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Manually deploy Istio

Use Istio Helm charts to configure and deploy an Istio control plane and gateways in each workload cluster. The deployments are created by using Helm to facilitate future version upgrades. For example, you can fork Istio's existing Helm chart to add it to your existing CI/CD workflow.

For more information about manually deploying Istio, review the following:

This installation guide installs production-level Solo Istio, a hardened Istio enterprise image. For more information, see About Solo Istio.
For information about the namespaces that are used in this guide and other deployment recommendations, see Best practices for Istio in prod.
The east-west gateways in this architecture allow services in one mesh to route cross-cluster traffic to services in the other mesh. If you install Istio into only one cluster for a single-cluster Gloo Mesh setup, the east-west gateway deployment is not required.
For more information about using Istio Helm charts, see the Istio documentation.
For more information about the example resource files that are provided in the following steps, see the GitHub repository for Gloo Mesh Use Cases.

Figure of a production-level deployment architecture

Step 1: Set up tools

Set up the following tools and environment variables.

Save the Istio version information as environment variables.
- For REPO, use a Solo Istio repo key that you can get by logging in to the Support Center and reviewing the Istio images built by Solo.io support article. If you do not have a Solo account or have trouble logging in, contact your account administrator. For more information, see Get the Solo Istio version that you want to use.
- For ISTIO_VERSION, save the Istio version that you want to use. To verify that the version is supported for the Kubernetes or OpenShift version of your workload clusters, see Supported versions.
  Istio versions 1.17 and later do not support the Gloo legacy metrics pipeline. If you run the legacy metrics pipeline, before you upgrade or deploy gateway proxies with Istio 1.17, be sure that you set up the Gloo OpenTelemetry (OTel) pipeline instead in your new or existing Gloo Gateway installation.
- For ISTIO_IMAGE, append the solo tag to the Istio version. The solo tag is required to use many enterprise features. You can optionally append other Solo Istio tags, as described in About Solo Istio.
- For REVISION, take the Istio major and minor version numbers and replace the period with a hyphen. The revision label facilitates canary-based upgrades, which allow you to upgrade the version of the Istio control plane more easily, as documented in the Istio upgrade guide.
```
export REPO=<repo-key>
export ISTIO_VERSION=1.18.2
export ISTIO_IMAGE=1.18.2-solo
export REVISION=1-18-2
```

Install istioctl, the Istio CLI tool.

curl -L https://istio.io/downloadIstio | ISTIO_VERSION=${ISTIO_VERSION} sh -
cd istio-$ISTIO_VERSION
export PATH=$PWD/bin:$PATH

Add and update the Helm repository for Istio.

helm repo add istio https://istio-release.storage.googleapis.com/charts
helm repo update

Step 2: Prepare the cluster environment

Prepare the workload cluster for Istio installation, including installing the Istio custom resource definitions (CRDs).

Save the name and kubeconfig context of a workload cluster in the following environment variables. Each time you repeat the steps in this guide, you change these variables to the next workload cluster's name and context.
```
export CLUSTER_NAME=<remote-cluster>
export REMOTE_CONTEXT=<remote-cluster-context>
```
Ensure that the Istio operator CRD (istiooperators.install.istio.io) is not managed by the Gloo Platform CRD Helm chart.
```
kubectl get crds -A --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT | grep istiooperators.install.istio.io
```
- If the CRD does not exist on your cluster, you disabled it during the Gloo Mesh installation. Continue to the next step.
- If the CRD exists on your cluster, follow these steps to remove the Istio operator CRD from the gloo-platform-crds Helm release:
  1. Update the Helm repository for Gloo Platform.
```
helm repo add gloo-platform https://storage.googleapis.com/gloo-platform/helm-charts
helm repo update
```
  2. Upgrade your gloo-platform-crds Helm release in the workload cluster by including the --set installIstioOperator=false flag.
```
helm upgrade gloo-platform-crds gloo-platform/gloo-platform-crds \
   --kube-context $REMOTE_CONTEXT \
   --namespace=gloo-mesh \
   --set installIstioOperator=false
```

Install the Istio CRDs.

helm upgrade --install istio-base istio/base \
  -n istio-system \
  --version $ISTIO_VERSION \
  --kube-context $REMOTE_CONTEXT \
  --create-namespace

Create the istio-config namespace. This namespace serves as the administrative root namespace for Istio configuration. For more information, see Plan Istio namespaces.
```
kubectl create namespace istio-config --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT
```

OpenShift only: Deploy the Istio CNI plug-in, and elevate the istio-system service account permissions. For more information about using Istio on OpenShift, see the Istio documentation for OpenShift installation.

