For the complete documentation index, see llms.txt. Markdown versions of all docs pages are available by appending .md to any docs URL.
Istiod environment variables
Review the environment variables that you can set on the istiod control plane to configure features and behavior.
The istiod control plane reads the following environment variables at startup. You can use these variables to configure features and tune performance behavior.
Solo
These environment variables are specific to Solo Enterprise for Istio and are not available in upstream Istio.
| Variable | Type | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
DISABLE_LEGACY_MULTICLUSTER | bool | false | If enabled, cross-cluster service discovery can ONLY be done via peering. Remote secrets will be ignored. |
ENABLE_AMBIENT_ENVOYFILTER | bool | true | If true, ambient waypoints will support EnvoyFilter API. |
ENABLE_AMBIENT_ENVOY_MULTI_NETWORK | bool | false | If enabled, ambient multi-network mode will work for Envoy based data-planes (Sidecar, Gateway, Waypoint). |
ENABLE_PEERING_DISCOVERY | bool | false | If enabled, cross-cluster service discovery will be done via peering. |
ENABLE_PEERING_LABEL_PROPAGATION | string | "" | If enabled, matching label keys on the source k8s resource are propagated to the corresponding auto-generated WorkloadEntries. This includes global Services and for flat-networking setups, pods. Alternatively, the keyword ‘all’ can be specified to propagate all labels.Format: <label key 1>,<label key 2> |
ENABLE_SERVICE_INHERITANCE | bool | false | If enabled, policies that target or have a parent to a Service will also include the Global Service. |
ENABLE_WAYPOINT_INTEROP | bool | false | If true, sidecars will short-circuit all processing and connect directly to a waypoint if the destination service has a waypoint. |
PERMIT_CROSS_NAMESPACE_RESOURCE_ACCESS | string | "" | If enabled, cross-namespace resource access will be allowed for the given proxies. Format: namespace1/proxy1,namespace2/proxy2,namespace3/proxy3 |
PILOT_PEERING_WE_EXCLUSION_LABELS | string | "gloo.solo.io/parent_name" | Comma-separated label keys. WorkloadEntries carrying any of these keys will never be selected by peering-generated ServiceEntries. Defaults to excluding any WEs with the gloo.solo.io/parent_name label. |
Ambient
| Variable | Type | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
AMBIENT_ENABLE_BAGGAGE | bool | false | If true, enables waypoints to use baggage header to discover and propagate peer metadata for metrics. |
AMBIENT_ENABLE_DRY_RUN_AUTHORIZATION_POLICY | bool | false | If enabled, ztunnel will be configured with dry-run authorizationPolicies. Ensure ztunnel is 1.29 or above before enabling this feature. Older ztunnel will accept dry-run policies, but enforce them instead of only logging. |
AMBIENT_ENABLE_MULTI_NETWORK | bool | false | If true, the multi-network functionality will be enabled. |
AMBIENT_ENABLE_MULTI_NETWORK_INGRESS | bool | false | If true and AMBIENT_ENABLE_MULTI_NETWORK is also true, it will enable ingress gateways to route requests to clusters on remote networks while by default ingress gateways will keep traffic local. |
AMBIENT_ENABLE_MULTI_NETWORK_WAYPOINT | bool | true | If true and AMBIENT_ENABLE_MULTI_NETWORK is also true, it will enable waypoints to route requests to clusters on remote networks, while by default waypoints will keep traffic local. |
AMBIENT_ENABLE_STATUS | bool | true | If enabled, status messages for ambient mode will be written to resources. Currently, this does not do leader election, so may be unsafe to enable with multiple replicas. |
AMBIENT_SCOPED_ADDRESS_PUSHES | bool | true | If enabled, ambient Address updates only trigger pushes for waypoints whose attached services or workloads changed, and are skipped entirely for sidecar and gateway proxies. If disabled, every Address update triggers a full LDS/CDS/EDS push to all waypoints and an RDS push to all proxies. |
ENABLE_INGRESS_WAYPOINT_ROUTING | bool | true | If true, Gateways will call service waypoints if the ‘istio.io/ingress-use-waypoint’ label set on the Service. |
