Calisti

• 1: What's new
• 1.1: Version Matrix
• 2: Service Mesh Manager
• 2.1: Overview
• 2.1.1: Features
• 2.1.1.1: Istio distribution
• 2.1.1.2: Mesh lifecycle management
• 2.1.1.3: Observability toolbox
• 2.1.1.4: Multi-cluster topologies
• 2.1.2: Modes of operation
• 2.1.3: Istio-operator feature comparison
• 2.2: Getting started with the Free Tier
• 2.3: Installation
• 2.3.1: Prerequisites
• 2.3.1.1: Accessing the Service Mesh Manager binaries
• 2.3.1.2: Create a test cluster
• 2.3.2: Licensing options
• 2.3.3: Create single cluster mesh
• 2.3.4: Create multi-cluster mesh
• 2.3.5: SMM Operator helm charts
• 2.3.5.1: Install SMM with the SMM Operator chart
• 2.3.5.2: The ControlPlane Custom Resource
• 2.3.6: Install SMM - GitOps - single cluster
• 2.3.7: Install SMM - GitOps - multi-cluster
• 2.3.8: OpenShift integration
• 2.3.9: Install FIPS images
• 2.3.10: Customize installation
• 2.4: Upgrade
• 2.4.1: How to upgrade
• 2.4.2: CLI - single cluster upgrade
• 2.4.3: CLI - multi-cluster upgrade
• 2.4.4: Operator mode
• 2.4.5: Upgrade SMM - GitOps - single cluster
• 2.4.6: Upgrade SMM - GitOps - multi-cluster
• 2.4.7: Upgrading your business applications
• 2.4.8: Delete old Istio control plane
• 2.5: Dashboard
• 2.5.1: Dashboard overview
• 2.5.2: Mesh
• 2.5.2.1: Validation
• 2.5.3: Topology view
• 2.5.3.1: Drill-down
• 2.5.3.2: Generate test load
• 2.5.3.3: Pod logs
• 2.5.4: Workloads
• 2.5.5: Services
• 2.5.6: Gateways
• 2.5.6.1: Create ingress gateway
• 2.5.6.2: Create egress gateway
• 2.5.6.3: Manage host and port configuration
• 2.5.6.4: Routes and traffic management with Virtual Services
• 2.5.6.5: Using Let's Encrypt with your own domain name
• 2.5.7: Traffic tap
• 2.5.8: Managing Kafka clusters
• 2.5.9: Istio resources
• 2.5.9.1: Create Istio resources
• 2.5.9.2: Manage Istio resources
• 2.5.10: Configure the dashboard
• 2.5.10.1: Exposing the Dashboard
• 2.5.10.2: OIDC authentication
• 2.5.10.2.1: Using Dex for authentication
• 2.6: Deploy custom application into the mesh
• 2.7: Mesh Management
• 2.7.1: Multi-cluster - single mesh
• 2.7.1.1: Cluster network
• 2.7.1.2: Attach a new cluster to the mesh
• 2.7.1.3: Detach a cluster from the mesh
• 2.7.1.4: Cluster registry controller
• 2.7.2: Traffic management
• 2.7.2.1: Circuit Breaking
• 2.7.2.2: External Services
• 2.7.2.3: Fault Injection
• 2.7.2.4: Ingress gateways
• 2.7.2.5: Mirroring
• 2.7.2.6: Restrict Outbound Traffic of Workloads
• 2.7.2.7: Routing
• 2.7.2.8: Sidecar injection
• 2.7.3: Istio configuration validation
• 2.8: Convenience features
• 2.8.1: Tracking Service Level Objectives (SLOs)
• 2.8.1.1: Create new Service Level Objectives (SLOs)
• 2.8.1.2: Create new Alerting Policy
• 2.8.1.3: Service Level Indicator template
• 2.8.1.4: Create custom Service Level Objective
• 2.8.2: Flagger Canary
• 2.8.3: Integrated monitoring in SMM
• 2.8.4: Integrated tracing in SMM
• 2.8.5: Let's Encrypt support for gateways
• 2.9: Integrating Virtual Machines into the mesh
• 2.9.1: Prerequisites
• 2.9.2: Quickstart
• 2.9.3: Dashboard
• 2.9.4: Use-cases
• 2.9.4.1: Add a virtual machine to the mesh
• 2.9.4.2: VM to Kubernetes migration
• 2.9.4.3: Upgrading Istio
• 2.9.4.4: Autoscaling VM groups
• 2.9.4.5: Maintenance
• 2.9.4.6: Remove VM from the mesh
• 2.9.5: Istio resources
• 2.9.6: Known limitations
• 2.10: Operations
• 2.10.1: Scaling and performance tuning
• 2.10.1.1: Finding bottlenecks
• 2.10.1.2: Scale a specific Workload
• 2.10.1.3: Scale the Istio proxy sidecar of a workload
• 2.10.1.4: Scale the Istio Control Plane
• 2.10.1.5: Scale SMM Control Plane
• 2.10.1.6: Scale the built-in Prometheus
• 2.10.2: SLO-based alerting in Production
• 2.10.2.1: Set up Persistent Volumes for Prometheus
• 2.10.2.2: Set up High Availability for the Monitoring Stack
• 2.10.2.3: Deploy a new Alertmanager
• 2.10.2.4: Use an existing Alertmanager
• 2.10.3: Global DNS
• 2.10.4: GitOps
• 2.11: Security
• 2.11.1: Zero Trust Security
• 2.11.2: Authentication
• 2.11.3: Mutual TLS
• 2.11.4: FIPS-compliant service mesh
• 2.11.5: Open Port Inventory
• 2.11.6: Recovery procedure
• 2.11.7: Fetch CA certificate from Vault
• 2.12: Frequently Asked Questions
• 2.12.1: Calisti Service Mesh Manager
• 2.12.2: Service mesh FAQ
• 2.12.3: Observability and debugging
• 2.12.4: Security and compliance
• 2.12.5: Multi-cluster support
• 2.12.6: Licensing
• 2.13: Reference
• 2.13.1: API
• 2.13.2: CRD
• 2.13.2.1: ControlPlane CRD schema reference (group smm.cisco.com)
• 2.13.2.2: IstioOperator CRD schema reference (group smm.cisco.com)
• 2.13.2.3: License CRD schema reference (group smm.cisco.com)
• 2.13.2.4: SRE API
• 2.13.2.4.1: AlertingPolicy CRD schema reference (group sre.smm.cisco.com)
• 2.13.2.4.2: AlertingTemplate CRD schema reference (group sre.smm.cisco.com)
• 2.13.2.4.3: ServiceLevelIndicatorTemplate CRD schema reference (group sre.smm.cisco.com)
• 2.13.2.4.4: ServiceLevelObjective CRD schema reference (group sre.smm.cisco.com)
• 2.13.3: The command line interface
• 2.13.3.1: Command reference
• 2.13.3.1.1: smm
• 2.13.3.1.2: smm activate
• 2.13.3.1.3: smm activate-ecr
• 2.13.3.1.4: smm analyze
• 2.13.3.1.5: smm cert-manager
• 2.13.3.1.6: smm cert-manager install
• 2.13.3.1.7: smm cert-manager uninstall
• 2.13.3.1.8: smm config
• 2.13.3.1.9: smm config delete
• 2.13.3.1.10: smm config edit
• 2.13.3.1.11: smm config view
• 2.13.3.1.12: smm dashboard
• 2.13.3.1.13: smm demoapp
• 2.13.3.1.14: smm demoapp install
• 2.13.3.1.15: smm demoapp load
• 2.13.3.1.16: smm demoapp load start
• 2.13.3.1.17: smm demoapp load stop
• 2.13.3.1.18: smm demoapp uninstall
• 2.13.3.1.19: smm graph
• 2.13.3.1.20: smm install
• 2.13.3.1.21: smm istio
• 2.13.3.1.22: smm istio cluster
• 2.13.3.1.23: smm istio cluster attach
• 2.13.3.1.24: smm istio cluster detach
• 2.13.3.1.25: smm istio cluster status
• 2.13.3.1.26: smm istio install
• 2.13.3.1.27: smm istio outbound-traffic-policy
• 2.13.3.1.28: smm istio overview
• 2.13.3.1.29: smm istio uninstall
• 2.13.3.1.30: smm license
• 2.13.3.1.31: smm license apply
• 2.13.3.1.32: smm license list
• 2.13.3.1.33: smm license remove
• 2.13.3.1.34: smm login
• 2.13.3.1.35: smm operator
• 2.13.3.1.36: smm operator reconcile
• 2.13.3.1.37: smm registry
• 2.13.3.1.38: smm registry add
• 2.13.3.1.39: smm registry ecr
• 2.13.3.1.40: smm registry list
• 2.13.3.1.41: smm registry override
• 2.13.3.1.42: smm registry override reset
• 2.13.3.1.43: smm registry override set
• 2.13.3.1.44: smm registry override status
• 2.13.3.1.45: smm registry reconcile
• 2.13.3.1.46: smm registry remove
• 2.13.3.1.47: smm sdm
• 2.13.3.1.48: smm sdm cluster
• 2.13.3.1.49: smm sdm cluster kafka-connect
• 2.13.3.1.50: smm sdm cluster kafka-connect create
• 2.13.3.1.51: smm sdm cluster kafka-connect delete
• 2.13.3.1.52: smm sdm cluster kafka-connect get
• 2.13.3.1.53: smm sdm cluster kafka-connect update
• 2.13.3.1.54: smm sdm cluster kafka-connector
• 2.13.3.1.55: smm sdm cluster kafka-connector
• 2.13.3.1.56: smm sdm cluster kafka-connector
• 2.13.3.1.57: smm sdm cluster kafka-connector delete
• 2.13.3.1.58: smm sdm cluster kafka-connector get
• 2.13.3.1.59: smm sdm cluster update
• 2.13.3.1.60: smm sdm mirror-maker2
• 2.13.3.1.61: smm sdm prometheus
• 2.13.3.1.62: smm sdm zookeeper
• 2.13.3.1.63: smm sidecar-proxy
• 2.13.3.1.64: smm sidecar-proxy auto-inject
• 2.13.3.1.65: smm sidecar-proxy auto-inject off
• 2.13.3.1.66: smm sidecar-proxy auto-inject on
• 2.13.3.1.67: smm sidecar-proxy egress
• 2.13.3.1.68: smm sidecar-proxy egress recommend
• 2.13.3.1.69: smm tap
• 2.13.3.1.70: smm uninstall
• 2.13.3.1.71: smm version
• 2.13.3.2: Upgrade Service Mesh Manager CLI
• 3: Streaming Data Manager
• 3.1: Overview
• 3.1.1: Koperator feature comparison
• 3.1.2: Modes of operation
• 3.1.2.1: Operator mode
• 3.2: Getting started with the Free Tier
• 3.3: Installation
• 3.3.1: Install SDM from the command line
• 3.3.2: Recommendations demo application
• 3.3.3: Operator mode
• 3.3.4: Install SDM - GitOps
• 3.4: Upgrade
• 3.5: Create Kafka cluster
• 3.5.1: Create KafkaCluster using the CLI
• 3.5.2: KafkaCluster CR examples
• 3.5.3: Mandatory KafkaCluster CR elements in Streaming Data Manager
• 3.6: Data migration using MirrorMaker2
• 3.7: Dashboard
• 3.7.1: Accessing the UI
• 3.7.2: Brokers dashboard
• 3.7.3: Consumers dashboard
• 3.7.4: Topics dashboard
• 3.7.4.1: Create topic
• 3.7.4.2: Edit topic
• 3.7.4.3: Delete topic
• 3.7.5: ACL dashboard
• 3.7.5.1: KafkaACL dashboard
• 3.7.5.2: Role dashboard
• 3.7.5.3: Resource Selector dashboard
• 3.7.5.4: Classic ACL dashboard
• 3.7.5.5: Kafka users
• 3.7.5.5.1: Create user
• 3.7.5.5.2: Delete user
• 3.8: Managing custom Kafka distribution with Streaming Data Manager
• 3.8.1: Updating the Kafka distribution with Streaming Data Manager
• 3.9: Apache Kafka over Istio
• 3.9.1: Use a custom Certificate Authority with Istio
• 3.9.2: Setup Istio to use CSR operator as external CA
• 3.10: Kafka ACLs over Istio overview
• 3.10.1: Client applications in the same mesh
• 3.10.2: Client applications outside the Istio mesh
• 3.10.3: Client applications outside the Kubernetes cluster
• 3.10.4: Enable OAuth Bearer Token Authentication for listeners
• 3.10.4.1: OAuth Bearer Token Authentication for listeners (Apache Kafka 3.1.0 and above)
• 3.10.4.2: OAuth Bearer Token Authentication for listeners (Apache Kafka pre 3.1.0)
• 3.10.5: Declarative Kafka ACLs
• 3.11: Koperator
• 3.11.1: Install the operator
• 3.11.2: Upgrade the operator
• 3.11.3: Test provisioned Kafka Cluster
• 3.11.4: CruiseControlOperation to manage Cruise Control
• 3.11.5: Configure Kafka cluster
• 3.11.5.1: KafkaCluster CR configuration
• 3.11.5.1.1: KafkaCluster CR Examples
• 3.11.6: Provisioning Kafka Topics
• 3.11.7: Securing Kafka With SSL
• 3.11.8: Koperator capablities
• 3.11.9: Monitoring Apache Kafka on Kubernetes
• 3.11.10: Expose the Kafka cluster to external applications
• 3.11.11: Configure rack awareness
• 3.11.12: Supported versions and compatibility matrix
• 3.11.13: Support
• 3.11.14: Benchmarking Kafka
• 3.11.15: Delete the operator
• 3.11.16: Tips and tricks for the Koperator
• 3.11.17: Troubleshooting the operator
• 3.11.17.1: Common errors
• 3.11.18: CRD
• 3.11.18.1: KafkaCluster CRD schema reference (group kafka.banzaicloud.io)
• 3.11.18.2: KafkaTopic CRD schema reference (group kafka.banzaicloud.io)
• 3.11.18.3: KafkaUser CRD schema reference (group kafka.banzaicloud.io)
• 3.11.19: Developer Guide
• 3.11.20: License of Koperator
• 3.12: Manage Schema Registry instances
• 3.13: Using ksqlDB
• 3.13.1: Running ksqlDB in headless mode
• 3.14: Monitoring and alerting
• 3.14.1: Storage settings
• 3.14.2: Alerting
• 3.14.3: Monitoring with Prometheus and Grafana
• 3.14.4: Changing Prometheus resource limits
• 3.15: Security
• 3.15.1: Open Port Inventory
• 3.15.2: Recovery procedure
• 3.16: Disaster recovery
• 3.16.1: Disaster recovery on Kubernetes using MirrorMaker2
• 3.17: Using Kafka Connect with Streaming Data Manager
• 3.17.1: Manage Kafka Connect clusters
• 3.17.2: Available Kafka Connectors and Connector Classes
• 3.17.3: Manage Kafka Connectors
• 3.17.4: Kafka Connect and Connector examples
• 3.18: Synchronizing SDM resources across multiple Kubernetes Clusters
• 3.18.1: How to synchronize SDM resources between Kubernetes clusters
• 3.18.2: Cluster Registry Custom Resources
• 3.18.3: Operator Mode
• 3.18.4: How to manage multiple Apache Kafka clusters using the dashboard
• 3.19: Tips and tricks
• 3.19.1: How to switch to declarative mode
• 3.19.2: Add more disk to the brokers
• 3.19.3: How to run SDM with upstream Istio in the same Kubernetes cluster
• 3.19.4: Create SuperUser with JKS key
• 3.20: FAQ
• 3.21: Reference
• 3.21.1: CRD
• 3.21.1.1: ApplicationManifest CRD schema reference (group supertubes.banzaicloud.io)
• 3.21.1.2: KafkaACL CRD schema reference (group kafka.banzaicloud.io)
• 3.21.1.3: KafkaBackup CRD schema reference (group kafka.banzaicloud.io)
• 3.21.1.4: KafkaConnect CRD schema reference (group kafka.banzaicloud.io)
• 3.21.1.5: KafkaConnector CRD schema reference (group kafka.banzaicloud.io)
• 3.21.1.6: KafkaResourceSelector CRD schema reference (group kafka.banzaicloud.io)
• 3.21.1.7: KafkaRole CRD schema reference (group kafka.banzaicloud.io)
• 3.21.1.8: KsqlDB CRD schema reference (group kafka.banzaicloud.io)
• 3.21.1.9: MirrorMaker2 CRD schema reference (group kafka.banzaicloud.io)
• 3.21.1.10: SchemaRegistry CRD schema reference (group kafka.banzaicloud.io)
• 3.21.2: The command line interface
• 3.21.2.1: Installing the CLI
• 4: Support
• 4.1: Known Issues
• 4.2: Common CLI issues
• 4.3: Support-bundle