Install the CNI plug-in, which is required for using Istio in OpenShift.

helm install istio-cni istio/cni \
--namespace kube-system \
--kube-context $REMOTE_CONTEXT \
--version $ISTIO_VERSION \
--set cni.cniBinDir=/var/lib/cni/bin \
--set cni.cniConfDir=/etc/cni/multus/net.d \
--set cni.cniConfFileName="istio-cni.conf" \
--set cni.chained=false \
--set cni.privileged=true

Elevate the permissions of the following service accounts. These permissions allow the Istio sidecars to make use of a user ID that is normally restricted by OpenShift.

oc adm policy add-scc-to-group anyuid system:serviceaccounts:istio-system --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT
oc adm policy add-scc-to-group anyuid system:serviceaccounts:istio-config --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT
oc adm policy add-scc-to-group anyuid system:serviceaccounts:istio-ingress --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT
oc adm policy add-scc-to-group anyuid system:serviceaccounts:istio-eastwest --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT

Create a NetworkAttachmentDefinition custom resource for the gloo-mesh-gateways project.

cat <<EOF | oc create -n gloo-mesh-gateways --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT -f -
apiVersion: "k8s.cni.cncf.io/v1"
kind: NetworkAttachmentDefinition
metadata:
  name: istio-cni
EOF

  If you plan to create the Istio gateways in a different namespace, such as `istio-ingress` or `istio-gateways`, make sure to create the NetworkAttachmentDefinition in that namespace instead.

Step 3: Deploy the Istio control plane

Deploy an Istio control plane in your workload cluster. The provided Helm values files are configured with production-level settings; however, depending on your environment, you might need to edit settings to achieve specific Istio functionality.

Prepare a Helm values file for the istiod control plane. You can further edit the file to provide your own details for production-level settings.
1. Download an example file, istiod.yaml, and update the environment variables with the values that you previously set.
```
curl -0L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/solo-io/gloo-mesh-use-cases/main/gloo-mesh/istio-install/manual-helm/istiod.yaml > istiod.yaml
envsubst < istiod.yaml > istiod-values.yaml
```
2. Optional: Trust domain validation is disabled by default in the profile that you downloaded in the previous step. If you have a multicluster mesh setup and you want to enable trust domain validation, add all the clusters that are part of your mesh in the meshConfig.trustDomainAliases field, excluding the cluster that you currently prepare for the istiod installation. For example, let's say you have 3 clusters that belong to your mesh: cluster1, cluster2, and cluster3. When you install istiod in cluster1, you set the following values for your trust domain:
```
      ...
      meshConfig:
        trustDomain: cluster1
        trustDomainAliases: ["cluster2","cluster3"]
      
```
  Then, when you move on to install istiod in cluster2, you set trustDomain: cluster2 and trustDomainAliases: ["cluster1","cluster3"]. You repeat this step for all the clusters that belong to your service mesh. Note that as you add or delete clusters from your service mesh, you must make sure that you update the trustDomainAliases field for all of the clusters.

Create the istiod control plane in your cluster.

helm upgrade --install istiod-$REVISION istio/istiod \
  --version $ISTIO_VERSION \
  --namespace istio-system \
  --kube-context $REMOTE_CONTEXT \
  --wait \
  -f istiod-values.yaml

After the installation is complete, verify that the Istio control plane pods are running.

kubectl get pods -n istio-system --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT

Example output for 2 replicas:

NAME                            READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
istiod-1-18-2-7b96cb895-4nzv9   1/1     Running   0          30s
istiod-1-18-2-7b96cb895-r7l8k   1/1     Running   0          30s

Step 4 (multicluster setups): Deploy the Istio east-west gateway

If you have a multicluster Gloo Mesh setup, deploy an Istio east-west gateway into each workload cluster. An east-west gateway lets services in one mesh communicate with services in another.

Prepare a Helm values file for the Istio east-west gateway. This sample command downloads an example file, eastwest-gateway.yaml, and updates the environment variables with the values that you previously set. You can further edit the file to provide your own details for production-level settings.
```
curl -0L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/solo-io/gloo-mesh-use-cases/main/gloo-mesh/istio-install/manual-helm/eastwest-gateway.yaml > eastwest-gateway.yaml
envsubst < eastwest-gateway.yaml > eastwest-gateway-values.yaml
```

Create the east-west gateway.

helm upgrade --install istio-eastwestgateway-$REVISION istio/gateway \
  --version $ISTIO_VERSION \
  --create-namespace \
  --namespace istio-eastwest \
  --kube-context $REMOTE_CONTEXT \
  --wait \
  -f eastwest-gateway-values.yaml

Verify that the east-west gateway pods are running and the load balancer service is assigned an external address.

kubectl get pods -n istio-eastwest --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT
kubectl get svc -n istio-eastwest --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT

Example output:

NAME                                          READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
istio-eastwestgateway-1-18-2-7f6f8f7fc7-ncrzq   1/1     Running   0          11s
istio-eastwestgateway-1-18-2-7f6f8f7fc7-ncrzq   1/1     Running   0          48s
NAME                               TYPE           CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)                                                                                                      AGE
istio-eastwestgateway-1-18-2       LoadBalancer   10.96.166.166   <externalip>  15021:32343/TCP,80:31685/TCP,443:30877/TCP,31400:31030/TCP,15443:31507/TCP,15012:30668/TCP,15017:30812/TCP   13s

AWS clusters only: For the Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) instance that is automatically created for you to back the east-west gateway service, verify that the health check shows a healthy state. Gloo Mesh configures the east-west 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 Mesh configures. For your ELB health check to pass, you might need to configure the load balancer to run the health check on port 15443.

Step 5 (optional): Deploy the Istio ingress gateway

If you have a Gloo Gateway license, deploy an Istio ingress gateway to allow incoming traffic requests to your Istio-managed apps.

Prepare a Helm values file for the Istio ingress gateway. This sample command downloads an example file, ingress-gateway.yaml, and updates the environment variables with the values that you previously set. You can further edit the file to provide your own details for production-level settings.
```
curl -0L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/solo-io/gloo-mesh-use-cases/main/gloo-mesh/istio-install/manual-helm/ingress-gateway.yaml > ingress-gateway.yaml
envsubst < ingress-gateway.yaml > ingress-gateway-values.yaml
```

Create the ingress gateway.

helm upgrade --install istio-ingressgateway-$REVISION istio/gateway \
  --version $ISTIO_VERSION \
  --create-namespace \
  --namespace istio-ingress \
  --kube-context $REMOTE_CONTEXT \
  --wait \
  -f ingress-gateway-values.yaml

Verify that the ingress gateway pods are running and the load balancer service is assigned an external address.

kubectl get pods -n istio-ingress --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT
kubectl get svc -n istio-ingress --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT

Example output:

NAME                                         READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
istio-ingressgateway-1-18-2-665d46686f-nhh52   1/1     Running   0          106s
istio-ingressgateway-1-18-2-665d46686f-tlp5j   1/1     Running   0          2m1s
NAME                               TYPE           CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)                                                                                                      AGE
istio-ingressgateway-1-18-2        LoadBalancer   10.96.252.49    <externalip>  15021:32378/TCP,80:30315/TCP,443:32186/TCP,31400:30313/TCP,15443:31632/TCP                                   2m2s

AWS clusters only: 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 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 Mesh 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 load balancer by using an OpenShift route.

oc -n istio-ingress expose svc istio-ingressgateway-1-18-2 --port=http2 --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT

Step 6 (multicluster setups): Repeat steps 2 - 5

If you have a multicluster Gloo Mesh setup, repeat steps 2 - 5 for each workload cluster that you want to install Istio on. Remember to change the cluster name and context variables each time you repeat the steps.

export CLUSTER_NAME=<remote-cluster>
export REMOTE_CONTEXT=<remote-cluster-context>

Step 6: Deploy workloads

Now that Istio is up and running on all your workload clusters, you can create service namespaces for your teams to run app workloads in.

OpenShift only: In each workload project, create a NetworkAttachmentDefinition and elevate the service account.
1. Create a NetworkAttachmentDefinition custom resource for each project where you want to deploy workloads, such as the bookinfo project.
```
cat <<EOF | oc -n bookinfo --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT create -f -
apiVersion: "k8s.cni.cncf.io/v1"
kind: NetworkAttachmentDefinition
metadata:
  name: istio-cni
EOF
```
2. Elevate the permissions of the service account in each project where you want to deploy workloads, such as the bookinfo project. This permission allows the Istio sidecars to make use of a user ID that is normally restricted by OpenShift.
```
oc adm policy add-scc-to-group anyuid system:serviceaccounts:bookinfo --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT
```
For any workload namespace, such as bookinfo, label the namespace with the revision so that Istio sidecars are deployed to your app pods.
```
kubectl label ns bookinfo istio.io/rev=$REVISION --overwrite --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT
```
Deploy apps and services to your workload namespaces. For example, you might start out with the Bookinfo sample application for multicluster or single cluster environments. Those steps guide you through creating workspaces for your workloads, deploying Bookinfo across workload clusters, and using ingress and east-west gateways to shift traffic across clusters.

Next steps

If you haven't already, install Gloo Mesh Enterprise so that Gloo Mesh can manage your Istio service mesh resources. You don't need to directly configure any Istio resources going forward.
Review how Gloo Mesh custom resources are automatically translated into Istio resources.
Try out the Policies for steps to secure, observe, and control network traffic.