Istio Operator Install

Use of the operator for new Istio installations is discouraged in favor of the Istioctl and Helm installation methods. While the operator will continue to be supported, new feature requests will not be prioritized.

Instead of manually installing, upgrading, and uninstalling Istio, you can instead let the Istio operator manage the installation for you. This relieves you of the burden of managing different istioctl versions. Simply update the operator custom resource (CR) and the operator controller will apply the corresponding configuration changes for you.

The same IstioOperator API is used to install Istio with the operator as when using the istioctl install instructions. In both cases, configuration is validated against a schema and the same correctness checks are performed.

Using an operator does have a security implication. With the istioctl install command, the operation will run in the admin user’s security context, whereas with an operator, an in-cluster pod will run the operation in its security context. To avoid a vulnerability, ensure that the operator deployment is sufficiently secured.

Prerequisites

  1. Perform any necessary platform-specific setup.

  2. Check the Requirements for Pods and Services.

  3. Install the istioctl command.

Install

Deploy the Istio operator

The istioctl command can be used to automatically deploy the Istio operator:

  1. $ istioctl operator init

This command runs the operator by creating the following resources in the istio-operator namespace:

  • The operator custom resource definition
  • The operator controller deployment
  • A service to access operator metrics
  • Necessary Istio operator RBAC rules

You can configure which namespace the operator controller is installed in, the namespace(s) the operator watches, the installed Istio image sources and versions, and more. For example, you can pass one or more namespaces to watch using the --watchedNamespaces flag:

  1. $ istioctl operator init --watchedNamespaces=istio-namespace1,istio-namespace2

See the istioctl operator init command reference for details.

You can alternatively deploy the operator using Helm:

  1. Create a namespace istio-operator.

    1. $ kubectl create namespace istio-operator

  2. Install operator using Helm.

    1. $ helm install istio-operator manifests/charts/istio-operator \
    2. --set watchedNamespaces="istio-namespace1\,istio-namespace2" \
    3. -n istio-operator

Note that you need to download the Istio release to run the above command.

Prior to Istio 1.10.0, the namespace istio-system needed to be created before installing the operator. As of Istio 1.10.0, the istioctl operator init will create the istio-system namespace.

If you use something other than istioctl operator init, then the istio-system namespace needs to be created manually.

Install Istio with the operator

With the operator installed, you can now create a mesh by deploying an IstioOperator resource. To install the Istio demo configuration profile using the operator, run the following command:

  1. $ kubectl apply -f - <<EOF
  2. apiVersion: install.istio.io/v1alpha1
  3. kind: IstioOperator
  4. metadata:
  5.   namespace: istio-system
  6.   name: example-istiocontrolplane
  7. spec:
  8.   profile: demo
  9. EOF

The controller will detect the IstioOperator resource and then install the Istio components corresponding to the specified (demo) configuration.

If you used --watchedNamespaces when you initialized the Istio operator, apply the IstioOperator resource in one of the watched namespaces, instead of in istio-system.

The Istio control plane (istiod) will be installed in the istio-system namespace by default. To install it in a different location, specify the namespace using the values.global.istioNamespace field as follows:

  1. apiVersion: install.istio.io/v1alpha1
  2. kind: IstioOperator
  3. ...
  4. spec:
  5.   profile: demo
  6.   values:
  7.     global:
  8.       istioNamespace: istio-namespace1

The Istio operator controller begins the process of installing Istio within 90 seconds of the creation of the IstioOperator resource. The Istio installation completes within 120 seconds.

You can confirm the Istio control plane services have been deployed with the following commands:

  1. $ kubectl get services -n istio-system
  2. NAME                   TYPE           CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP      PORT(S)   AGE
  3. istio-egressgateway    ClusterIP      10.96.65.145    <none>           ...       30s
  4. istio-ingressgateway   LoadBalancer   10.96.189.244   192.168.11.156   ...       30s
  5. istiod                 ClusterIP      10.96.189.20    <none>           ...       37s
  1. $ kubectl get pods -n istio-system
  2. NAME                                    READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
  3. istio-egressgateway-696cccb5-m8ndk      1/1     Running   0          68s
  4. istio-ingressgateway-86cb4b6795-9jlrk   1/1     Running   0          68s
  5. istiod-b47586647-sf6sw                  1/1     Running   0          74s

Update

Now, with the controller running, you can change the Istio configuration by editing or replacing the IstioOperator resource. The controller will detect the change and respond by updating the Istio installation correspondingly.