ENABLE_LAYERED_WAYPOINT_AUTHORIZATION_POLICIES | bool | false | If enabled, selector based authorization policies will be enforced as L4 policies in front of the waypoint. |
PILOT_AUTO_ALLOW_WAYPOINT_POLICY | bool | false | If enabled, zTunnel will receive synthetic authorization policies for each workload ALLOW the Waypoint’s identity. Unless other ALLOW policies are created, this effectively denies traffic that doesn’t go through the waypoint. |
PILOT_ENABLE_AMBIENT | bool | false | If enabled, ambient mode can be used. Individual flags configure fine grained enablement; this must be enabled for any ambient functionality. |
PILOT_ENABLE_AMBIENT_WAYPOINTS | bool | true | If enabled, controllers required for ambient will run. This is required to run ambient mesh. |
PILOT_ENABLE_SENDING_HBONE | bool | true | If enabled, HBONE will be allowed when sending to destinations. |
PILOT_ENABLE_SIDECAR_LISTENING_HBONE | bool | true | If enabled, HBONE support can be configured for proxies. |
PILOT_HBONE_INITIAL_CONNECTION_WINDOW_SIZE | uint32 | 0 | Sets the HTTP/2 initial_connection_window_size on HBONE CONNECT upstream clusters generated for waypoints and east-west gateways. If 0 (the default), the field is left unset so Envoy’s built-in default applies. |
PILOT_HBONE_INITIAL_STREAM_WINDOW_SIZE | uint32 | 0 | Sets the HTTP/2 initial_stream_window_size on HBONE CONNECT upstream clusters generated for waypoints and east-west gateways. If 0 (the default), the field is left unset so Envoy’s built-in default applies. |
PILOT_PREFER_SENDING_HBONE | bool | false | If enabled, HBONE will be preferred when sending to destinations. |
Experimental
| Variable | Type | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
ENABLE_100_CONTINUE_HEADERS | bool | true | If enabled, istiod will proxy 100-continue headers as is |
ENABLE_ENHANCED_DESTINATIONRULE_MERGE | bool | true | If enabled, Istio merge destinationrules considering their exportTo fields, they will be kept as independent rules if the exportTos are not equal. |
ENABLE_GATEWAY_API_INFERENCE_EXTENSION | bool | false | If true, support gateway inference extension routing apis |
ENABLE_HCM_INTERNAL_NETWORKS | bool | false | If enable, endpoints defined in mesh networks will be configured as internal addresses in Http Connection Manager |
ENABLE_LEADER_ELECTION | bool | true | If enabled (default), starts a leader election client and gains leadership before executing controllers. If false, it assumes that only one instance of istiod is running and skips leader election. |
ENABLE_LOCALITY_WEIGHTED_LB_CONFIG | bool | false | If enabled, always set LocalityWeightedLbConfig for a cluster, otherwise only apply it when locality lb is specified by DestinationRule for a service |
ENABLE_MCS_AUTO_EXPORT | bool | false | If enabled, istiod will automatically generate Kubernetes Multi-Cluster Services (MCS) ServiceExport resources for every service in the mesh. Services defined to be cluster-local in MeshConfig are excluded. |
ENABLE_MCS_CLUSTER_LOCAL | bool | false | If enabled, istiod will treat the host <svc>.<namespace>.svc.cluster.local as defined by the Kubernetes Multi-Cluster Services (MCS) spec. In this mode, requests to cluster.local will be routed to only those endpoints residing within the same cluster as the client. Requires that both ENABLE_MCS_SERVICE_DISCOVERY and ENABLE_MCS_HOST also be enabled. |
ENABLE_MCS_HOST | bool | false | If enabled, istiod will configure a Kubernetes Multi-Cluster Services (MCS) host ( |
ENABLE_MCS_SERVICE_DISCOVERY | bool | false | If enabled, istiod will enable Kubernetes Multi-Cluster Services (MCS) service discovery mode. In this mode, service endpoints in a cluster will only be discoverable within the same cluster unless explicitly exported via ServiceExport. |
ENABLE_TLS_ON_SIDECAR_INGRESS | bool | false | If enabled, the TLS configuration on Sidecar.ingress will take effect |
ENABLE_WILDCARD_HOST_SERVICE_ENTRIES_FOR_TLS | bool | false | If enabled, ServiceEntries with wildcard hosts and dynamic dns resolution will be allowed for TLS traffic. This is a security risk, susceptible to SNI spoofing, and should be used with caution. Only consider using this feature if the client is trusted and you understand the risks. |
ENVOY_STATUS_PORT_ENABLE_PROXY_PROTOCOL | bool | false | If enabled, Envoy will support requests with proxy protocol on its status port |
ISTIO_DELTA_XDS | bool | true | If enabled, pilot will only send the delta configs as opposed to the state of the world configuration on a Resource Request. While this feature uses the delta xds api, it may still occasionally send unchanged configurations instead of just the actual deltas. |
ISTIO_DUAL_STACK | bool | false | If true, Istio will enable the Dual Stack feature. |
MCS_API_GROUP | string | "multicluster.x-k8s.io" | The group to be used for the Kubernetes Multi-Cluster Services (MCS) API. |
MCS_API_VERSION | string | "v1alpha1" | The version to be used for the Kubernetes Multi-Cluster Services (MCS) API. |
PILOT_ALLOW_SIDECAR_SERVICE_INBOUND_LISTENER_MERGE | bool | false | If set, it allows creating inbound listeners for service ports and sidecar ingress listeners |
PILOT_ANALYSIS_INTERVAL | duration | 10s | If analysis is enabled, pilot will run istio analyzers using this value as interval in seconds Istio Resources |
PILOT_CA_CERT_CONFIGMAP | string | "istio-ca-root-cert" | The name of the ConfigMap that stores the Root CA Certificate that is used by istiod |
PILOT_CRL_CONFIGMAP | string | "istio-ca-crl" | The name of the ConfigMap that stores the Certificate Revocation List (CRL) for a plugged-in CA |
PILOT_DRAINING_LABEL | string | "istio.io/draining" | If not empty, endpoints with the label value present will be sent with status DRAINING. |
PILOT_ENABLE_AGENTGATEWAY | bool | false | If enabled, the istio-agentgateway GatewayClass will be enabled. |
PILOT_ENABLE_ALPHA_GATEWAY_API | bool | false | If this is set to true, support for alpha APIs in the Kubernetes gateway-api (github.com/kubernetes-sigs/gateway-api) will be enabled. In addition to this being enabled, the gateway-api CRDs need to be installed. |
PILOT_ENABLE_ANALYSIS | bool | false | If enabled, pilot will run istio analyzers and write analysis errors to the Status field of any Istio Resources |
PILOT_ENABLE_GATEWAY_API | bool | true | If this is set to true, support for Kubernetes gateway-api (github.com/kubernetes-sigs/gateway-api) will be enabled. In addition to this being enabled, the gateway-api CRDs need to be installed. |
PILOT_ENABLE_GATEWAY_API_COPY_LABELS_ANNOTATIONS | bool | true | If this is set to false, istiod will not copy any attributes from the Gateway resource onto its related Deployment resources. |
PILOT_ENABLE_GATEWAY_API_DEPLOYMENT_CONTROLLER | bool | true | If this is set to true, gateway-api resources will automatically provision in cluster deployment, services, etc |
PILOT_ENABLE_GATEWAY_API_GATEWAYCLASS_CONTROLLER | bool | true | If this is set to true, istiod will create and manage its default GatewayClasses |
PILOT_ENABLE_GATEWAY_API_STATUS | bool | true | If this is set to true, gateway-api resources will have status written to them |
PILOT_ENABLE_PERSISTENT_SESSION_FILTER | bool | false | If enabled, Istiod sets up persistent session filter for listeners, if services have ‘PILOT_PERSISTENT_SESSION_LABEL’ set. |
PILOT_ENABLE_QUIC_LISTENERS | bool | false | If true, QUIC listeners will be generated wherever there are listeners terminating TLS on gateways if the gateway service exposes a UDP port with the same number (for example 443/TCP and 443/UDP) |
PILOT_FILTER_GATEWAY_CLUSTER_CONFIG | bool | false | If enabled, Pilot will send only clusters that referenced in gateway virtual services attached to gateway |
PILOT_IGNORE_RESOURCES | string | "" | If set, the resources set on this list will be ignored and never reconciled.This value should be a comma-separated list of resources names.Items on this list can be prefixed with a ‘*.’ meaning a whole group should be ignored. |
PILOT_INCLUDE_RESOURCES | string | "" | If set, and combined with ‘PILOT_IGNORE_RESOURCES’ the resources set on this list will not be ignored.This value should be a comma-separated list of resources names.Items on this list can be prefixed with a ‘*.’ meaning a whole group should be included regardless of the ignore list. |
PILOT_PERSISTENT_SESSION_HEADER_LABEL | string | "istio.io/persistent-session-header" | If not empty, services with this label will use header based persistent sessions |
PILOT_PERSISTENT_SESSION_LABEL | string | "istio.io/persistent-session" | If not empty, services with this label will use cookie based persistent sessions |
PILOT_SEND_UNHEALTHY_ENDPOINTS | bool | false | If enabled, Pilot will include unhealthy endpoints in EDS pushes and even if they are sent Envoy does not use them for load balancing. To avoid, sending traffic to non ready endpoints, enabling this flag, disables panic threshold in Envoy i.e. Envoy does not load balance requests to unhealthy/non-ready hosts even if the percentage of healthy hosts fall below minimum health percentage(panic threshold). |
PILOT_UNIFIED_SIDECAR_SCOPE | bool | true | If true, unified SidecarScope creation will be used. This is only intended as a temporary feature flag for backwards compatibility. |
Pilot
| Variable | Type | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
BLOCKED_CIDRS_IN_JWKS_URIS | string | "" | Comma separated list of CIDR ranges that are blocked in JWKS URIs (e.g., 10.0.0.0/8,192.168.1.0/24). |
CLUSTER_ID | string | constants.DefaultClusterName | Defines the cluster and service registry that this Istiod instance belongs to |
DEBUG_ENDPOINT_AUTH_ALLOWED_NAMESPACES | string | "" | Comma separated list of namespaces to allow access to debug endpoints. Only used if ENABLE_DEBUG_ENDPOINT_AUTH is enabled. The system namespaceis always authorized. |
DISABLE_SHADOW_HOST_SUFFIX | bool | true | If disabled, the shadow host suffix will be added to the hostnames of the mirrored requests. |
DISABLE_TRACK_REMAINING_CB_METRICS | bool | true | If disabled, the remaining metrics for circuit breakers will not be tracked. |
ENABLE_CA_SERVER | bool | true | If this is set to false, will not create CA server in istiod. |
ENABLE_CLUSTER_TRUST_BUNDLE_API | bool | false | If enabled, uses the ClusterTrustBundle API instead of ConfigMaps to store the root certificate in the cluster. |
ENABLE_DEBUG_ENDPOINT_AUTH | bool | true | Enforce namespace-based authorization on debug endpoints. Non-system namespaces restricted to config_dump/ndsz/edsz for same-namespace proxies only. |
ENABLE_DEBUG_ON_HTTP | bool | true | If this is set to false, the debug interface will not be enabled, recommended for production |
ENABLE_GATEWAY_API_MANUAL_DEPLOYMENT | bool | true | If true, allows users to bind Gateway API resources to existing gateway deployments. |
ENABLE_LAZY_SIDECAR_EVALUATION | bool | true | If enabled, pilot will only compute sidecar resources when actually used |
ENABLE_MULTICLUSTER_HEADLESS | bool | true | If true, the DNS name table for a headless service will resolve to same-network endpoints in any cluster. |
ENABLE_NATIVE_SIDECARS | string | "auto" | If set to true, use Kubernetes native sidecar container support. Requires SidecarContainer feature flag. Set to true to unconditionally enable, false to unconditionally disable. Set to auto to automatically enable for supported scenarios |
ENABLE_PROXY_FIND_POD_BY_IP | bool | false | If enabled, the pod controller will allow finding pods matching proxies by IP if it fails to find them by name. |
ENABLE_SELECTOR_BASED_K8S_GATEWAY_POLICY | bool | true | If disabled, Gateway API gateways will ignore workloadSelector policies, onlyapplying policies that select the gateway with a targetRef. |
ENABLE_VTPROTOBUF | bool | true | If true, will use optimized vtprotobuf based marshaling. Requires a build with -tags=vtprotobuf. |
EXTERNAL_ISTIOD | bool | false | If this is set to true, one Istiod will control remote clusters including CA. |
INJECTION_WEBHOOK_CONFIG_NAME | string | "istio-sidecar-injector" | Name of the mutatingwebhookconfiguration to patch, if istioctl is not used. |
ISTIOD_CUSTOM_HOST | string | "" | Custom host name of istiod that istiod signs the server cert. Multiple custom host names are supported, and multiple values are separated by commas. |
ISTIO_AGENT_ENABLE_WASM_REMOTE_LOAD_CONVERSION | bool | true | If enabled, Istio agent will intercept ECDS resource update, downloads Wasm module, and replaces Wasm module remote load with downloaded local module file. |
ISTIO_ENABLE_IPV4_OUTBOUND_LISTENER_FOR_IPV6_CLUSTERS | bool | false | If true, pilot will configure an additional IPv4 listener for outbound traffic in IPv6 only clusters, e.g. AWS EKS IPv6 only clusters. |
ISTIO_KUBE_CLIENT_CONTENT_TYPE | string | "protobuf" | The content type to use for Kubernetes clients. Defaults to protobuf. Valid options: [protobuf, json] |
ISTIO_MULTIROOT_MESH | bool | false | If enabled, mesh will support certificates signed by more than one trustAnchor for ISTIO_MUTUAL mTLS |
ISTIO_WASM_MAX_BINARY_SIZE_BYTES | int64 | 1024*1024*256 | Maximum size of a Wasm binary in bytes. Default is 256MB. |
ISTIO_WATCH_NAMESPACE | string | "" | If set, limit Kubernetes watches to a single namespace. Warning: only a single namespace can be set. |
ISTIO_WORKLOAD_ENTRY_VALIDATE_IDENTITY | bool | true | If enabled, will validate the identity of a workload matches the identity of the WorkloadEntry it is associating with for health checks and auto registration. This flag is added for backwards compatibility only and will be removed in future releases |
JWKS_RESOLVER_INSECURE_SKIP_VERIFY | bool | false | If enabled, istiod will skip verifying the certificate of the JWKS server. |
LABEL_CANONICAL_SERVICES_FOR_MESH_EXTERNAL_SERVICE_ENTRIES | bool | false | If enabled, metadata representing canonical services for ServiceEntry resources with a location of mesh_external will be populatedin the cluster metadata for those endpoints. |
LOCAL_CLUSTER_SECRET_WATCHER | bool | false | If enabled, the cluster secret watcher will watch the namespace of the external cluster instead of config cluster |
MAX_CONNECTIONS_PER_SOCKET_EVENT_LOOP | int | 1 | The maximum number of connections to accept from the kernel per socket event. Set this to ‘0’ to accept unlimited connections. |
PILOT_CERT_PROVIDER | string | constants.CertProviderIstiod | The provider of Pilot DNS certificate. K8S RA will be used for k8s.io/NAME. ‘istiod’ value will sign using Istio build in CA. Other values will not not generate TLS certs, but still distribute ./etc/certs/root-cert.pem. Only used if custom certificates are not mounted. |
PILOT_DISABLE_MX_ALPN | bool | false | If true, pilot will not put istio-peer-exchange ALPN into TLS handshake configuration. |
PILOT_DNS_CARES_UDP_MAX_QUERIES | uint32 | 100 | Sets the udp_max_queries option in Envoy for the Cares DNS resolver. Defaults to 0, an unlimited number of queries. See extensions.network.dns_resolver.cares.v3.CaresDnsResolverConfig in https://www.envoyproxy.io/docs/envoy/latest/api-v3/extensions/network/dns_resolver/cares/v3/cares_dns_resolver.proto and ARES_OPT_UDP_MAX_QUERIES in https://c-ares.org/docs/ares_init.html |
PILOT_DNS_JITTER_DURATION | duration | 100ms | Jitter added to periodic DNS resolution |
PILOT_ENABLE_ABSOLUTE_FQDN_VHOST_DOMAIN | string | `// Environment variable name | |
| true` | If set to false, Istio will not add the absolute FQDN variant (e.g., my-service.my-ns.svc.cluster.local.) to the domains list for VirtualHost entries. | ||
PILOT_ENABLE_ALPN_FILTER | bool | true | If true, pilot will add Istio ALPN filters, required for proper protocol sniffing. |
PILOT_ENABLE_CA_CRL | bool | true | If set to false, Istio will not watch for the ca-crl.pem file in the /etc/cacerts directory and will not distribute CRL data to namespaces for proxies to consume. |
PILOT_ENABLE_CROSS_CLUSTER_WORKLOAD_ENTRY | bool | true | If enabled, pilot will read WorkloadEntry from other clusters, selectable by Services in that cluster. |
PILOT_ENABLE_IP_AUTOALLOCATE | bool | true | If enabled, pilot will start a controller that assigns IP addresses to ServiceEntry which do not have a user-supplied IP. This, when combined with DNS capture allows for tcp routing of traffic sent to the ServiceEntry. |
PILOT_ENABLE_K8S_SELECT_WORKLOAD_ENTRIES | bool | true | If enabled, Kubernetes services with selectors will select workload entries with matching labels. It is safe to disable it if you are quite sure you don’t need this feature |
PILOT_ENABLE_NODE_UNTAINT_CONTROLLERS | bool | false | If enabled, controller that untaints nodes with cni pods ready will run. This should be enabled if you disabled ambient init containers. |
PILOT_ENABLE_ROUTE_COLLAPSE_OPTIMIZATION | bool | true | If true, Pilot will merge virtual hosts with the same routes into a single virtual host, as an optimization. |
PILOT_ENABLE_SERVICEENTRY_SELECT_PODS | bool | true | If enabled, service entries with selectors will select pods from the cluster. It is safe to disable it if you are quite sure you don’t need this feature |
PILOT_ENABLE_WORKLOAD_ENTRY_AUTOREGISTRATION | bool | true | Enables auto-registering WorkloadEntries based on associated WorkloadGroups upon XDS connection by the workload. |
PILOT_ENABLE_WORKLOAD_ENTRY_HEALTHCHECKS | bool | true | Enables automatic health checks of WorkloadEntries based on the config provided in the associated WorkloadGroup |
PILOT_ENVOY_FILTER_STATS | bool | false | If true, Pilot will collect metrics for envoy filter operations. |
PILOT_GATEWAY_API_CONTROLLER_NAME | string | "istio.io/gateway-controller" | Gateway API controller name. istiod will only reconcile Gateway API resources referencing a GatewayClass with this controller name |
PILOT_GATEWAY_API_DEFAULT_GATEWAYCLASS_NAME | string | "istio" | Name of the default GatewayClass |
PILOT_GATEWAY_TRANSPORT_SOCKET_CONNECT_TIMEOUT | duration | 15s | The timeout for transport socket (e.g., TLS handshake) connections on gateway listeners. This helps protect against slow TLS handshake attacks. Set to 0s to disable. |
PILOT_HTTP10 | bool | false | Enables the use of HTTP 1.0 in the outbound HTTP listeners, to support legacy applications. |
PILOT_INSECURE_MULTICLUSTER_KUBECONFIG_OPTIONS | string | "" | Comma separated list of potentially insecure kubeconfig authentication options that are allowed for multicluster authentication.Support values: all authProviders (gcp, azure, exec, openstack), clientKey, clientCertificate, tokenFile, and exec. |
PILOT_IP_AUTOALLOCATE_IPV4_PREFIX | string | "240.240.0.0/16" | The CIDR range/prefix to use for auto-allocated IPv4 addresses. This should be a private range, and not conflict with any other IPs in the cluster. |
PILOT_IP_AUTOALLOCATE_IPV6_PREFIX | string | "2001:2::/48" | The CIDR range/prefix to use for auto-allocated IPv6 addresses. This should be a private range, and not conflict with any other IPs in the cluster. |
PILOT_JWT_ENABLE_REMOTE_JWKS | string | "false" | Mode of fetching JWKs from JwksUri in RequestAuthentication. Supported value: istiod, false, hybrid, true, envoy. The client fetching JWKs is as following: istiod/false - Istiod; hybrid/true - Envoy and fallback to Istiod if JWKs server is external; envoy - Envoy. |
PILOT_JWT_PUB_KEY_REFRESH_INTERVAL | duration | 20m | The interval for istiod to fetch the jwks_uri for the jwks public key. |
PILOT_MULTICLUSTER_KUBECONFIG_PATH | string | "" | If set, istiod reads remote cluster kubeconfigs from this local directory. If both PILOT_MULTICLUSTER_KUBECONFIG_PATH and LOCAL_CLUSTER_SECRET_WATCHER are set, PILOT_MULTICLUSTER_KUBECONFIG_PATH takes precedence. |
PILOT_MULTI_NETWORK_DISCOVER_GATEWAY_API | bool | true | If true, Pilot will discover labeled Kubernetes gateway objects as multi-network gateways. |
PILOT_NODE_UNTAINT_CONTROLLERS_TAINT_NAME | string | "cni.istio.io/not-ready" | The taint key used by the node-untaint controller to identify nodes that should be untainted. |
PILOT_REMOTE_CLUSTER_TIMEOUT | duration | 30s | After this timeout expires, pilot can become ready without syncing data from clusters added via remote-secrets. Setting the timeout to 0 disables this behavior. |
PILOT_SCOPE_GATEWAY_TO_NAMESPACE | bool | false | If enabled, a gateway workload can only select gateway resources in the same namespace. Gateways with same selectors in different namespaces will not be applicable. |
PILOT_SIDECAR_PICK_BEST_SERVICE_NAMESPACE | bool | true | If enabled, when a sidecar needs to pick a service namespace for a hostname, it will prefer Kubernetes services and fall back to the oldest non-Kubernetes service. When disabled, the first visible namespace alphabetically is used. |
PILOT_SOLO_ENABLE_AUTO_WAYPOINT | bool | true | If true, pilot will automatically create a waypoint for namespaces that have the istio.io/use-waypoint label set to auto. |