1 - What's new

Release 1.12.0 (2023-05-11)

OpenShift support and certification

Red Hat OpenShift provides scalable and reliable solutions to monitor microservices and offers full-fledged container security. With a Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS (ROSA) version 4.11 setup, you can seamlessly install Calisti on Red Hat OpenShift clusters. Calisti avoids vendor lock-in so that you can mix-n-match your cluster cloud providers and transition or continue using mixed multi-clusters (GKE, EKS, AKS, OpenShift).

We have implemented OpenShift support for Calisti in a way that it is ready to be OpenShift certified.

Starting with this release, Calisti runs on Red Hat OpenShift, and can run and manage Apache Kafka clusters and Istio meshes on OpenShift. For details, see the detailed instructions for the installation method you want to use.

Migrate your Kafka cluster data into Calisti

You can now migrate data from your existing Apache Kafka clusters to Kafka clusters that are managed by Calisti without introducing downtime of the existing Kafka clusters. That way you can get the benefits of running Kafka clusters on Calisti without losing any data collected to the already running Kafka clusters.

For details, see Data migration using MirrorMaker2.

Dashboard improvements

You can now directly create and edit Istio resources on the dashboard. The new YAML editor of Calisti provides ready-to-use templates, as well as syntactic and semantic validation.

• Navigate to MENU > ISTIO RESOURCES > CREATE NEW, select an Istio resource to create from the list displayed.

• The MENU > GATEWAYS > ROUTES page has been renamed to VIRTUAL SERVICE.

• The MENU > SERVICES > TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT and MENU > TOPOLOGY > TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT pages are renamed to VIRTUAL SERVICE. Calisti provides various templates to configure virtual services depending on your use case.

