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Installing Istio Multicluster

We can use istioctl CLI to easily install Istio in our registered cluster. You can find istioctl on the Getting Started page of the Istio site. Currently, Gloo Mesh supports Istio versions 1.7, 1.8, and 1.9.

Be sure to review the assumptions and satisfy the pre-requisites from the Guides top-level document. If you used the meshctl demo init command, Istio has already been installed for you.

Gloo Mesh Enterprise users may be interested in installing Gloo Mesh Istio.

Istio versions 1.8.0, 1.8.1, and 1.8.2 have a known issue where sidecar proxies may fail to start under specific circumstances. This bug may surface in sidecars configured by Failover Services. This issue is resolved in Istio 1.8.3.

In this guide we will walk you through two options for installing Istio for use with Gloo Mesh in a single cluster and multi-cluster setting. The instructions here are for reference only, and your installation process for Istio will likely be different depending on your organization's policies and procedures.

Istio quick install (single cluster)

An easy way to get up and running quickly with Istio (but insufficient for a multi-cluster demo) is by installing Istio in its “demo” profile (profile documentation). Using the Istio command line tool, the command is as follows:

istioctl install --set profile=demo

This will NOT install Istio suitable for a multi-cluster installation. For a correct multi-cluster installation, see the next section.

Istio quick install (multi cluster)

For following some of the Gloo Mesh guides, we assume two clusters with Istio installed for multi-cluster communication across both of them.

We will install Istio with a suitable configuration for a multi-cluster demonstration by overriding some of the Istio Operator values.

Let's install Istio into both clusters. The configuration below assumes that you are using the Kind clusters created in the Setup guide. The contexts for those clusters should be kind-cluster-1 and kind-cluster-2. Both clusters are using a NodePort to expose the ingress gateway for Istio. If you are deploying Istio on different cluster setup, update your context and gateway settings accordingly.

The manifest for Istio 1.7 is different from other versions, so be sure to select the correct tab for the version of Istio you plan to install. The manifests below were tested using Istio 1.7.3, 1.8.3, and 1.9.0.

Before running the following, make sure your context names are set as environment variables:

MGMT_CONTEXT=your_context_with_gloo_mesh_installed
REMOTE_CONTEXT=your_other_context


cat << EOF | istioctl manifest install -y --context $MGMT_CONTEXT -f -
apiVersion: install.istio.io/v1alpha1
kind: IstioOperator
metadata:
  name: example-istiooperator
  namespace: istio-system
spec:
  profile: minimal
  meshConfig:
    enableAutoMtls: true
    defaultConfig:
      proxyMetadata:
        # Enable Istio agent to handle DNS requests for known hosts
        # Unknown hosts will automatically be resolved using upstream dns servers in resolv.conf
        ISTIO_META_DNS_CAPTURE: "true"
  components:
    # Istio Gateway feature
    ingressGateways:
    - name: istio-ingressgateway
      enabled: true
      k8s:
        env:
          - name: ISTIO_META_ROUTER_MODE
            value: "sni-dnat"
        service:
          type: NodePort
          ports:
            - port: 80
              targetPort: 8080
              name: http2
            - port: 443
              targetPort: 8443
              name: https
            - port: 15443
              targetPort: 15443
              name: tls
              nodePort: 32001
  values:
    global:
      pilotCertProvider: istiod
EOF


cat << EOF | istioctl manifest install --context $MGMT_CONTEXT -f -
apiVersion: install.istio.io/v1alpha1
kind: IstioOperator
metadata:
  name: mgmt-plane-istiooperator
  namespace: istio-system
spec:
  profile: minimal
  addonComponents:
    istiocoredns:
      enabled: true
  components:
    # Istio Gateway feature
    ingressGateways:
    - name: istio-ingressgateway
      enabled: true
      k8s:
        env:
          - name: ISTIO_META_ROUTER_MODE
            value: "sni-dnat"
        service:
          ports:
            - port: 80
              targetPort: 8080
              name: http2
            - port: 443
              targetPort: 8443
              name: https
            - port: 15443
              targetPort: 15443
              name: tls
              nodePort: 32001
  meshConfig:
    enableAutoMtls: true
  values:
    prometheus:
      enabled: false
    gateways:
      istio-ingressgateway:
        type: NodePort
        ports:
          - targetPort: 15443
            name: tls
            nodePort: 32001
            port: 15443
    global:
      pilotCertProvider: istiod
      controlPlaneSecurityEnabled: true
      podDNSSearchNamespaces:
      - global
EOF

