Gloo Mesh 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 customize settings for an advanced Gloo Mesh installation. To learn more about the benefits and architecture, see About.

Before you begin

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

    • helm, the Kubernetes package manager.
    • 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=v2.7.4 sh -
export PATH=$HOME/.gloo-mesh/bin:$PATH

  2. Set your Gloo Mesh 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_LICENSE_KEY} | base64 -w0).

      export GLOO_MESH_LICENSE_KEY=<license_key>

  3. Set the Gloo Mesh version. This example uses the latest version. You can find other versions in the Changelog documentation. Append -fips for a FIPS-compliant image, such as 2.7.4-fips. Do not include v before the version number.

      export GLOO_VERSION=2.7.4

  4. Create or use an existing Kubernetes cluster for a single-cluster setup, or for a multicluster setup, at least two existing Kubernetes clusters. The instructions in this guide assume one management cluster and two workload clusters.

    • The cluster name must be alphanumeric with no special characters except a hyphen (-), lowercase, and begin with a letter (not a number).
  5. Production installations: Review Best practices for production to prepare your optional security measures. For example, before you begin your Gloo installation, you can provide your own certificates to secure the management server and agent connection, and set up secure access to the Gloo UI.

Install Gloo Mesh

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

  1. Save the name of your cluster as an environment variable.

      export CLUSTER_NAME=<cluster_name>

  2. Add and update the Helm repository for Gloo.

      helm repo add gloo-platform https://storage.googleapis.com/gloo-platform/helm-charts
helm repo update

  3. Install the Gloo CRDs.

      helm upgrade -i gloo-platform-crds gloo-platform/gloo-platform-crds \
   --namespace=gloo-mesh \
   --create-namespace \
   --version=$GLOO_VERSION \
   --set installEnterpriseCrds=false

  4. Prepare a Helm values file to provide your customizations. To get started, you can use the minimum settings in the following profile as a basis. These settings enable all components that are required for a single-cluster Gloo Mesh installation.

      curl https://storage.googleapis.com/gloo-platform/helm-profiles/$GLOO_VERSION/gloo-mesh-single-cluster.yaml > gloo-single.yaml
open gloo-single.yaml

  5. Edit the file to provide your own details for settings that are recommended for production deployments, such as the following settings.

    FieldDescription
    glooUi.authSet up OIDC authorization for the Gloo UI. For more information, see UI authentication.
    prometheus.enabledDisable the default Prometheus instance as needed to provide your own. Otherwise, you can keep the default Prometheus server enabled, and deploy a production-level server to scrape metrics from the server. For more information on each option, see Best practices for collecting metrics in production.

  6. Use the customizations in your Helm values file to install the Gloo Mesh components in your cluster.

      helm upgrade -i gloo-platform gloo-platform/gloo-platform \
    -n gloo-mesh \
    --version $GLOO_VERSION \
    --values gloo-single.yaml \
    --set common.cluster=$CLUSTER_NAME \
    --set licensing.glooMeshCoreLicenseKey=$GLOO_MESH_LICENSE_KEY

    1. Elevate the permissions of the gloo-mesh service account that will be created.

        oc adm policy add-scc-to-group anyuid system:serviceaccounts:gloo-mesh --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT

    2. Install Gloo Mesh.

        helm upgrade -i gloo-platform gloo-platform/gloo-platform \
    -n gloo-mesh \
    --version $GLOO_VERSION \
    --values gloo-single.yaml \
    --set common.cluster=$CLUSTER_NAME \
    --set licensing.glooMeshCoreLicenseKey=$GLOO_MESH_LICENSE_KEY \
    --set glooUi.floatingUserId=true

  7. Verify that your Gloo Mesh 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.
      meshctl check

    Example output:

      🟢 License status

INFO  gloo-mesh enterprise license expiration is 25 Aug 26 10:38 CDT

🟢 CRD version check 

🟢 Gloo deployment status

Namespace | Name                           | Ready | Status 
gloo-mesh | gloo-mesh-ui                   | 1/1   | Healthy
gloo-mesh | gloo-telemetry-collector-agent | 3/3   | Healthy
gloo-mesh | prometheus-server              | 1/1   | Healthy

  8. If you have not installed Istio yet, see the guides for installing Istio in sidecar or ambient mode.

Next steps

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

Istio:

Gloo Mesh:

  • Explore insights to review and improve your setup’s health and security posture.
  • When it’s time to upgrade Gloo Mesh, see the upgrade guide.

Help and support: