Kubernetes/Istio

Architecture Istio v1.7

Namespace: <app namespace>
  | app1  |                | app2  |  # main container
  | proxy |  <---------->  | proxy |  # Data Plane (all Envoy sidecar proxies)
  |  pod  |                |  pod  |

Namespace: istio-system
| |citadel|        |mixer|       |pilot| |
| |  pod  |        | pod |       | pod | | 
|      C o n t r o l  P l a n e  A P I   |
 ----------------------------------------

Note: All proxies are collectively named Data Plane and everything else that Istio deployed is called Control Plane

Note: Proxy term meaning is when someone has authority to represent someone. In software proxy components are invisible to clients. proxies

Istio components

• Istio-telemetry
• Istio-pilot
• Istio-tracing

Istio components

Envoy L7 proxy	Pilot	Citadel	Mixer[deprecate]	Galley
Dynamic service discovery Load balancing TLS termination Health checks Staged rollouts Fault injection	Converts Istio configuration into a format that Envoy can understand. Aware about pods health, what pods are available and sends to the proxy pods that are alive with any other configuration updates. Propagates the configuration to the Proxies Service discovery Intelligent routing Resiliency	Manages certificates, allows to enable TLS/SSL across entire cluster. User authentication Credential management Certificate management Traffic encryption Pods istio-citadel-* It's certificate store.	handles Access control Usage policies, rate limiting Telemetry data (data scraping) It has a lot of modules/plugins. Pods: istio-policy-* istio-telemetry-*	Interface for underlying Istio API gateway(aka server). It reads in k8s yaml and transforms it into internal structure Istio understand.

Istio UI components:

• grafana:3000 - dashboards
• kiali:31000 - visualisation, tells what services are part of istio, how are they connected and performing
• jaeger:31001 - tracing

Noticeable changes

• In Istio 1.6, completed transition and fully moved functionality into Istiod. This has allow to remove the separate deployments for Citadel, the sidecar injector, and Galley.

Istio on minikube

# Minimum requirements are 8G and 4 CPUs
PROFILE=minikube-v1.17.6-istio
minikube start --memory=8192 --cpus=4 --kubernetes-version=v1.17.6 --profile $PROFILE
minikube start --memory=8192 --cpus=4 --kubernetes-version=v1.17.6 --driver kvm --profile $PROFILE-kvm2

minikube tunnel --profile $PROFILE
minikube addons enable istio --profile $PROFILE # [1] error

Troubleshooting

[1] - no matches for kind "IstioOperator"

💣  enable failed: run callbacks: running callbacks: [sudo KUBECONFIG=/var/lib/minikube/kubeconfig /var/lib/minikube/binaries/v1.17.6/kubectl apply -f /etc/kubernetes/addons/istio-default-profile.yaml: Process exited with status 1
stdout:
namespace/istio-system unchanged

stderr:
error: unable to recognize "/etc/kubernetes/addons/istio-default-profile.yaml": no matches for kind "IstioOperator" in version "install.istio.io/v1alpha1"

Install istioctl tool

# Istio 1.6.x - option-1
curl -L https://istio.io/downloadIstio | ISTIO_VERSION=1.6.8 sh -
cd istio-1.6.8/  # istio package directory
export PATH=$PWD/bin:$PATH
export PATH=$PATH:/git3rd/istio-1.6.8/bin

# Istio 1.7.x - option-2
export ISTIO_VERSION=1.7.3
curl -L https://istio.io/downloadIstio | sh -
export PATH=$PWD/istio-$ISTIO_VERSION/bin:$PATH
export ISTIO_INSTALL_DIR=$PWD/istio-$ISTIO_VERSION

# Check version
istioctl version --remote
client version: 1.7.3
control plane version: 1.7.3
data plane version: 1.7.3 (7 proxies)

# make sure you can connect to k8s cluster, then verify the install
istioctl verify-install
...
CustomResourceDefinition: templates.config.istio.io.default checked successfully
CustomResourceDefinition: istiooperators.install.istio.io.default checked successfully
Checked 25 custom resource definitions
Checked 1 Istio Deployments
Istio is installed successfully

# Verify mesh coverage and config status 
istioctl proxy-status
NAME                                                  CDS        LDS        EDS        RDS        ISTIOD                      VERSION
details-v1-5974b67c8-xbp8l.default                    SYNCED     SYNCED     SYNCED     SYNCED     istiod-5c6b7b5b8f-9npdz     1.7.3
istio-ingressgateway-5689f7c67-gvrh8.istio-system     SYNCED     SYNCED     SYNCED     SYNCED     istiod-5c6b7b5b8f-9npdz     1.7.3
...

Install the control plane

Istio maintainers with increasing complexity of the project that goes against the user friendliness still support helm manifest based configuration although there is fair movement towards the operator pattern. See below for differences, v1.6 and v1.7 still support both methods.