• The MENU > SERVICES > CIRCUIT BREAKER and MENU > TOPOLOGY > CIRCUIT BREAKER pages are renamed to DESTINATION RULES. Calisti provides various templates to configure destination rules depending on your use case.

  

• Creating ingress and egress gateways, as well as setting other traffic management components of Istio is now possible on the Calisti dashboard using the new YAML editor.

• You can now create a VirtualService and use:

  • Tls Route Template for creating Ingress with your own domain.
  • Fault Injection Abort Template and Fault Injection Delay Template to inject fault in a service. To learn more see, Fault Injection.

• You can now create a DestinationRule and use Outlier Detection and Connection Pool for setting circiut breaking parameters. To lean more see, Circuit Breaking.

Other changes

• You can now install Istio into custom namespaces.
• You can now configure custom sidecar injection templates for Calisti to help you integrate Service Mesh Manager with other applications.
• Calisti can now generate a support bundle to help troubleshooting support cases. For details, see Support-bundle.

Release 1.11.0 (2022-11-07)

Streaming Data Manager

Calisti now has a new component called Streaming Data Manager. Streaming Data Manager is a cloud-native, turnkey solution for deploying and managing Apache Kafka over Istio, providing:

• Security and encryption
• out-of-the-box observability
• RBAC integration
• Scaling

For details, see Overview.

Note: When using Streaming Data Manager on Amazon EKS, you must install the EBS CSI driver add-on on your cluster.

GitOps support

Service Mesh Manager and Streaming Data Manager can be used in GitOps environments as well. For details, see Install SMM - GitOps - single cluster, Install SMM - GitOps - multi-cluster, and Install SDM - GitOps.

Istio 1.15 support

Service Mesh Manager now supports Istio 1.15 and provides our Istio distribution based on that codebase.

This also means that Service Mesh Manager is fully compatible with Kubernetes v1.24.x.

Other changes

• The health views of the Services and Workloads pages now have fixed URLs to make sharing easier.

• If the name of your cluster doesn’t comply with the RFC 1123 DNS labels/subdomain restrictions, Service Mesh Manager now automatically converts it to a compliant format and sets it as the name of the cluster. In earlier versions, you had to manually set a compliant name for clusters with non-compliant names, otherwise certain operations (like smm install and smm attach) failed. Service Mesh Manager now automatically applies the following conversions if needed:

  • Replace ‘_’ characters with ‘-’
  • Replace ‘.’ characters with ‘-’
  • Replace ‘:’ characters with ‘-’
  • Truncate the name to 63 characters

• The Service Mesh Manager CLI now returns an error message when trying to run a command on a cluster that’s running an unsupported Kubernetes version.

• In Kubernetes 1.24 or newer, token secrets for service accounts aren’t created automatically. If Service Mesh Manager is running on a Kubernetes 1.24 (or newer) cluster, then when adding virtual machines to the mesh, you must create the token secrets manually. For details, see Add a virtual machine to the mesh.

Release 1.10.0 (2022-08-09)

RedHat-based virtual machines

Service Mesh Manager now supports attaching virtual machines running RedHat Enterprise Linux 8 to the mesh. For details, see Integrating Virtual Machines into the mesh.

Istio 1.13 support

Service Mesh Manager now supports Istio 1.13 and provides our Istio distribution based on that codebase.

Enterprise licenses

Paid-tier and enterprise licenses are now available for Service Mesh Manager.

• If you are interested in purchasing a license, contact us.
• If you have already purchased a license, apply it to your Service Mesh Manager deployments. For details, see Licensing options.

Other changes

• The smm CLI tool now supports MacOS running on M1 chips.
• The Prometheus node exporter service now uses port 19101 instead of 19100. That way, the Prometheus deployment of Service Mesh Manager can work side-by-side with a pre-existing Prometheus deployment. For details on other ports used by Service Mesh Manager, see Open Port Inventory.

Release 1.9.1 (2022-04-11)

Service Mesh Manager now supports attaching virtual machines to the mesh. After a virtual machine has been integrated into the mesh, Service Mesh Manager automatically updates the configuration of the virtual machine to ensure that it remains a part of the mesh and receives every configuration updates it needs to operate in teh mesh. In addition, the observability features available for Kubernetes pods are available for the virtual machines as well, for example:

• Virtual machine workloads and their health information are shown on the MENU > TOPOLOGY and MENU > WORKLOADS dashboard pages.
• On both pages, you can drill down to get detailed information and monitoring data about the virtual machine.
• Troubleshooting features like tracing and traffic tapping work for virtual machines as well.

For details, see Integrating Virtual Machines into the mesh.

Release 1.9.0 (2022-03-08)

Free tier

From now on, after a free registration, you can use Service Mesh Manager to manage your mesh of up to ten nodes. For details, see Licensing options and Getting started with the Free Tier.

Istio 1.12 support

Service Mesh Manager now supports Istio 1.12 and provides our Istio distribution based on that codebase.

Other changes

This release includes the following fixes:

• All custom resources used by Service Mesh Manager had been moved to the smm.cisco.com group. CLI is capable of migrating the objects to the new group.
• Topology:
  • Mesh gateways are now fully visible on the topology page even in timeline mode
  • Topology view now shows pod counts in timeline mode
• Fix an issue causing new SLOs to not to start calculating on creation
• IstioControlPlane settings can be overridden from Service Mesh Manager’s ControlPlane resource using the .spec.meshManager.istio.istioCRDOverrides key (which contains a YAML string).

Removed features

The following commands have been removed from the Service Mesh Manager command-line tool. You can configure the related features from the dashboard.

• smm sidecar-proxy egress get
• smm sidecar-proxy egress set
• smm sidecar-proxy egress delete
• smm routing
• smm mtls
• Integrated support for canary deployments. You can use the Flagger operator instead.

Release 1.8.2 (2021-12-14)

This release includes the following fixes:

Active-active fixes

• Fix secret cleanup for Istio in active-active setups.
• Update istio-operator to latest.
• Multiple active Istio control-plane support.
• Cluster name is now visible in istio status command.
• Control plane list now shows clusters as well.

Mesh view

• Stabilize the ordering of Istio clusters to prevent changed ordering on the UI.

cert-manager

• Update to v1 API.

Auth

• Fix an issue where 1.7 specific authentication tokens were generated during upgrade scenarios.

UI

• Fix an issue which caused topology to crash for ingress gateways.

Operators

• Add RBAC for Coordination resources so that operator leader election can use the resources.
• In case there is a merge conflict during reconciliation the smm operator will retry the reconciliation without failing.
• 1.7 Istio operators will be properly removed during uninstall.

Let’s Encrypt

• Validate DNS records on let’s encrypt enabled ingresses to ensure that the ingress and DNS records are matching.

Registry access

• Sort secret names to prevent changes always happening during reconciliation.

Release 1.8 (2021-10-26)

The primary goal of this release was to have a modern way to orchestrate Istio and the multi-cluster topologies Service Mesh Manager supports. As part of this work, the Cisco Istio Operator has been restructured from the ground up so that you can benefit from an API that has been adjusted to the modern Istio versions.

As this new version of the operator supports not just the Primary-Remote cluster topology, but also Multi-Primary both on the same and different network, this change paves the way for subsequent releases to add support into Service Mesh Manager for meshes with any number of Primary and Remote clusters.

Istio 1.11 support

Service Mesh Manager now supports Istio 1.11 and provides our Istio distribution based on that codebase.

This also means that Service Mesh Manager is fully compatible with Kubernetes v1.22.x.

OIDC and external dashboard access support

This release provides support for exposing the Service Mesh Manager dashboard via a public, https URL. For the required configuration please check out the Exposing the Dashboard page.

To entirely remove the need for downloading the Service Mesh Manager CLI and to better integrate with existing OIDC-enabled Kubernetes deployments, we are also supporting OIDC Authentication.

Release 1.7 (2021-07-28)

Release 1.7 is focusing on compliance, integrations, tech-debt and reusability.

GraphQL federation

The Service Mesh Manager GraphQL API is now broken down into separate components to increase reusability, and to provide the ability to switch components on/off in Service Mesh Manager in the future.

Protocol-specific observability

Istio provides several useful metrics for the TCP, HTTP, and GRPC protocols. To give you better observability and more insight into the traffic of your services, Service Mesh Manager displays protocol-specific metrics normally not available in Istio for MySQL and PostgreSQL traffic. Support for more protocols is planned in future releases.

Istio 1.10 support

Service Mesh Manager now supports Istio 1.10.

Cluster registry

A generic, distributed Kubernetes cluster registry is now serving as the base for keeping multi-cluster metadata. Cluster metadata is replicated across clusters using a gossip-like protocol.

Unified Istio distribution with SecureCN

SecureCN and Service Mesh Manager are now using the same Istio distribution that enables better integration between the two products.

CSDL Compliance

Service Mesh Manager has now reached CSDL “Planned” status.

DevNet Sandbox

Service Mesh Manager is now available on DevNet sandbox for design partners for solution testing.

Release 1.6.1 (2021-05-06)

This release is a security and bugfix release.

Included changes are:

• Add support for Istio 1.8.5 for customers still using the old version of Istio instead of 1.9
• Fix an issue in the Istio operator that required permissions for the authentication.istio.io and config.istio.io groups, while those are only needed for Istio versions < 1.8
• smm activate command now resets all of the user’s registry settings, making changing IAM credentials easier. Previously the end user-needed to remove the registry access credentials manually using the smm registry remove command

Release 1.6 (2021-04-09)

Group your clusters into networks to optimize your mesh topology using a mix of gateway-based and flat-network connections between your clusters, decreasing cross-cluster latencies and transfer costs. Clusters belonging to the same network can access each other directly, without using the cluster gateway. For details, see Cluster network and Attach a new cluster to the mesh.

UI improvements

• The Mesh Overview page of the UI shows information about your service mesh and the control planes.

  

• The new Dashboard Overview page now shows health and SLO information as well.

  

• The Topology View now shows the health status of the services.

  

• You can now filter on health and alert status on the services and workloads lists.

  

Istio 1.9 support

Service Mesh Manager now supports Istio 1.9.

1.1 - Version Matrix

Release 1.12.0 (2023-05-11)

Calisti v1.12.0 is validated on

• EKS, GKE, AKS, KinD, On-premises (requires loadBalancer) kubernetes versions - 1.21, 1.22, 1.23, 1.24
• Openshift ROSA (AWS) - 4.11

Release 1.11.0 (2022-11-07)

Calisti v1.11.0 is validated on

• EKS, GKE, AKS, KinD, On-premises (requires loadBalancer) kubernetes versions - 1.21, 1.22, 1.23, 1.24

Release 1.10.0 (2022-08-09)

Calisti v1.10.0 is validated on

• EKS, GKE, AKS, KinD, On-premises (requires loadBalancer) kubernetes versions - 1.19, 1.20, 1.21, 1.22, 1.23

Release 1.9.1 (2022-04-11)

Calisti v1.9.1 is validated on

• EKS, GKE, AKS, KinD, On-premises (requires loadBalancer) kubernetes versions - 1.19, 1.20, 1.21, 1.22, 1.23

2 - Service Mesh Manager

Service Mesh Manager is a multi and hybrid-cloud enabled service mesh platform for constructing modern applications. Built on Kubernetes and our Istio distribution, Service Mesh Manager enables flexibility, portability and consistency across on-premises datacenters and cloud environments.

Service Mesh Manager helps you to confidently scale your microservices over single- and multi-cluster environments and to make daily operational routines standardized and more efficient. The componentization and scaling of modern applications inevitably leads to a number of optimization and management issues:

• How do you spot bottlenecks? Are all components functioning correctly?
• How are connections between components secured?
• How does one reliably upgrade service components?

Service Mesh Manager helps you accomplish these tasks and many others in a simple and scalable way, by leveraging the Istio service mesh and building many automations around it. Our tag-line for the product captures this succinctly:

Service Mesh Manager operationalizes the service mesh to bring deep observability, convenient management, and policy-based security to modern container-based applications.

Learn more about Service Mesh Manager.

2.1 - Overview

Service Mesh Manager is a multi and hybrid-cloud enabled service mesh platform for constructing modern applications. Built on Kubernetes and our Istio distribution, Service Mesh Manager enables flexibility, portability and consistency across on-premises datacenters and cloud environments.

Service Mesh Manager helps you to confidently scale your microservices over single- and multi-cluster environments and to make daily operational routines standardized and more efficient. The componentization and scaling of modern applications inevitably leads to a number of optimization and management issues:

• How do you spot bottlenecks? Are all components functioning correctly?
• How are connections between components secured?
• How does one reliably upgrade service components?

Service Mesh Manager helps you accomplish these tasks and many others in a simple and scalable way, by leveraging the Istio service mesh and building many automations around it. Our tag-line for the product captures this succinctly:

Service Mesh Manager operationalizes the service mesh to bring deep observability, convenient management, and policy-based security to modern container-based applications.

Key features

Service Mesh Manager takes the pain out of Istio by offering great UX from installation and mesh management to runtime diagnostics and more.

Istio distribution

Service Mesh Manager is built on Istio, but offers enhanced functionality, for example, operator-based Istio management, a full-featured CLI tool, and an intuitive and easy to use UI. It is not a new abstraction layer on top of Istio, and stays fully compatible with the upstream. Service Mesh Manager is designed for enterprise users and comes with commercial support.

For a detailed list of changes compared to upstream Istio, see Istio distribution.

Observability

The Service Mesh Manager UI gives you insight into the operation of your services. It not only shows the service topology with real-time and historical metrics, but also allows you to drill-down and analyze the metrics in context. Service Mesh Manager automatically calculates the health of your services and workloads based on the available metrics. If you still need additional details, you can access the related Grafana dashboards with a single click.

You can also monitor communications with services that are external to your mesh.

Root cause diagnostics

Root cause diagnostics help you efficiently isolate and solve operational issues related to your services. Service Mesh Manager offers:

• Real-time tracing of inter-service traffic through the Tap view
• Service mesh configuration and cluster state validation
• Drill-down view to analyze metrics in context
• One-click access to Jaeger distributed traces)

Control

You can manage Istio through the Service Mesh Manager UI and the CLI. Service Mesh Manager gives you easy access to the configuration of the Istio service mesh and its underlying traffic-management features, including:

• Routing
• Circuit breaking
• Fault injection
• Ingress gateway management
• Restricting Outbound Traffic

With Service Mesh Manager, you can manage service-updates using automated, industry-standard upgrade strategies, like canary releases.

Multi-cluster

With Service Mesh Manager, you can monitor and manage your hybrid multi-cloud service infrastructure from a single pane of glass. You can easily attach and detach clusters using the CLI, and take advantage of enhanced multi-cluster telemetry.

Service Mesh Manager supports multiple mesh topologies, so you can use the one that best fits for your use-cases. In multi-cluster configurations it provides automatic locality load-balancing.

Service Level Objectives and burn-rate alerts

Service Mesh Manager helps SREs and operation engineers to observe and control the health of their services and applications. You can create and track service level objectives and corresponding alerting rules on the Service Mesh Manager dashboard.

Security & Compliance

Service Mesh Manager helps you secure your services through industry-standard authorization and authentication practices, including:

• Automatically-secured communication channels between service components: advanced mTLS configuration per service, per namespace, or cluster-wide
• Seamless Kubernetes-native RBAC authentication
• Available in FIPS-140 compliant edition as well

High-level architecture

Calisti Service Mesh Manager consists of the following components:

• Service mesh management: The open source Cisco Istio operator helps to install/upgrade/manage Istio deployments. Its unique features include managing multiple ingress/egress gateways in a declarative fashion, and automated and fine-tuned multi-cluster management.

• The core components of Service Mesh Manager are:

  • the Service Mesh Manager backend (exposing a GraphQL API)
  • the Service Mesh Manager UI, a web interface
  • the Service Mesh Manager CLI
  • the Service Mesh Manager operator

  Service Mesh Manager’s soul is its backend, which exposes a GraphQL API. The Service Mesh Manager UI (dashboard) and CLI interact with this API. The Service Mesh Manager operator is an optional component which helps with a declarative installation method to support GitOps workflows.

• External out-of-the-box integrations:

  • Prometheus
  • Grafana
  • Jaeger
  • Cert manager

  These components are automatically installed and configured by Service Mesh Manager by default to be able to work with Istio. You can also integrate Service Mesh Manager with your own Prometheus, Grafana, Jaeger, or Cert manager - Service Mesh Manager follow the batteries included but replaceable paradigm.

Istio-operator and Service Mesh Manager

The Calisti team actively maintains its fully upstream-compatible Istio distribution and several open-source projects and integrations that serve as the basis for Cisco Service Mesh Manager. From the perspective of Istio management, the Calisti team maintains the following:

• The Istio operator is an open source project, which is the core component involved in Istio control plane and gateway lifecycle management for Cisco Service Mesh Manager.
• Calisti Service Mesh Manager is a commercial product that includes all the features mentioned in this guide, enterprise support, and optionally integration support for customer environments.

Read the detailed comparison.

Next steps

• Jump to the Installation guide or get started with the Free Tier
• Read the FAQ
• View Service Mesh Manager related blogposts
• Schedule a demo

2.1.1 - Features

Service Mesh Manager addresses the whole cloud-native lifecycle of a service mesh-based solution by providing various tools starting from day 0 to day 2 operations. As such a solution requires quite many components to provide the core service mesh functionality, tracing, metrics or safe canary-based deployments (just to name a few) we are dividing Service Mesh Manager into the following layers:

Now let’s see how these layers add up to a complete solution over the whole lifecycle of the product:

Day 0

Day 0, in software development, represents the design phase, during which project requirements are specified and the architecture of the solution is decided. Service Meshes, even if they are offloading the burden of security and traffic routing from the microservices' native side, are complex in nature.

Service Mesh Manager is designed with Day 0 experimentation in mind: we are providing a CLI tool that allows to install Service Mesh Manager without prior experience: you can have an Istio-based service mesh up and running in 15 minutes - with monitoring and tracing included. The user interface allows for rapid experimentation with Istio features via an intuitive dashboard, so during the design phase Engineers can focus on what matters the most: finding the right architecture.

Day 1

Day 1 involves developing and deploying software that was designed in the Day 0 phase. In this phase you create not only the application itself, but also its infrastructure, network, and external services, then implement the initial configuration of it all.

After the initial experimentation, Service Mesh Manager aids this process by not just providing facilities for configuring the service mesh, but also by providing validations to check for any issues in the deployed settings, and integrated metrics and outlier-detection information to pinpoint any issues with the freshly changed services.

In case of interoperability issues, the traffic tap and automated tracing feature provides more detailed insight into the real-time traffic.

Day 2

Day 2 is the time when the product is shipped or made available to the customer. Here, most of the effort is focused on maintaining, monitoring, and optimizing the system. Analyzing the behavior of the system and reacting correctly are of crucial importance, as the resulting feedback loop is applied until the end of the application’s life.

Service meshes and Istio in particular are developing fast. This is reflected in the N-1 support model it uses: a new Istio version is released every 3 months, and only the last two are supported. Service Mesh Manager helps decrease the risk of these upgrades by providing canary-like control plane upgrades: SREs can gradually upgrade their services to the new version even on a Workload level, and in case an issue happens, the old version of Istio is always available in the cluster to fall back to.

Service Mesh Manager provides a Service Level Objective feature that allows to ensure the solution works within its expected operational parameters. In case of an issue, the automated outlier detection system detects failures and shows them on the topology view. We are aiding postmortems using our timeline feature, that allows for checking out the past state of the deployment, including health data.

2.1.1.1 - Istio distribution

Service Mesh Manager is built on Istio, but offers enhanced functionality, for example, operator-based Istio management, a full-featured CLI tool, and an intuitive and easy to use UI. It is not a new abstraction layer on top of Istio, and stays fully compatible with the upstream.

Service Mesh Manager is designed for enterprise users and comes with commercial support.

Notable changes compared to upstream Istio

FIPS 140-2 Level 1 compliant build

The FIPS build uses Google’s BoringCrypto for the go-based components and Envoy. All components are recompiled with the necessary configuration to provide Level 1 compliance. Also the allowed ciphers are restricted even more than FIPS would allow. For details, see FIPS-compliant service mesh.

Multiple control plane support

The upstream Istio does not have the proper support for having properly isolated multiple control planes within one cluster. Various changes (ENV name overrides, ConfigMap name overrides, and so on) were made to support proper isolation between control planes.

Protocol specific observability

Istio uses Envoy proxy under the hood, which has support for various data protocols and provides protocol-specific metrics for them. The upstream Istio can enable those metrics if a supported protocol is detected. That list has been extended with PostgreSQL, and other protocols are coming soon.

Direct connect through gateways

Direct connect means that a workload can be exposed through an Istio ingress gateway in a way that the internal mTLS is not terminated, but rather the workload proxy port is directly accessible through the gateway. This allows communication to a workload with mTLS from an external client. This feature is mainly used in the Streaming Data Manager (formerly called Supertubes) product.

DNS capture and report

With this feature the Istio proxy is able to capture DNS requests and responses and report them to an API endpoint. This feature is used in the SecureCN product.

TLS interception

The mesh Certificate Authority (CA) can issue TLS certificates for arbitrary domain names, to be able to look into TLS encrypted traffic. This feature is used in the SecureCN product.

Store arbitrary key/value information in certificates

The certificates issued by Istio CA can store arbitrary, workload-specific key-value attributes in the certificates' subject directory attribute property. This is used in Panoptica, the Cisco Secure Application Cloud to propagate workload-specific information between clusters, without the need for a central database.

Standalone sidecar injector component

The standalone sidecar injector is used in multi-cluster topologies on the peer clusters to have the sidecar-injection functionality of Istiod with much smaller resource requirements.

2.1.1.2 - Mesh lifecycle management

Operating a Service Mesh at scale is hard due to the inherent complexity of Mesh configurations. To ensure the most optimal operations of Service Mesh Manager based solutions, we provide validations to highlight any common issues with the existing configuration.

When it comes to supporting a service mesh-based solution on the long run, Service Mesh Manager provides support to dynamically extend the existing cluster with zero downtime to additional clusters.

Given that Istio is a fast-moving project (a new release is available every 3 months), Service Mesh Manager needs to bridge the gap between a rapidly changing Cloud Native solution and the requirements of an enterprise deployment. To decrease the blast radius of these upgrades we have introduced canary control plane upgrades based on Cisco’s open source Istio operator.

2.1.1.3 - Observability toolbox

Service Mesh Manager includes integrated observability by default. You can make the most out of your service mesh deployments:

• By leveraging the security and traffic management features of Istio.
• By having access to all the monitoring and tracing features Istio is capable of.

Integrated monitoring

Service Mesh Manager includes Prometheus to ensure faster troubleshooting and recovery. For further information on our monitoring capabilities, see the Dashboard guide.

Integrated tracing

Distributed tracing is the process of tracking individual requests throughout their whole call stack in the system.

With distributed tracing in place, you can visualize full call stacks, to see:

• which service called which service,
• how long each call took, and
• the network latencies between them.

The above insights can tell where a request failed, or which service took too much time to respond.

To access traces and see real-time traffic flowing thru the cluster, see the traffic tap feature.

Automated outlier detection system

Complex systems might be hard to understand. Service Mesh Manager provides an automated (zero configuration required) outlier detection system available on the topology, workloads, and services pages of the Service Mesh Manager UI.

Service Level Objectives

To ensure, and most importantly to measure the deployed workloads availability, you can use an integrated Service Level Objective (SLO) based alerting system.

For defining SLOs, see Tracking Service Level Objectives (SLOs).

For alerting settings, see SLO-based alerting in Production.

2.1.1.4 - Multi-cluster topologies

Multi-cluster topologies overview

Service Mesh Manager is able to construct an Istio service mesh that spans multiple clusters. In this scenario you combine multiple clusters into a single service mesh that you can manage from either a single or from multiple Istio control planes.

Single mesh scenarios are best suited to use cases where clusters are configured together, sharing resources, and are generally treated as one infrastructural component within an organization.

Service Mesh Manager not only automates setting up multi-cluster topologies, but also:

• Updates resources to keep everything running in case a cluster changes (for example, the IP address of a load balancer changes, and so on)
• Keeps the Istio CRs in sync between the clusters
• Creates federated trust between the clusters (this is a difference compared to Istio)
• Provides observability, tracing, traffic tapping and other features over multiple clusters

Supported multi-cluster topologies

Istio supports a variety of mesh topologies, as detailed in the official documentation.

Service Mesh Manager implements the Primary-Remote model, either using the different or the same network model. Service Mesh Manager also supports the Primary-Primary model, either using the different or the same network model.

Moreover, the topologies can be combined and one can have multiple primaries and multiple remotes using Service Mesh Manager.

Creating a multi-cluster mesh

Read the multi-cluster installation guide for details on how to set up a multi-cluster mesh.

2.1.2 - Modes of operation

To support the different use-cases from Day 0 to Day 2 operations, Service Mesh Manager has different modes of operation. The same binary can act as:

• a CLI tool for imperative use,
• a local reconciler, and
• a Kubernetes operator.

You can also use the operator in GitOps scenarios.

Imperative mode

The main purpose of the imperative mode is to install Service Mesh Manager, get you started, and help you experiment with the various components. You can access only a small subset of the available configuration options and features (mostly just the default settings and some of the most important configuration flags) to avoid getting overloaded with command line flags.

Most notably, you can install and delete Service Mesh Manager from the command line. Internally, the install and delete commands change the component-specific parts of the main configuration, then trigger the reconciliation of the affected components.

Other commands do not necessarily change the main configuration, nor trigger reconciliation of any component. Such commands create dynamic resources which are out of scope for the reconcilers, but are convenient for getting started without having to leave the CLI.

Once you are finished experimenting with Service Mesh Manager, the recommended way forward is to start using the reconcile command, and apply all configuration through the custom resource directly. This is analogous to how you use kubectl create and then switch to using kubectl apply when you already have a full configuration and just want to apply changes incrementally. If you are an experienced Kubernetes user, you probably skip the imperative mode and start using the reconcile command from the beginning.

The drawback of the imperative mode is that there is no overall state of components, so it can’t tell what has already been installed.

Also, it it not suitable for automation. CD systems typically require Helm charts, Kustomize, or pure YAML resources to operate with. Although the imperative commands of Service Mesh Manager have a --dump-resources flag that generates YAML files instead of applying them, you would still have to run the install command locally for each component, and commit the generated resources into version control. The CD workflow would then have to specify sequential steps for each component separately, making the whole flow difficult to extend over time.

Using the imperative mode

To use Service Mesh Manager in imperative mode, install the smm-cli command-line tool, then use its commands to install Service Mesh Manager and perform other actions. For a list of available commands, see the CLI reference.

Note: You can also configure many aspects of your service mesh using the Service Mesh Manager web interface. To access the web interface run the smm dashboard command (if your KUBECONFIG file is set properly), the smm dashboard command automatically performs the login).

Install/Uninstall components

The following components can be installed/uninstalled individually. The -a flag installs/uninstalls them all. For details on installing and uninstalling the Service Mesh Manager operator, see Operator mode.

• istio: smm istio [install|uninstall]
• cert-manager: smm cert-manager [install|uninstall]
• smm (backend and UI): smm [install|uninstall]
• demo application: smm demoapp [install|uninstall]

Reconciler mode

Reconciler mode is a declarative CLI mode. The reconcile command is a one-shot version of an operator’s reconcile flow. It executes the component reconcilers in order, and can decide whether they require another reconciliation round, or are already finished. Reconciling can apply new configuration, and remove disabled components from the system.

Note: In this mode, the operator is not installed on the cluster. The controller code runs from the CLI on the client side.