PILOT_WORKLOAD_ENTRY_GRACE_PERIOD | duration | 10s | The amount of time an auto-registered workload can remain disconnected from all Pilot instances before the associated WorkloadEntry is cleaned up. |
PREFER_DESTINATIONRULE_TLS_FOR_EXTERNAL_SERVICES | bool | true | If true, external services will prefer the TLS settings from DestinationRules over the metadata TLS settings. |
RESOLVE_HOSTNAME_GATEWAYS | bool | true | If true, hostnames in the LoadBalancer addresses of a Service will be resolved at the control plane for use in cross-network gateways. |
SHARED_MESH_CONFIG | string | "" | Additional config map to load for shared MeshConfig settings. The standard mesh config will take precedence. |
UNSAFE_ENABLE_ADMIN_ENDPOINTS | bool | false | If this is set to true, dangerous admin endpoints will be exposed on the debug interface. Not recommended for production. |
UNSAFE_PILOT_ENABLE_DELTA_TEST | bool | false | If enabled, addition runtime tests for Delta XDS efficiency are added. These checks are extremely expensive, so this should be used only for testing, not production. |
UNSAFE_PILOT_ENABLE_RUNTIME_ASSERTIONS | bool | false | If enabled, addition runtime asserts will be performed. These checks are both expensive and panic on failure. As a result, this should be used only for testing. |
VALIDATION_WEBHOOK_CONFIG_NAME | string | "istio-istio-system" | If not empty, the controller will automatically patch validatingwebhookconfiguration when the CA certificate changes. Only works in kubernetes environment. |
Security
| Variable | Type | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
CA_TRUSTED_NODE_ACCOUNTS | string | "" | If set, the list of service accounts that are allowed to use node authentication for CSRs. Node authentication allows an identity to create CSRs on behalf of other identities, but only if there is a pod running on the same node with that identity. This is intended for use with node proxies. |
CERT_SIGNER_DOMAIN | string | "" | The cert signer domain info |
PILOT_ENABLE_MULTIPLE_CUSTOM_AUTHZ_PROVIDERS | bool | false | If enabled, allows multiple CUSTOM authorization providers per workload, enabling different authentication schemes (OAuth, LDAP, API keys) for different API paths. Each provider gets its own filter chain with provider-specific metadata matching. |
PILOT_ENABLE_XDS_IDENTITY_CHECK | bool | true | If enabled, pilot will authorize XDS clients, to ensure they are acting only as namespaces they have permissions for. |
PILOT_SKIP_VALIDATE_TRUST_DOMAIN | bool | false | Skip validating the peer is from the same trust domain when mTLS is enabled in authentication policy |
TRUSTED_GATEWAY_CIDR | string | "" | If set, any connections from gateway to Istiod with this CIDR range are treated as trusted for using authentication mechanisms like XFCC. This can only be used when the network where Istiod and the authenticating gateways are running in a trusted/secure network |
USE_CACERTS_FOR_SELF_SIGNED_CA | bool | false | If enabled, istiod will use a secret named cacerts to store its self-signed istio-generated root certificate. |
XDS_AUTH | bool | true | If true, will authenticate XDS clients. |
Telemetry
| Variable | Type | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
ISTIO_ENABLE_CONTROLLER_QUEUE_METRICS | bool | false | If enabled, publishes metrics for queue depth, latency and processing times. |
PILOT_AGENT_MERGE_ENVOY_STATS | bool | true | If false, pilot agent will not merge Envoy stats in the agent stats endpoint. |
PILOT_ENABLE_METADATA_EXCHANGE | bool | true | If true, pilot will add metadata exchange filters, which will be consumed by telemetry filter. |
PILOT_ENABLE_TELEMETRY_LABEL | bool | true | If true, pilot will add telemetry related metadata to cluster and endpoint resources, which will be consumed by telemetry filter. |
PILOT_ENDPOINT_TELEMETRY_LABEL | bool | true | If true, pilot will add telemetry related metadata to Endpoint resource, which will be consumed by telemetry filter. |
PILOT_MX_ADDITIONAL_LABELS | string | "" | Comma separated list of additional labels to be added to metadata exchange filter. |
