removes the Istio service mesh from your cluster.

For more information about removing an AKS Extension, see the Azure documentation.

  1. Open the Azure Portal.

  2. Go to the Resource group and then select the AKS cluster where you recently installed the application.

    Figure: Select your AKS cluster
    Figure: Select your AKS cluster
    Figure: Select your AKS cluster
    Figure: Select your AKS cluster

  3. From the service menu, expand Settings and click Extensions + applications

  4. From the list of extensions, select the Solo.io Istio extension

  5. From the action menu, click Uninstall.

    Figure: Uninstall the extension
    Figure: Uninstall the extension
    Figure: Uninstall the extension
    Figure: Uninstall the extension

  6. In your cluster, clean up the istio-system namespace.

      kubectl delete namespace istio-system