Setting up Kubernetes and Istio on Minikube

October 29, 2018

This is another kubernetes/istio tutorial. I have found a few tutorials out there, but some of them are out of date, due to some breaking changes in kubernetes and istio. So I decided to document this, for myself, if for nobody else. I used the quickstart as the basis of this article. So if you find that easier to follow, please do so.

First let me lay out the versions of my Mac OS and the versions of kubernetes, minikube and istio that I am using/installing

MacOS: 10.13,6 (High Sierra)
kubernetes(client): 1.12.0
kubernetes(server): 1.10.0
minikube: v0.30.0
istio: 1.0.3

Install a Hypervisor

Minikube needs this to virtualize a cluster on your local machine. I use VirtualBox, download the mac os version. Now, I know VirtualBox kind of sucks, so you can try and use Docker/Xhyve. I had issues getting it to work, but here are a couple of articles; if you are interested in giving it a shot

Install kubectl (I use brew to manage this)

> brew install kubernetes-cli

Then check the version

> kubectl version
Client Version: version.Info{Major:"1", Minor:"12", GitVersion:"v1.12.0", GitCommit:"0ed33881dc4355495f623c6f22e7dd0b7632b7c0", GitTreeState:"clean", BuildDate:"2018-09-28T15:20:58Z", GoVersion:"go1.11", Compiler:"gc", Platform:"darwin/amd64"}
Server Version: version.Info{Major:"1", Minor:"10", GitVersion:"v1.10.0", GitCommit:"fc32d2f3698e36b93322a3465f63a14e9f0eaead", GitTreeState:"clean", BuildDate:"2018-03-26T16:44:10Z", GoVersion:"go1.9.3", Compiler:"gc", Platform:"linux/amd64"}

Install minikube

> brew cask install minikube

Set minikube context

> kubectl config use-context minikube
Context "minikube" modified.

Download and Setup Istio

> curl -L https://git.io/getLatestIstio | sh -

You will get a message to export the path,just copy the command and run it

> export PATH="$PATH:/Users/christopherlam/git/development/istio-1.0.3/bin"

Start up Minikube

Since we are using VirtualBox we don’t have to set the driver; I believe VirtualBox is the default

> minikube start --memory=8192 --cpus=4 --kubernetes-version=v1.10.0

Install Istio onto Minikube

So when you downloaded Istio via the cURL command in the previous steps it downloaed some additional code and examples. Change into the istio directory i.e.

 
> cd ~/git/istio-1.0.3

Install Istio’s Custom Resource Definitions

CRDs are one way to define resources, [Aggregated APIs][aggregated-api-url] is the other way

> kubectl apply -f install/kubernetes/helm/istion/templates/crds.yaml

Install Istio’s Core Components

I chose to install without mutual TLS authentication between sidecars. There are other options, such as installing with TLS authentication, using Helm, using Helm and Tiller, etc.

> kubectl apply -f install/kubernetes/istio-demo.yaml

Verify the installation

> kubectl get svc -n istio-system

You should see services like istio-ingressgateway, istio-telemetry, istio-sidecar-injector, etc

Since we are using minikube, it does not support an external load balancer. The EXTERNAL-IP of istio-ingress and istio-ingressgateway will say . You will need to access it using the service NodePort, or use port-forwarding instead.

Install the sample project BookInfo

> kubectl apply -f <(istioctl kube-inject -f samples/bookinfo/platform/kube/bookinfo.yaml)

Confirm that the services are running

> kubectl get services
NAME                              TYPE           CLUSTER-IP       EXTERNAL-IP              PORT(S)          AGE
details                           ClusterIP      10.108.0.216     <none>                   9080/TCP         4d
kubernetes                        ClusterIP      10.96.0.1        <none>                   443/TCP          4d
productpage                       ClusterIP      10.96.126.187    <none>                   9080/TCP         4d
ratings                           ClusterIP      10.106.50.27     <none>                   9080/TCP         4d
reviews                           ClusterIP      10.109.237.86    <none>                   9080/TCP         4d

Confirm pods are running

> kubectl get pods
NAME                                               READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
details-v1-6865b9b99d-vzz82                        2/2     Running   1          4d
productpage-v1-f8c8fb8-6bldf                       2/2     Running   1          4d
ratings-v1-77f657f55d-66m2t                        2/2     Running   1          4d
reviews-v1-6b7f6db5c5-8gmsg                        2/2     Running   1          4d
reviews-v2-7ff5966b99-hfxcd                        2/2     Running   1          4d
reviews-v3-5df889bcff-2pqdd                        2/2     Running   1          4d

Now we need to make the app accessible

> kubectl apply -f samples/bookinfo/networking/bookinfo-gateway.yaml

Confirm the gateway

> kubectl get gateway
NAME               AGE
bookinfo-gateway   64s

Determine the IP address

Since you are running minikube there is no external load balancer, you can find the IP address of minikube by running the following command

> minikube ip
192.168.99.100

Determine the port

This command will return the port number

> kubectl -n istio-system get service istio-ingressgateway -o jsonpath='{.spec.ports[?(@.name=="http2")].nodePort}'

Now armed with the IP address and port you can hit the browser with the following url:

http://ip-address:port/productpage i.e. http://192.168.99.100:31380/productpage

Telemetry

Istio and Prometheus and Grafana

Check to see if Prometheus is running

> kubectl -n istio-system get svc prometheus
NAME         CLUSTER-IP     EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)    AGE
prometheus   10.59.241.54   <none>        9090/TCP   2m

Check to see if Grafana is running

> kubectl -n istio-system get svc grafana
NAME      CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)    AGE
grafana   10.59.247.103   <none>        3000/TCP   2m

> kubectl -n istio-system port-forward $(kubectl -n istio-system get pod -l app=grafana -o jsonpath='{.items[0].metadata.name}') 3000:3000 &

Various built-in Grafana Dashboards

http://ip-address:3000/dashboard/db/istio-mesh-dashboard
http://ip-address:3000/dashboard/db/istio-service-dashboard
http://ip-address:3000/dashboard/db/istio-workload-dashboard

Istio and Jaeger

> kubectl port-forward -n istio-system $(kubectl get pod -n istio-system -l app=jaeger -o jsonpath='{.items[0].metadata.name}') 16686:16686 &

http://ip-address:16686

Istio and Service Graph

Check to see if the Service Graph is running

> kubectl -n istio-system get svc servicegraph
NAME           CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)    AGE
servicegraph   10.59.253.165   <none>        8088/TCP   30s

> kubectl -n istio-system port-forward $(kubectl -n istio-system get pod -l app=servicegraph -o jsonpath='{.items[0].metadata.name}') 8088:8088 &

http://ip-address:8088/force/forcegraph.html