PILOT_SPAWN_UPSTREAM_SPAN_FOR_GATEWAY | bool | true | If true, separate tracing span for each upstream request for gateway. This is only available when using Telemetry API. |
PILOT_TRACE_SAMPLING | float64 | 1.0 | Sets the mesh-wide trace sampling percentage. Should be 0.0 - 100.0. Precision to 0.01. Default is 1.0. |
Tuning
| Variable | Type | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
ISTIO_GPRC_MAXRECVMSGSIZE | int | 4*1024*1024 | Sets the max receive buffer size of gRPC stream in bytes. |
ISTIO_GPRC_MAXSTREAMS | int | 100000 | Sets the maximum number of concurrent grpc streams. |
MUTEX_PROFILE_FRACTION | int | 1000 | If set to a non-zero value, enables mutex profiling a rate of 1/MUTEX_PROFILE_FRACTION events. For example, ‘1000’ will record 0.1% of events. Set to 0 to disable entirely. |
PILOT_CONVERT_SIDECAR_SCOPE_CONCURRENCY | int | 1 | Deprecated, superseded by ENABLE_LAZY_SIDECAR_EVALUATION. Used to adjust the concurrency of SidecarScope conversions. When istiod is deployed on a multi-core CPU server, increasing this value will help to use the CPU to accelerate configuration push, but it also means that istiod will consume more CPU resources. |
PILOT_DEBOUNCE_AFTER | duration | 100ms | The delay added to config/registry events for debouncing. This will delay the push by at least this interval. If no change is detected within this period, the push will happen, otherwise we’ll keep delaying until things settle, up to a max of PILOT_DEBOUNCE_MAX. |
PILOT_DEBOUNCE_MAX | duration | 10s | The maximum amount of time to wait for events while debouncing. If events keep showing up with no breaks for this time, we’ll trigger a push. |
PILOT_ENABLE_EDS_DEBOUNCE | bool | true | If enabled, Pilot will include EDS pushes in the push debouncing, configured by PILOT_DEBOUNCE_AFTER and PILOT_DEBOUNCE_MAX. EDS pushes may be delayed, but there will be fewer pushes. By default this is enabled |
PILOT_MAX_REQUESTS_PER_SECOND | float64 | 0.0 | Limits the number of incoming XDS requests per second. On larger machines this can be increased to handle more proxies concurrently. If set to 0 or unset, the max will be automatically determined based on the machine size |
PILOT_PUSH_THROTTLE | int | 0 | Limits the number of concurrent pushes allowed. On larger machines this can be increased for faster pushes. If set to 0 or unset, the max will be automatically determined based on the machine size |
PILOT_STATUS_MAX_WORKERS | int | 100 | The maximum number of workers Pilot will use to keep configuration status up to date. Smaller numbers will result in higher status latency, but larger numbers may impact CPU in high scale environments. |
PILOT_XDS_CACHE_INDEX_CLEAR_INTERVAL | duration | 5s | The interval for xds cache index clearing. |
PILOT_XDS_CACHE_SIZE | int | 60000 | The maximum number of cache entries for the XDS cache. |
XDS
| Variable | Type | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
PILOT_ENABLE_CDS_CACHE | bool | true | If true, Pilot will cache CDS responses. Note: this depends on PILOT_ENABLE_XDS_CACHE. |
PILOT_ENABLE_EDS_FOR_HEADLESS_SERVICES | bool | false | If enabled, for headless service in Kubernetes, pilot will send endpoints over EDS, allowing the sidecar to load balance among pods in the headless service. This feature should be enabled if applications access all services explicitly via a HTTP proxy port in the sidecar. |
PILOT_ENABLE_MONGO_FILTER | bool | true | EnableMongoFilter enables injection of envoy.filters.network.mongo_proxy in the filter chain. |
PILOT_ENABLE_MYSQL_FILTER | bool | false | EnableMysqlFilter enables injection of envoy.filters.network.mysql_proxy in the filter chain. |
PILOT_ENABLE_RDS_CACHE | bool | true | If true, Pilot will cache RDS responses. Note: this depends on PILOT_ENABLE_XDS_CACHE. |
PILOT_ENABLE_REDIS_FILTER | bool | false | EnableRedisFilter enables injection of envoy.filters.network.redis_proxy in the filter chain. |
PILOT_ENABLE_XDS_CACHE | bool | true | If true, Pilot will cache XDS responses. |
PILOT_SIDECAR_USE_REMOTE_ADDRESS | bool | false | UseRemoteAddress sets useRemoteAddress to true for sidecar outbound listeners. |
PILOT_XDS_CACHE_STATS | bool | false | If true, Pilot will collect metrics for XDS cache efficiency. |