# Tested with 1.7.3
istioctl          install --skip-confirmation --set profile=default --dry-run # via operator
istioctl manifest install --skip-confirmation --set profile=default --dry-run # via helm chart

# Uses istio operator, the install can be replaced with 'upgrade'
istioctl install --skip-confirmation --set profile=default \
  --set        kiali.enabled=true      \
  --set        prometheus.enabled=true \
  --dry-run

# Using helm templates, notice the prefix 'values.'
istioctl manifest install --skip-confirmation --set profile=default \
  --set values.kiali.enabled=true      \
  --set values.prometheus.enabled=true \
  --dry-run

Uninstall Istio

Uninstall v1.6.8, it's safe to ignore RBAC not existing resources.

istioctl manifest generate --set profile=default | kubectl delete --ignore-not-found=true -f -
kubectl delete namespace istio-system

Uninstall v1.7.x

istioctl x uninstall --purge
✔ Uninstall complete

Get info

Profiles are istiooperators.install.istio.io CRD manifests located in istio-1.7.3/manifests/profiles

# List profiles
istioctl profile list
ls istio-1.7.3/manifests/profiles
default.yaml  demo.yaml  empty.yaml  minimal.yaml  preview.yaml  remote.yaml

# profile configuration
istioctl profile dump demo
istioctl profile dump --config-path components.pilot demo

# Differences in the profiles
istioctl profile diff default demo

Istio operator (v1.7.3), this is not super clear to me

find . -iname *operator*
./samples/operator
./samples/addons/extras/prometheus-operator.yaml
./manifests/charts/istio-operator # it's a chart to deploy operator
./manifests/charts/istio-operator/crds/crd-operator.yaml
./manifests/charts/base/crds/crd-operator.yaml
./manifests/charts/istio-telemetry/prometheusOperator
./manifests/deploy/crds/istio_v1alpha1_istiooperator_crd.yaml
./manifests/deploy/crds/istio_v1alpha1_istiooperator_cr.yaml
./manifests/deploy/operator.yaml # this [1]
./manifests/examples/customresource/istio_v1alpha1_istiooperator_cr.yaml

# [1] manifests/deploy/operator.yaml
---
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  namespace: istio-operator
  name: istio-operator
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      name: istio-operator
...

# This API get always installed
k -n istio-system get istiooperators.install.istio.io # kind: IstioOperator

# List all Istio CRDs
k get crd -A | grep istio | cut -f1 -d" "
adapters.config.istio.io
attributemanifests.config.istio.io
authorizationpolicies.security.istio.io
destinationrules.networking.istio.io
envoyfilters.networking.istio.io
gateways.networking.istio.io
handlers.config.istio.io
httpapispecbindings.config.istio.io
httpapispecs.config.istio.io
instances.config.istio.io
istiooperators.install.istio.io
peerauthentications.security.istio.io
quotaspecbindings.config.istio.io
quotaspecs.config.istio.io
requestauthentications.security.istio.io
rules.config.istio.io
serviceentries.networking.istio.io
sidecars.networking.istio.io
templates.config.istio.io
virtualservices.networking.istio.io
workloadentries.networking.istio.io

IstioOperator

Note: This is confusing part thus wip

istioctl operator init
Using operator Deployment image: docker.io/istio/operator:1.7.3
✔ Istio operator installed                                                                                                                                     
✔ Installation complete

# The operator deployment gets installed in a new namespace 'istio-operator'
kubectl get deployment -n istio-operator  -owide
NAME             READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE     CONTAINERS       IMAGES                           SELECTOR
istio-operator   1/1     1            1           7m14s   istio-operator   docker.io/istio/operator:1.7.3   name=istio-operator

kubectl get all -n istio-operator 
NAME                                 READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
pod/istio-operator-9dc6b7fd7-xf2m5   1/1     Running   0          5m42s
NAME                     TYPE        CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)    AGE
service/istio-operator   ClusterIP   10.119.252.73   <none>        8383/TCP   5m43s
NAME                             READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
deployment.apps/istio-operator   1/1     1            1           5m43s
NAME                                       DESIRED   CURRENT   READY   AGE
replicaset.apps/istio-operator-9dc6b7fd7   1         1         1       5m42s

CRDs aka new kind: objects - demystified

• Envoy terminiology Host, Downstream, Upstream, Listener, Cluster, Mesh, Runtime configuration
  • Cluster: A cluster is a group of logically similar upstream hosts that Envoy connects to, eg. group of pods reviews service v1, v2 and v3.
  • Cluster Discovery Service (CDS)
  • Listener discovery service (LDS)
  • Endpoint discovery service (EDS); cluster members are called endpoint.
  • Route Discovery Service (RDS)