For example, you can switch the installation to the default profile with the following command:

  1. $ kubectl apply -f - <<EOF
  2. apiVersion: install.istio.io/v1alpha1
  3. kind: IstioOperator
  4. metadata:
  5.   namespace: istio-system
  6.   name: example-istiocontrolplane
  7. spec:
  8.   profile: default
  9. EOF

You can also enable or disable components and modify resource settings. For example, to enable the istio-egressgateway component and increase pilot memory requests:

  1. $ kubectl apply -f - <<EOF
  2. apiVersion: install.istio.io/v1alpha1
  3. kind: IstioOperator
  4. metadata:
  5.   namespace: istio-system
  6.   name: example-istiocontrolplane
  7. spec:
  8.   profile: default
  9.   components:
  10.     pilot:
  11.       k8s:
  12.         resources:
  13.           requests:
  14.             memory: 3072Mi
  15.     egressGateways:
  16.     - name: istio-egressgateway
  17.       enabled: true
  18. EOF

You can observe the changes that the controller makes in the cluster in response to IstioOperator CR updates by checking the operator controller logs:

  1. $ kubectl logs -f -n istio-operator "$(kubectl get pods -n istio-operator -lname=istio-operator -o jsonpath='{.items[0].metadata.name}')"

Refer to the IstioOperator API for the complete set of configuration settings.

In-place Upgrade

Download and extract the istioctl corresponding to the version of Istio you wish to upgrade to. Reinstall the operator at the target Istio version:

  1. $ <extracted-dir>/bin/istioctl operator init

You should see that the istio-operator pod has restarted and its version has changed to the target version:

  1. $ kubectl get pods --namespace istio-operator \
  2.   -o=jsonpath='{range .items[*]}{.metadata.name}{":\t"}{range .spec.containers[*]}{.image}{", "}{end}{"\n"}{end}'

After a minute or two, the Istio control plane components should also be restarted at the new version:

  1. $ kubectl get pods --namespace istio-system \
  2.   -o=jsonpath='{range .items[*]}{"\n"}{.metadata.name}{":\t"}{range .spec.containers[*]}{.image}{", "}{end}{"\n"}{end}'

Canary Upgrade

The process for canary upgrade is similar to the canary upgrade with istioctl.

For example, to upgrade the revision of Istio installed in the previous section, first verify that the IstioOperator CR named example-istiocontrolplane exists in your cluster:

  1. $ kubectl get iop --all-namespaces
  2. NAMESPACE      NAME                        REVISION   STATUS    AGE
  3. istio-system   example-istiocontrolplane              HEALTHY   11m

Download and extract the istioctl corresponding to the version of Istio you wish to upgrade to. Then, run the following command to install the new target revision of the Istio control plane based on the in-cluster IstioOperator CR (here, we assume the target revision is 1.8.1):

  1. $ istio-1.8.1/bin/istioctl operator init --revision 1-8-1

You can alternatively use Helm to deploy another operator with a different revision setting:

  1. $ helm install istio-operator manifests/charts/istio-operator \
  2.   --set watchedNamespaces=istio-system \
  3.   -n istio-operator \
  4.   --set revision=1-9-0

Note that you need to download the Istio release to run the above command.

Make a copy of the example-istiocontrolplane CR and save it in a file named example-istiocontrolplane-1-8-1.yaml. Change the name to example-istiocontrolplane-1-8-1 and add revision: 1-8-1 to the CR. Your updated IstioOperator CR should look something like this:

  1. $ cat example-istiocontrolplane-1-8-1.yaml
  2. apiVersion: install.istio.io/v1alpha1
  3. kind: IstioOperator
  4. metadata:
  5.   namespace: istio-system
  6.   name: example-istiocontrolplane-1-8-1
  7. spec:
  8.   revision: 1-8-1
  9.   profile: demo

Apply the updated IstioOperator CR to the cluster. After that, you will have two control plane deployments and services running side-by-side:

  1. $ kubectl get pod -n istio-system -l app=istiod
  2. NAME                            READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
  3. istiod-1-8-1-597475f4f6-bgtcz   1/1     Running   0          64s
  4. istiod-6ffcc65b96-bxzv5         1/1     Running   0          2m11s
  1. $ kubectl get services -n istio-system -l app=istiod
  2. NAME           TYPE        CLUSTER-IP       EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)                                         AGE
  3. istiod         ClusterIP   10.104.129.150   <none>        15010/TCP,15012/TCP,443/TCP,15014/TCP,853/TCP   2m35s
  4. istiod-1-8-1   ClusterIP   10.111.17.49     <none>        15010/TCP,15012/TCP,443/TCP,15014/TCP           88s

To complete the upgrade, label the workload namespaces with istio.io/rev=1-8-1 and restart the workloads, as explained in the Data plane upgrade documentation.

Uninstall

If you used the operator to perform a canary upgrade of the control plane, you can uninstall the old control plane and keep the new one by deleting the old in-cluster IstioOperator CR, which will uninstall the old revision of Istio:

  1. $ kubectl delete istiooperators.install.istio.io -n istio-system example-istiocontrolplane

Wait until Istio is uninstalled - this may take some time.

Then you can remove the Istio operator for the old revision by running the following command:

  1. $ istioctl operator remove --revision <revision>

If you omit the revision flag, then all revisions of Istio operator will be removed.

Note that deleting the operator before the IstioOperator CR and corresponding Istio revision are fully removed may result in leftover Istio resources. To clean up anything not removed by the operator:

  1. $ istioctl manifest generate | kubectl delete -f -
  2. $ kubectl delete ns istio-system --grace-period=0 --force