Istio Hands-on Part 2 - Setting Up the Playground with Kind

Objective

Set up the local cluster used in the rest of the series. You will:

1. Create a kind cluster. kind runs Kubernetes nodes as Docker containers.
2. Install Istio with the demo profile.

The result is small and easy to recreate.

Prerequisites

Install these tools first:

Step 1: Create a kind cluster

The cluster is named istio-lab. Two host ports are mapped so that you can reach NodePort services later.

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

Create the cluster:

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

Check that it runs:

kubectl cluster-info
kubectl get nodes

Expected output:

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

Step 2: Install Istio

The demo profile installs:

• Istiod, the control plane
• An ingress gateway and an egress gateway
• Settings that work with the telemetry add-ons (Prometheus, Kiali, Grafana, Jaeger)

2.1 Download the Istio CLI

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

Check the CLI:

istioctl version

Expected output:

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

2.2 Install with the demo profile

istioctl install --set profile=demo -y

Expected output:

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

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

Check 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

Istio is installed. No application runs in the mesh yet. Part 3 deploys two services and shows what the sidecar does with their traffic.