• VirtualServices and DestinationRules are key resources for configuring Istio’s traffic routing functionality.
  • VirtualServices - is used to configure how requests are routed to a service within an Istio service mesh, define how traffic is routed to a given destination
  • DestinationRules define policies that apply to traffic intended for a service after routing has occurred. A DestinationRules is applied after VirtualServices routing rules are evaluated, so they apply to the traffic’s real destination.
    • subsets - defines a set of pods with common matching label eg. version: v1

• gateways,gw - taps on to ingressgateway; describe which controller to use eg. plugs into real network received by service/istio-ingressgateway that has label istio=ingressgateway
• virtualservices,vs - it bounds to a gateway(s), and describes how requests are routed to a service within the mesh
• destinationrules,dr - applied after vs routing rules to real traffic destination, defines available versions called subsets
• serviceentries,se - holds a list of all endpoints services that they belong to, adds an entry into Istio’s internal service registry, then the Envoy proxies can send traffic to the specified host as if it was a service in the mesh. Allows traffic to be managed for services running outside of the mesh,can set redirect, forward, retry, timeout and fault injection policies fro external destinations. Two purposes:
  • used as external service
  • allows multi-cluster services

• adapters
• attributemanifests
• authorizationpolicies
• envoyfilters
• handlers
• httpapispecbindings
• httpapispecs
• instances
• istiooperators
• peerauthentications
• quotaspecbindings
• quotaspecs
• requestauthentications
• rules
• sidecars
• templates
• workloadentries

Customize istio installation

Configure ingress-gateways

• Deploying multiple Istio Ingress Gateways
• Creating an Internal Load Balancer in AWS EKS using Istio

Gateways are a special type of component, since multiple ingress and egress gateways can be defined. In the IstioOperator API, gateways are defined as a list type. The default profile installs one ingress gateway, called istio-ingressgateway.

# Show default values of the ingressgateway
istioctl profile dump --config-path components.ingressGateways
istioctl profile dump --config-path values.gateways.istio-ingressgateway

Install istio with ingressgateway servioce as internal AWS loadbalancer:

istioctl install \
   --set profile=default \
   --set addonComponents.prometheus.enabled=false \
   --set addonComponents.grafana.enabled=false \
   --set addonComponents.kiali.enabled=false \
   --set addonComponents.tracing.enabled=false \
   --set components.ingressGateways[0].enabled="true" \
   --set components.ingressGateways[0].k8s.serviceAnnotations."service\.beta\.kubernetes\.io/aws-load-balancer-internal"=\"true\"
✔ Istio core installed                                                                                                                                         
✔ Istiod installed                                                                                                                                             
✔ Ingress gateways installed                                                                                                                                   
✔ Installation complete

# --set gateways.istio-ingressgateway.serviceAnnotations."service\.beta\.kubernetes\.io/aws-load-balancer-internal"="0\.0\.0\.0/0"

Configure using IstioOperator

istioctl manifest install -f <(cat <<EOF
apiVersion: install.istio.io/v1alpha1
kind: IstioOperator
spec:
  profile: default
  components:
    ingressGateways:
    - enabled: true # default is true for default profile
    egressGateways:
    - enabled: true
EOF
)

Ingress Gateways - controller

# manually inject the sidecar
kubectl -n bin apply -f <(istioctl kube-inject -f httpbin.yaml)

export INGRESS_HOST=$(       kubectl -n istio-system get service istio-ingressgateway -o jsonpath='{.status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].ip}')
# AWS, uses 'hostname'
export INGRESS_HOST=$(       kubectl -n istio-system get service istio-ingressgateway -o jsonpath='{.status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].hostname}')

export INGRESS_PORT=$(       kubectl -n istio-system get service istio-ingressgateway -o jsonpath='{.spec.ports[?(@.name=="http2")].port}')
export SECURE_INGRESS_PORT=$(kubectl -n istio-system get service istio-ingressgateway -o jsonpath='{.spec.ports[?(@.name=="https")].port}')

# This is not necessary set/configured
export TCP_INGRESS_PORT=$(   kubectl -n istio-system get service istio-ingressgateway -o jsonpath='{.spec.ports[?(@.name=="tcp")].port}')

# Verify
env | grep INGRESS

Object examples

Gateway, virtualservice

# istio-1.7.3/samples/bookinfo/networking/bookinfo-gateway.yaml
---
# Entry point gateway
apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3
kind: Gateway
metadata:
  name: bookinfo-gateway
spec:
  selector:
    istio: ingressgateway # use istio default controller
  servers:
  - port:
      number: 80
      name: http
      protocol: HTTP
    hosts:
    - "*"
---
# Routes traffic to destination, could use subset for Traffic Shifting
apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3
kind: VirtualService
metadata:
  name: bookinfo
spec:
  hosts:
  - "*"
  gateways:
  - bookinfo-gateway
  http:
  - match:
    - uri:
        exact: /productpage
    - uri:
        prefix: /static
    - uri:
        exact: /login
    - uri:
        exact: /logout
    - uri:
        prefix: /api/v1/products
    route:
    - destination:
        host: productpage
        port:
          number: 9080
       #subset: v1 # [1] if defined in DestinationRule for the host ('productpage'), it will route to any pods
                   # matching a label(s) defined in the subset

