Getting Started

This section requires basic understanding of Kubernetes - make sure you do the tutorial in sequence.

Kubernetes

Install Istio

First, make sure you already have a Kubernetes cluster up and running.

Install istioctl

You need to get the istioctl CLI to install Istio into the cluster.

cd $HOME

# Specify an Istio version to install
curl -L https://istio.io/downloadIstio | \
  ISTIO_VERSION=1.7.4 sh -

Add Istio's bin path to shell's PATH.

echo 'export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/istio-1.7.4/bin"' >> ~/.bash_profile

source $HOME/.bash_profile

Verify istioctl is installed properly and with the correct version:

istioctl version

Install Istio

Install the demo profile of Istio, which comes with the basic settings for most of the things you'll want to learn about. In addition, because the cluster in this guide enabled Network Policy, so we can use Istio with Container Network Interface (CNI).

istioctl install \
  --set profile=demo \
  --set values.cni.cniBinDir=/home/kubernetes/bin \
  --set components.cni.enabled=true \
  --set components.cni.namespace=kube-system

Validate that Istio is installed. istioctl version should show you the control plane version.

istioctl version

In addition, Istio is installed into the istio-system namespace.

kubectl get ns

kubectl -n=istio-system get pods

Install Addons

In addition to core-Istio, you can install addons for observability, for example to see distributed traces and out-of-the-box metrics/dashboard.

# Zipkin
kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/istio/istio/release-1.7/samples/addons/extras/zipkin.yaml

# Prometheus
kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/istio/istio/release-1.7/samples/addons/prometheus.yaml

# Grafana
kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/istio/istio/release-1.7/samples/addons/grafana.yaml

# Wait for Grafana a bit before Kiali
sleep 20

# Kiali
kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/istio/istio/release-1.7/samples/addons/kiali.yaml