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🎯 Objective

In this post, we’ll set up our local playground for the Istio Hands-on series.You’ll learn how to:

  1. Create a Kind (Kubernetes-in-Docker) cluster
  2. Install Istio using the demo profile

This will be our foundation for the rest of the series — simple, reproducible, and lightweight.

🧱 Prerequisites

Before starting, make sure you have these installed on your machine:

ToolVersion (or higher)Install link
Docker20.xDocker Install Guide
kubectl1.25+kubectl install
kind0.20+Kind install

🧩 Step 1: Create a Kind Cluster

Let’s create a simple Kind cluster with an ingress-ready configuration. We’ll call it istio-lab.

cat <<EOF > kind-istio-config.yaml
kind: Cluster
apiVersion: kind.x-k8s.io/v1alpha4
name: istio-lab
nodes:
  - role: control-plane
    extraPortMappings:
      - containerPort: 30000
        hostPort: 30000
      - containerPort: 30001
        hostPort: 30001
EOF

Now create the cluster:

kind create cluster --config kind-istio-config.yaml

Verify it’s running:

kubectl cluster-info
kubectl get nodes

✅ You should see something like:

NAME                      STATUS   ROLES           AGE   VERSION
istio-lab-control-plane   Ready    control-plane   48s   v1.33.1

🚀 Step 2: Install Istio

We’ll use the demo profile , which includes:

  • Istiod (control plane)
  • Ingress Gateway
  • Default telemetry (Prometheus, Kiali, Grafana, Jaeger)

2.1 Download and add Istio CLI to PATH

curl -L https://istio.io/downloadIstio | sh -
cd istio-1.*
export PATH=$PWD/bin:$PATH

Check it’s working:

istioctl version

✅ You should see something like:

Istio is not present in the cluster: no running Istio pods in namespace "istio-system"
client version: 1.27.3

2.2 Install Istio using the demo profile

istioctl install --set profile=demo -y

✅ You should see:

        |\
        | \
        |  \
        |   \
      /||    \
     / ||     \
    /  ||      \
   /   ||       \
  /    ||        \
 /     ||         \
/______||__________\
____________________
  \__       _____/
     \_____/

✔ Istio core installed ⛵️
✔ Istiod installed 🧠
✔ Egress gateways installed 🛫
✔ Ingress gateways installed 🛬
✔ Installation complete

Verify the pods:

kubectl get pods -n istio-system

✅ Expected output:

NAME                                    READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
istio-egressgateway-5b6b664d8-cz8bl     1/1     Running   0          86s
istio-ingressgateway-7d7f977654-lbt5f   1/1     Running   0          85s
istiod-86db895df-lmpt8                  1/1     Running   0          112s

🧵 Next Up

👉 Istio Hands-on Part 3 - Understanding Sidecar Injection and Traffic Flow

We’ll explore how Envoy proxies intercept traffic, inspect configurations, and understand the flow inside the mesh.

⬅ Back to Intro | Next → Part 3 – Understanding Sidecar Injection and Traffic Flow