# samples/bookinfo/networking/destination-rule-all.yaml
apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3
kind: DestinationRule
metadata:
  name: productpage
spec:
  host: productpage
  subsets:   # pod selectors matching labels
  - name: v1 # [1] subset name for the host 'productpage'
    labels:
      version: v1
---
apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3
kind: DestinationRule
metadata:
  name: reviews
spec:
  host: reviews
  subsets:
  - name: v1
    labels:
      version: v1
  - name: v2
    labels:
      version: v2
  - name: v3
    labels:
      version: v3
---
apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3
kind: DestinationRule
metadata:
  name: ratings
spec:
  host: ratings
  subsets:
  - name: v1
    labels:
      version: v1
  - name: v2
    labels:
      version: v2
  - name: v2-mysql
    labels:
      version: v2-mysql
  - name: v2-mysql-vm
    labels:
      version: v2-mysql-vm
---
apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3
kind: DestinationRule
metadata:
  name: details
spec:
  host: details
  subsets:
  - name: v1
    labels:
      version: v1
  - name: v2
    labels:
      version: v2
---
# Split traffic between reviews:v1 and reviews:v3
apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3
kind: VirtualService
metadata:
  name: reviews
spec:
  hosts:
    - reviews
  http:
  - route:
    - destination:
        host: reviews
        subset: v1
      weight: 50
    - destination:
        host: reviews
        subset: v3
      weight: 50

ServiceEntry

It depends on installation option meshConfig.outboundTrafficPolicy.mode that configures Envoy's handling of unknown services, that is, services that are not defined in Istio’s internal service registry:

• ALLOW_ANY by default, so may not be defined in the configMap/istio, tells Envoy to let calls to unknown services pass through
• REGISTRY_ONLY tells Envoy to block any connections to endpoints without a registry entry

kubectl get configmap istio -n istio-system -o yaml | grep mode -m1 -B1

Example MESH_EXTERNAL service entry adds the ext-svc external dependency to Istio’s service registry

apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3
kind: ServiceEntry
metadata:
  name: svc-entry
spec:
  hosts:
  - ext-svc.example.com # FQDN of external resource or wildcard pref
  ports:
  - number: 443
    name: https
    protocol: HTTPS
  location: MESH_EXTERNAL # treat the service as external part of the mesh
  resolution: DNS         # | MESH_INTERNAL - Treat remote cluster services as part of the service mesh
                          # | as all clusters in the service mesh share the same root of trust.

Kiali visualisations

You install kiali manually from scratch or pass arg to istioctl

# Create user name and password
KIALI_USERNAME=admin
KIALI_PASSPHRASE=admin
kubectl apply -f <(cat <<EOF
apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: kiali
  namespace: istio-system
  labels:
    app: kiali
stringData:
  username: $KIALI_USERNAME
  passphrase: $KIALI_PASSPHRASE
EOF
)

istioctl manifest install \
  --set values.kiali.enabled=true \
  --set values.prometheus.enabled=true

kubectl wait --for=condition=Available deployment/kiali -n istio-system --timeout=300s

# Access the dashboard
istioctl dashboard kiali

Add custom headers

apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3
kind: VirtualService
metadata:
  name: httpbin
spec:
  hosts:
  - "*"
  gateways:
  - httpbin-gateway
  http:
  - match:
    - uri:
        prefix: /headers
    route:
    - destination:
        port:
          number: 8000
        host: httpbin
      headers:
        response:            # add to response
          add:
           "key1": "abc"
        request:             # add to request
           add:
             "key2": "def"

Resources

• gitops-istio Istio on a Kubernetes cluster and automating A/B testing and canary releases with GitOps pipelines example

Training Istio v1.5

• What is Istio Service Mesh?
• Istio Hands on Demo Part 1
• Istio Hands on Demo Part 2 - Enabling Sidecar Injection
• Istio Hands on Demo Part 3 - Visualizing the System with Kiali
• Istio Hands on Demo Part 4 - Finding Performance Problems
• istio-fleetman Github source materials
• Istio Architecture Part 1 - Proxies
• Istio Architecture Part 2 - The Data Plane and Envoy
• Istio Architecture Part 3 - The Control Plane
• Istio Architecture Part 4 - Going Deeper into Envoy

Istio v1.7

• VM <-> K8s mesh demo at 30 min