A component can be anything that receives the whole configuration, understands its own part from it to configure itself, and is able to delete its managed resources when disabled or removed. Service Mesh Manager uses two different implementations:

• The native reconciler triggers a “resource builder” to create Kubernetes resources along with their desired state (present or absent) based on the configuration of the component. Such resource builders create CRDs, RBAC, and a Deployment resource to be able to run an operator.

• The other implementation is the Helm reconciler that basically acts as a Helm operator. It installs and upgrades an embedded chart if it has changed, or uninstalls it if it has been removed from the main configuration.

Compared to kubectl apply, these solutions add ordering, and allow executing custom logic if required. Also, they remove resources that are not present in the config anymore. The CLI in this case executes the control logic as well.

Compared to terraform, the dependencies are managed in a predefined execution order and have static binding using deterministic names. Lower performance, but easier to follow. Remote state is the CR saved to the API server.

Using the reconciler mode

To use Service Mesh Manager in reconciler mode, complete the following steps. In this scenario, the manifest is read from a file, allowing you to declaratively provide custom configuration for the various components.

1. Login to your Service Mesh Manager installation.

2. Prepare the configuration settings you want to apply in a YAML file, and run the following command. For details on the configuration settings, see the ControlPlane Custom Resource.

   smm reconcile --from-file <path-to-file>
   

3. The settings applied to the components are the result of merging the default settings + valuesOverride + managed settings. You cannot change the managed settings to avoid misconfiguration and possible malfunction.

Operator mode

The operator mode follows the familiar operator pattern. In operator mode, Service Mesh Manager watches events on the ControlPlane Custom Resource, and triggers a reconciliation for all components in order, the same way you can trigger the reconcile command locally.

Note: Unlike in the declarative CLI mode, in operator mode the Service Mesh Manager operator is running inside Kubernetes, and not on a client machine. This naturally means that this mode is exclusive with the install, delete, and reconcile commands.

Using the operator mode is the recommended way to integrate the Service Mesh Manager installer into a Kubernetes-native continuous delivery solution, for example, Argo, where the integration boils down to applying YAML files to get the installer deployed as an operator.

Existing configurations managed using the reconcile command work out-of-the box after switching to the operator mode.

Using the operator mode

To use Service Mesh Manager in operator mode, Install Service Mesh Manager in operator mode. In this scenario, the reconcile flow runs on the Kubernetes cluster as an operator that watches the ControlPlane custom resources. Any changes made to the watched custom resource triggers the reconcile flow.

GitOps

GitOps is a way of implementing Continuous Deployment for cloud native applications. Based on Git and Continuous Deployment tools, GitOps provides a declarative way to store the desired state of your infrastructure and automated processes to realize the desired state in your production environment.

For example, to deploy a new application you update the repository, and the automated processes perform the actual deployment steps.

When used in operator mode, Service Mesh Manager works flawlessly with GitOps solutions such as Argo CD, and can be used to declaratively manage your service mesh. For a detailed tutorial on setting up Argo CD with Service Mesh Manager, see Install SMM - GitOps - single cluster.

2.1.3 - Istio-operator feature comparison

The Calisti team actively maintains its fully upstream-compatible Istio distribution and several open-source projects and integrations that serve as the basis for Cisco Service Mesh Manager. From the perspective of Istio management, the Calisti team maintains the following:

• The Istio operator is an open source project, which is the core component involved in Istio control plane and gateway lifecycle management for Cisco Service Mesh Manager.
• Calisti Service Mesh Manager is a commercial product that includes all the features mentioned in this guide, enterprise support, and optionally integration support for customer environments.

2.2 - Getting started with the Free Tier

This Getting Started guide helps you access and install the free version of Service Mesh Manager. If you are a paying customer, see Installation for installation options.

To get started with Service Mesh Manager, you will install Service Mesh Manager and a demo application on a single cluster. After that, you can attach other clusters to the mesh and redeploy the demo application to run on multiple clusters.

Free tier limitations

• The free tier of Service Mesh Manager allows you to use Service Mesh Manager on maximum of two Kubernetes clusters where the total number of worker nodes in your clusters is 10. For details, see Licensing options.
• SMM Operator helm charts is not supported.

To buy an enterprise license, contact your Cisco sales representative, or directly Cisco Emerging Technologies and Incubation.

Prerequisites

You need a Kubernetes cluster to run Service Mesh Manager. If you don’t already have a Kubernetes cluster to work with, then:

1. Create a cluster that meets the following resource requirements with your favorite provider.

   CAUTION:

   Supported providers and Kubernetes versions

   The cluster must run a Kubernetes version that Service Mesh Manager supports: Kubernetes 1.21, 1.22, 1.23, 1.24.

   Service Mesh Manager is tested and known to work on the following Kubernetes providers:

   • Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS)
   • Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)
   • Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
   • Red Hat OpenShift 4.11
   • On-premises installation of stock Kubernetes with load balancer support (and optionally PVCs for persistence)

   Calisti resource requirements

   Make sure that your Kubernetes or OpenShift cluster has sufficient resources to install Calisti. The following table shows the number of resources needed on the cluster:

   Resource	Required
   CPU	- 32 vCPU in total - 4 vCPU available for allocation per worker node (If you are testing on a cluster at a cloud provider, use nodes that have at least 4 CPUs, for example, c5.xlarge on AWS.)
   Memory	- 64 GiB in total - 4 GiB available for allocation per worker node for the Kubernetes cluster (8 GiB in case of the OpenShift cluster)
   Storage	12 GB of ephemeral storage on the Kubernetes worker nodes (for Traces and Metrics)

   These minimum requirements need to be available for allocation within your cluster, in addition to the requirements of any other loads running in your cluster (for example, DaemonSets and Kubernetes node-agents). If Kubernetes cannot allocate sufficient resources to Service Mesh Manager, some pods will remain in Pending state, and Service Mesh Manager will not function properly.

   Enabling additional features, such as High Availability increases this value.

   The default installation, when enough headroom is available in the cluster, should be able to support at least 150 running Pods with the same amount of Services. For setting up Service Mesh Manager for bigger workloads, see scaling Service Mesh Manager.

2. Set Kubernetes configuration and context.

   The Service Mesh Manager command-line tool uses your current Kubernetes context, as set in the KUBECONFIG environment variable (~/.kube/config by default). Check if the cluster is the same as the one you plan to deploy the Service Mesh Manager. Run the following command:

   kubectl config get-contexts
   

   If there are multiple contexts in the Kubeconfig file, specify the one you want to use with the use-context parameter, for example:

   kubectl config use-context <context-to-use>
   

Preparation

To access and install Calisti, complete the following steps.

1. You’ll need a Cisco Customer account to download Calisti. If you don’t already have one here’s how to sign up:

   1. Visit the Cisco Account registration page and complete the registration form.
   2. Look out for an email from no-reply@mail-id.cisco.com titled Activate Account and click on the Activate Account button to activate your account.

2. Download the Calisti command-line tools.

   1. Visit the Calisti download center.
   2. If you’re redirected to the home page, check the upper right-hand corner to see if you’re signed in. If you see a login button go ahead and login using your Cisco Customer account credentials. If, instead, you see “welcome, ” then you are already logged in.
   3. Once you have logged in, navigate to the Calisti download center again.
   4. Read and accept the End-User License Agreement (EULA).
   5. Download the Service Mesh Manager command-line tool (CLI) suitable for your system. The CLI supports macOS and Linux (x86_64). On Windows, install the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) and use the Linux binary.
   6. Extract the archive. The archive contains two binaries, smm for Service Mesh Manager, and supertubes for Streaming Data Manager.
   7. Navigate to the directory where you have extracted the CLI.

   Note: For information on how to download the CLI using ORAS, see Download the CLI using ORAS.

3. The Calisti download page shows your credentials that you can use to access the Service Mesh Manager and Streaming Data Manager docker images.

   Open a terminal and login to the image registries of Calisti by running the following command. The <your-password> and <your-username> parts contain the access credentials to the registries.

   SMM_REGISTRY_PASSWORD=<your-password> ./smm activate \
     --host=registry.eticloud.io \
     --prefix=smm \
     --user='<your-username>'
   

Install Service Mesh Manager on a single cluster

1. Run the following command. This will install the main Service Mesh Manager components.

   • On Kubernetes:

     smm install -a
     

   • On OpenShift (for details, see OpenShift integration):

     smm install -a --platform=openshift
     

   Note: If you are installing Service Mesh Manager on a managed Kubernetes solution of a public cloud provider (for example, Amazon EKS, AKS, or GKE) or kOps, the cluster name auto-discovered by Service Mesh Manager is incompatible with Kubernetes resource naming restrictions and Istio’s method of identifying clusters in a multicluster mesh.

   In earlier Service Mesh Manager versions, you had to manually use the --cluster-name parameter to set a cluster name that complies with the RFC 1123 DNS subdomain/label format (alphanumeric string without “_” or “.” characters). Starting with Service Mesh Manager version 1.11, non-compliant names are automatically converted using the following rules:

   • Replace ‘_’ characters with ‘-’
   • Replace ‘.’ characters with ‘-’
   • Replace ‘:’ characters with ‘-’
   • Truncate the name to 63 characters

   Calisti supports KUBECONFIG contexts having the following authentication methods:

   • certfile and keyfile
   • certdata and keydata
   • bearer token
   • exec/auth provider

   Username-password pairs are not supported.