Remote cluster install

Istio 1.8 and Istio 1.9
Istio 1.7


cat << EOF | istioctl manifest install -y --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT -f -
apiVersion: install.istio.io/v1alpha1
kind: IstioOperator
metadata:
  name: example-istiooperator
  namespace: istio-system
spec:
  profile: minimal
  meshConfig:
    enableAutoMtls: true
    defaultConfig:
      proxyMetadata:
        # Enable Istio agent to handle DNS requests for known hosts
        # Unknown hosts will automatically be resolved using upstream dns servers in resolv.conf
        ISTIO_META_DNS_CAPTURE: "true"
  components:
    # Istio Gateway feature
    ingressGateways:
    - name: istio-ingressgateway
      enabled: true
      k8s:
        env:
          - name: ISTIO_META_ROUTER_MODE
            value: "sni-dnat"
        service:
          type: NodePort
          ports:
            - port: 80
              targetPort: 8080
              name: http2
            - port: 443
              targetPort: 8443
              name: https
            - port: 15443
              targetPort: 15443
              name: tls
              nodePort: 32000
  values:
    global:
      pilotCertProvider: istiod
EOF


cat << EOF | istioctl manifest install --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT -f -
apiVersion: install.istio.io/v1alpha1
kind: IstioOperator
metadata:
  name: remote-cluster-istiooperator
  namespace: istio-system
spec:
  profile: minimal
  addonComponents:
    istiocoredns:
      enabled: true
  components:
    # Istio Gateway feature
    ingressGateways:
    - name: istio-ingressgateway
      enabled: true
      k8s:
        env:
          - name: ISTIO_META_ROUTER_MODE
            value: "sni-dnat"
        service:
          ports:
            - port: 80
              targetPort: 8080
              name: http2
            - port: 443
              targetPort: 8443
              name: https
            - port: 15443
              targetPort: 15443
              name: tls
              nodePort: 32000
  meshConfig:
    enableAutoMtls: true
  values:
    prometheus:
      enabled: false
    gateways:
      istio-ingressgateway:
        type: NodePort
        ports:
          - targetPort: 15443
            name: tls
            nodePort: 32000
            port: 15443
    global:
      pilotCertProvider: istiod
      controlPlaneSecurityEnabled: true
      podDNSSearchNamespaces:
      - global
EOF

With Gloo Mesh and Istio installed into cluster-1, and Istio installed into cluster-2, we have an architecture that looks like this:

Gloo Mesh Architecture

When the Istio Operator has finished the installation (can take up to 90 seconds), you should see the Istio control plane pods running successfully:

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

NAME                                    READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
istio-ingressgateway-746d597f7c-g6whv   1/1     Running   0          5d23h
istiod-7795ccf9dc-vr4cq                 1/1     Running   0          5d22h

The following section of the doc describes how to modify coredns to enable Istio DNS for the .global stub domain. This is not necessary when running Istio > 1.8.x with Istio's new Smart DNS enabled. More information on this new DNS can be found in the following blog post. If you have installed Istio using the operator specs outlined above, this new DNS will be enabled by default.

When running Istio < 1.8.x, or when not using Istio DNS, the following changes add the .global stub domain for multicluster communication. The following two blocks will enable Istio DNS for both clusters.

ISTIO_COREDNS=$(kubectl --context $MGMT_CONTEXT -n istio-system get svc istiocoredns -o jsonpath={.spec.clusterIP})
kubectl --context $MGMT_CONTEXT apply -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: v1
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
  name: coredns
  namespace: kube-system
data:
  Corefile: |
    .:53 {
        errors
        health
        ready
        kubernetes cluster.local in-addr.arpa ip6.arpa {
           pods insecure
           upstream
           fallthrough in-addr.arpa ip6.arpa
        }
        prometheus :9153
        forward . /etc/resolv.conf
        cache 30
        loop
        reload
        loadbalance
    }
    global:53 {
        errors
        cache 30
        forward . ${ISTIO_COREDNS}:53
    }
EOF

ISTIO_COREDNS=$(kubectl --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT -n istio-system get svc istiocoredns -o jsonpath={.spec.clusterIP})
kubectl --context $REMOTE_CONTEXT apply -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: v1
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
  name: coredns
  namespace: kube-system
data:
  Corefile: |
    .:53 {
        errors
        health
        ready
        kubernetes cluster.local in-addr.arpa ip6.arpa {
           pods insecure
           upstream
           fallthrough in-addr.arpa ip6.arpa
        }
        prometheus :9153
        forward . /etc/resolv.conf
        cache 30
        loop
        reload
        loadbalance
    }
    global:53 {
        errors
        cache 30
        forward . ${ISTIO_COREDNS}:53
    }
EOF

Next steps

Now that we have Istio and Gloo Mesh installed (and appropriate clusters registered), we can continue to explore the discovery capabilities of Gloo Mesh.