Getting Started with Istio

In this chapter, we will set up Istio on a Kubernetes cluster and prepare the environment for deploying applications with service mesh capabilities.

Now that we have a Kubernetes cluster and Meshery, we are ready to download and deploy Istio resources.

  1. Install Istio
  2. Verify install

Optional (manual install of Istio):

  1. Download Istio resources
  2. Setup istioctl
  3. Install istio

Using Meshery, select Istio from the Management menu.

In the Istio management page:

  1. Type istio-system into the namespace field.
  2. Click the (+) icon on the Install card and select Latest Istio to install the latest version of Istio.

Perform the below steps if the above steps doesn’t work for you.

You will download and deploy the latest Istio resources on your Kubernetes cluster.

Note to Docker Desktop users: Please ensure your Docker VM has at least 4GiB of Memory, which is required for all services to run.

On your local machine, execute:

curl -L https://git.io/getLatestIstio | ISTIO_VERSION=1.7.3 sh -

On a *nix system, you can setup istioctl by doing the following:

brew install istioctl

Alternatively, change into the Istio package directory and add the istioctl client to your PATH environment variable.

cd istio-*
export PATH=$PWD/bin:$PATH

Verify istioctl is available:

istioctl version

Check if the cluster is ready for installation:

istioctl verify-install

To install Istio with a demo profile, execute the below command.

istioctl install --set profile=demo

Alternatively, with Envoy logging enabled:

istioctl install --set profile=demo --set meshConfig.accessLogFile=/dev/stdout

In the Istio management page:

  1. Click the (+) icon on the Validate Service Mesh Configuration card.
  2. Select Verify Installation to verify the installation of Istio.

Istio is deployed in a separate Kubernetes namespace istio-system. To check if Istio is deployed, and also, to see all the pieces that are deployed, execute the following:

kubectl get all -n istio-system
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