   If you are installing Service Mesh Manager in a test environment, you can install it without requiring authentication by running:

   smm install --anonymous-auth -a
   

   If you experience errors during the installation, try running the installation in verbose mode: smm install -v

2. Wait until the installation is completed. This can take a few minutes.

3. (Optional) If you don’t already have Istio workload and traffic on this cluster, install the demo application:

   smm demoapp install
   

4. Run the following command to open the dashboard. If you don’t already have Istio workload and traffic, the dashboard will be empty.

   smm dashboard
   

   

5. (Optional)

   If you are installing Service Mesh Manager on a managed Kubernetes solution of a public cloud provider (for example, AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud), assign admin roles, so that you can tail the logs of your containers from the Service Mesh Manager UI, use Service Level Objectives and perform various tasks from the CLI that require custom permissions. Run the following command:

   kubectl create clusterrolebinding user-cluster-admin --clusterrole=cluster-admin --user=<gcp/aws/azure username>
   

   CAUTION:

   Assigning administrator roles might be very dangerous because it gives wide access to your infrastructure. Be careful and do that only when you’re confident in what you’re doing.

6. At this point, Service Mesh Manager is up and running. On the dashboard select MENU > TOPOLOGY to see how the traffic flows through your mesh, and experiment with any of the available features described in the documentation.

   

7. To evaluate Streaming Data Manager, see Getting tarted with Streaming Data Manager.

Next steps

To install applications into the Calisti service mesh, see Deploy custom application into the mesh.

Get help

If you run into errors, experience problems, or just have a question or feedback while using the Free Tier of Service Mesh Manager, visit our Application Networking and Observability community site.

Support details for the Pro and Enterprise Tiers are provided in the purchased plan.

2.3 - Installation

To evaluate the services Service Mesh Manager offers, we recommend using the free edition of Service Mesh Manager in a test environment and using our demo application. This way you can start over any time, and try all the options you are interested in without having to worry about changes made to your existing environment, even if it’s not used in production.

Production installation is very similar, but of course you won’t need to deploy the demo application, and you must exactly specify which components you want to use.

2.3.1 - Prerequisites

Before deploying Service Mesh Manager on your cluster, complete the following tasks.

Create a cluster

You need a Kubernetes cluster to run Service Mesh Manager (and optionally, Streaming Data Manager). If you don’t already have a Kubernetes cluster to work with, create one with one of the methods described in Create a test cluster.

Install the Service Mesh Manager tool

Install the Service Mesh Manager command-line tool. You can use the Service Mesh Manager CLI tool to install Service Mesh Manager and other components on your cluster.

Note: The Service Mesh Manager CLI supports macOS and Linux (x86_64). On Windows, install the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) and use the Linux binary.

1. Install the Service Mesh Manager CLI for your environment.

   • If you have already received access to the Service Mesh Manager binaries, see Accessing the Service Mesh Manager binaries.
   • If you are new to Service Mesh Manager, you can also use the free edition of Service Mesh Manager for evaluation.

2. Set Kubernetes configuration and context.

   The Service Mesh Manager command-line tool uses your current Kubernetes context, as set in the KUBECONFIG environment variable (~/.kube/config by default). Check if the cluster is the same as the one you plan to deploy the Service Mesh Manager. Run the following command:

   kubectl config get-contexts
   

   If there are multiple contexts in the Kubeconfig file, specify the one you want to use with the use-context parameter, for example:

   kubectl config use-context <context-to-use>
   

Deploy Service Mesh Manager

After you have completed the previous steps, you can install Service Mesh Manager on a single cluster, or you can form a multi-cluster mesh right away.

Note: The default version of Service Mesh Manager is built with the standard SSL libraries. To use a FIPS-compliant version of Istio, see Install FIPS images.

Select the installation method you want to use:

• Install Service Mesh Manager on a single cluster
• Install Service Mesh Manager on multiple cluster

You can install Service Mesh Manager on a single cluster first, and attach additional clusters later to form a multi-cluster mesh.

2.3.1.1 - Accessing the Service Mesh Manager binaries

To evaluate Service Mesh Manager we recommend using the free tier option.

If you don’t already have a Cisco Customer Identity (CCI) account, you’ll also have to complete a brief sign-up procedure.

To access the CLI binaries, you can either download it from the Service Mesh Manager download page or from registry.eticloud.io using ORAS.

Download the CLI

1. Visit the Calisti download center.
2. If you’re redirected to the home page, check the upper right-hand corner to see if you’re signed in. If you see a login button go ahead and login using your Cisco Customer account credentials. If, instead, you see “welcome, ” then you are already logged in.
3. Once you have logged in, navigate to the Calisti download center again.
4. Read and accept the End-User License Agreement (EULA).
5. Download the Service Mesh Manager command-line tool (CLI) suitable for your system. The CLI supports macOS and Linux (x86_64). On Windows, install the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) and use the Linux binary.
6. Extract the archive. The archive contains two binaries, smm for Service Mesh Manager, and supertubes for Streaming Data Manager.
7. Navigate to the directory where you have extracted the CLI.

Download the CLI using ORAS

To install the Service Mesh Manager CLI using ORAS, complete the following steps.

1. Install OCI Registry As Storage (ORAS). For details, see the ORAS installation guide for your operating system. For example, on macOS you can run brew install oras

2. Log in to registry.eticloud.io using ORAS. You can find your credentials and the activation command on the Service Mesh Manager download page. (If you haven’t registered yet, sign up on the Service Mesh Manager page).

   Run the following command to log in, then enter your username and password.

   oras login registry.eticloud.io
   

3. Download the Service Mesh Manager CLI by running:

   oras pull registry.eticloud.io/smm/smm-cli:v1.12.0
   

4. To manage Apache Kafka installations using Streaming Data Manager, download the Streaming Data Manager command-line tool (called supertubes-cli) as well.

   oras pull registry.eticloud.io/sdm/supertubes-cli:v1.12.0
   

5. Extract the archive for your operating system.

6. Navigate to the directory where you have extracted the CLI.

Activate the CLI

Due to legal requirements the docker images for Service Mesh Manager are stored in a docker registry requiring authentication. Service Mesh Manager has built-in support for transparently performing this authentication. For this feature to work you must “activate” the CLI on every workstation that will be used to install, upgrade, or change the Service Mesh Manager deployment. For using the dashboard or any other CLI command this activation step can be skipped.

You can find your credentials and the activation command on the Service Mesh Manager download page.

Open a terminal and login to the image registries of Calisti by running the following command. The <your-password> and <your-username> parts contain the access credentials to the registries.

SMM_REGISTRY_PASSWORD=<your-password> ./smm activate \
  --host=registry.eticloud.io \
  --prefix=smm \
  --user='<your-username>'

After the activation, you can install Service Mesh Manager on a single cluster or multiple clusters, or manage an existing installation.

2.3.1.2 - Create a test cluster

You need a Kubernetes cluster to run Service Mesh Manager. If you don’t already have a Kubernetes cluster to work with, create one with one of the following methods.

• Run locally (~5 minutes): Deploy Service Mesh Manager to a single-node Kubernetes cluster running on your development machine.
• Run on a Kubernetes cluster (~10 minutes): Deploy Service Mesh Manager to a Kubernetes cluster of your choice.

Run Service Mesh Manager locally

Recommended if you don’t have or don’t want to create a Kubernetes cluster, but want to try out Service Mesh Manager quickly.

1. Install one of the following tools to run a Kubernetes cluster locally:

   • minikube (recommended for Linux)
   • Docker for Desktop (recommended for Mac/Windows) provides Kubernetes support as noted here
   • kind

2. Ensure that the local Kubernetes cluster meets the following requirements:

1. Launch the local Kubernetes cluster with one of the following tools:

   • minikube:

     minikube start
     

   • Docker for Desktop: In preferences, choose Enable Kubernetes.

   • kind:

     kind create cluster
     

2. Proceed to Install Service Mesh Manager.

3. When you’re done experimenting, you can remove the demo application, Service Mesh Manager, and Istio from your cluster with the following command, which removes all of these components in the correct order:

   smm uninstall -a
   

   Note: Uninstalling Service Mesh Manager does not remove the Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs) from the cluster, because removing a CRD removes all related resources. Since Service Mesh Manager uses several external components, this could remove things not belonging to Service Mesh Manager.

Run on a Kubernetes cluster

Recommended if you have a Kubernetes cluster and want to try out Service Mesh Manager quickly.

1. Create a cluster that meets the following resource requirements with your favorite provider.

   CAUTION:

   Supported providers and Kubernetes versions

   The cluster must run a Kubernetes version that Service Mesh Manager supports: Kubernetes 1.21, 1.22, 1.23, 1.24.

   Service Mesh Manager is tested and known to work on the following Kubernetes providers:

   • Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS)
   • Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)
   • Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
   • Red Hat OpenShift 4.11
   • On-premises installation of stock Kubernetes with load balancer support (and optionally PVCs for persistence)

   Calisti resource requirements

   Make sure that your Kubernetes or OpenShift cluster has sufficient resources to install Calisti. The following table shows the number of resources needed on the cluster:

   Resource	Required
   CPU	- 32 vCPU in total - 4 vCPU available for allocation per worker node (If you are testing on a cluster at a cloud provider, use nodes that have at least 4 CPUs, for example, c5.xlarge on AWS.)
   Memory	- 64 GiB in total - 4 GiB available for allocation per worker node for the Kubernetes cluster (8 GiB in case of the OpenShift cluster)
   Storage	12 GB of ephemeral storage on the Kubernetes worker nodes (for Traces and Metrics)

   These minimum requirements need to be available for allocation within your cluster, in addition to the requirements of any other loads running in your cluster (for example, DaemonSets and Kubernetes node-agents). If Kubernetes cannot allocate sufficient resources to Service Mesh Manager, some pods will remain in Pending state, and Service Mesh Manager will not function properly.

   Enabling additional features, such as High Availability increases this value.

   The default installation, when enough headroom is available in the cluster, should be able to support at least 150 running Pods with the same amount of Services. For setting up Service Mesh Manager for bigger workloads, see scaling Service Mesh Manager.

2. Set Kubernetes configuration and context.

   The Service Mesh Manager command-line tool uses your current Kubernetes context, as set in the KUBECONFIG environment variable (~/.kube/config by default). Check if the cluster is the same as the one you plan to deploy the Service Mesh Manager. Run the following command:

   kubectl config get-contexts
   

   If there are multiple contexts in the Kubeconfig file, specify the one you want to use with the use-context parameter, for example:

   kubectl config use-context <context-to-use>
   

3. Proceed to Install Service Mesh Manager.

2.3.2 - Licensing options

Service Mesh Manager is available in two different editions:

• To register for free-tier access, see Getting started with the Free Tier.
• To buy a Pro (paid-tier) license, visit the Service Mesh Manager website.
• For an enterprise license, contact your Cisco sales representative, or directly the Service Mesh Manager sales team.

Free tier

The free tier allows using 10 nodes in maximum 2 clusters inside the same mesh (active/active or active/passive setups are allowed).

For example, you can use a single cluster with 10 worker nodes (counting the active nodes too), or you can have an active cluster with 6 worker nodes and a passive cluster attached with 4 additional nodes.

If you exceed these limits, the management functionalities of Service Mesh Manager become restricted until the number of nodes and clusters are back to the allowed values:

• CLI commands for installing Service Mesh Manager and attaching clusters to the mesh will fail until the node count has been decreased.

  Note: The uninstall command works regardless of the node count.

• The dashboard shows an error detailing the license violations when over limits. As Kubernetes is dynamic in nature, you can exceed the node limit by 1 for one day, so you can keep using the Service Mesh Manager dashboard during node rotations.

The Istio data plane is available regardless the number of nodes, ensuring that no production outage happens due to license violation.

To register for free-tier access, see Getting started with the Free Tier.

Paid tier

To buy a Pro (paid-tier) license, visit the Service Mesh Manager website. If you have purchased a Pro license for Service Mesh Manager, you have to apply the license to your Service Mesh Manager installations. To achieve that, complete the following steps.

1. Copy your license token into a file (for example, license.key).

2. Apply the license to your Service Mesh Manager installation. If you have a multi-cluster setup, apply it to the primary cluster (where the Service Mesh Manager control plane is running). Run the following command:

   smm license apply --licenseKeyPath <license.key>
   

   Note: If you are using Service Mesh Manager with a commercial license in a multi-cluster scenario, Service Mesh Manager automatically synchronizes the license to the attached clusters. If the peer cluster already has a license, it is automatically deleted and replaced with the license of the primary Service Mesh Manager cluster. Detaching a peer cluster automatically deletes the license from the peer cluster.

3. Run the following command to verify that the new license has been added to the Service Mesh Manager installation.

   smm license list
   

   Alternatively, you can open the Service Mesh Manager dashboard, open the user account in the top-right, then select License to display the details of the license.

   The details of the license include:

   • the number of permitted clusters (MaxClusters) in the mesh,
   • the total number of permitted nodes in the mesh (MaxNodes), and
   • the number of maximum permitted nodes for a cluster (MaxNodesPerCluster).

Exceeding the paid-tier license limit

In case you exceed the license limit for a paid-tier license, you lose access to the Service Mesh Manager dashboard until you decrease the size of the mesh to comply with the license limits.

The Istio data plane is available regardless the number of nodes, ensuring that no production outage happens due to license violation.

Enterprise license

To buy an enterprise license, contact your Cisco sales representative, or directly the Service Mesh Manager sales team.

To apply an enterprise license to your Service Mesh Manager installations, follow the steps described for the Paid tier.

2.3.3 - Create single cluster mesh

Prerequisites

You need the Service Mesh Manager CLI tool installed on your computer and a Kubernetes cluster as described in the Prerequisites section.

Install Service Mesh Manager

For a quick demo or evaluation, complete the following steps to install Service Mesh Manager with every component, including the demo application. If you prefer a more interactive installation, see Installing Service Mesh Manager interactively.

• If you have already received access to the Service Mesh Manager binaries, see Accessing the Service Mesh Manager binaries.
• If you are new to Service Mesh Manager, you can also use the free edition of Service Mesh Manager for evaluation.

Note: If you are installing Service Mesh Manager on a managed Kubernetes solution of a public cloud provider (for example, Amazon EKS, AKS, or GKE) or kOps, the cluster name auto-discovered by Service Mesh Manager is incompatible with Kubernetes resource naming restrictions and Istio’s method of identifying clusters in a multicluster mesh.

In earlier Service Mesh Manager versions, you had to manually use the --cluster-name parameter to set a cluster name that complies with the RFC 1123 DNS subdomain/label format (alphanumeric string without “_” or “.” characters). Starting with Service Mesh Manager version 1.11, non-compliant names are automatically converted using the following rules:

• Replace ‘_’ characters with ‘-’
• Replace ‘.’ characters with ‘-’
• Replace ‘:’ characters with ‘-’
• Truncate the name to 63 characters

1. Run the following command. This will install the main Service Mesh Manager components.

   • On OpenShift (for details, see OpenShift integration):

     smm install -a --platform=openshift
     

   • Otherwise, run

     smm install -a
     

   Calisti supports KUBECONFIG contexts having the following authentication methods:

   • certfile and keyfile
   • certdata and keydata
   • bearer token
   • exec/auth provider

   Username-password pairs are not supported.

   If you are installing Service Mesh Manager in a test environment, you can install it without requiring authentication by running:

   smm install --anonymous-auth -a
   

   If you experience errors during the installation, try running the installation in verbose mode: smm install -v

   Note: If you are installing Service Mesh Manager on a local cluster (for example, using MiniKube) and you don’t have a local LoadBalancer setup, disable the meshexpansion gateway support. To do that, create a file called local_icp_cr.yaml with the following content:

   apiVersion: servicemesh.cisco.com/v1alpha1
   kind: IstioControlPlane
   metadata:
       name: mesh
       namespace: istio-system
   spec:
     meshExpansion:
       enabled: false
   

   Then, run the following command: smm install --istio-cr-file local_icp_cr.yaml

2. Wait until the installation is completed. This can take a few minutes. Run the following command to open the dashboard.

   smm dashboard
   

   

   If you don’t already have Istio workload and traffic, the dashboard will be empty. To install the demo application, run:

   smm demoapp install
   

   After installation, the demo application automatically starts generating traffic, and the dashboard draws a picture of the data flow. (If it doesn’t, run the smm demoapp load start command, or Generate load on the UI. If you want to stop generating traffic, run smm demoapp load stop.)

3. If you are installing Service Mesh Manager on a managed Kubernetes solution of a public cloud provider (for example, AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud), assign admin roles, so that you can tail the logs of your containers from the Service Mesh Manager UI, use Service Level Objectives and perform various tasks from the CLI that require custom permissions. Run the following command:

   kubectl create clusterrolebinding user-cluster-admin --clusterrole=cluster-admin --user=<gcp/aws/azure username>
   

   CAUTION:

   Assigning administrator roles might be very dangerous because it gives wide access to your infrastructure. Be careful and do that only when you’re confident in what you’re doing.

4. At this point, Service Mesh Manager is up and running. On the dashboard select MENU > TOPOLOGY to see how the traffic flows through your mesh, and experiment with any of the available features described in the documentation.

5. If you have purchased a commercial license for Service Mesh Manager, apply the license. For details, see Paid tier.

Install Service Mesh Manager interactively

With the interactive installation, you can:

• Install the Service Mesh Manager core, which provides a dashboard and an internal API for handling the service mesh.
• Install and execute the Istio operator.
• Install a demo application (optional).

Complete the following steps.

1. Start the installation.

   smm install
   

   If you experience errors during the installation, try running the installation in verbose mode: smm install -v

   During installation, answer the interactive questions in the terminal.

   ? Install istio-operator (recommended). Press enter to accept Yes
   ? Install cert-manager (recommended). Press enter to accept Yes
   ? Install Streaming Data Manager (optional). Press enter to skip Yes
   ? Install and run demo application (optional). Press enter to skip Yes
   

   Note: If you don’t need the demo application, you can simply accept the defaults by pressing enter for each question as it will only install the core components. You can install additional components later.

2. Wait until the installation is completed. This can take a few minutes. If you have selected to install the demo application, the Service Mesh Manager dashboard automatically opens in your browser. Otherwise, run the following command to open the dashboard.

   smm dashboard
   

   If you don’t already have Istio workload and traffic, the dashboard will be empty. To install the demo application, run:

   smm demoapp install
   

   After installation, the demo application automatically starts generating traffic, and the dashboard draws a picture of the data flow. (If it doesn’t, run the smm demoapp load start command, or Generate load on the UI. If you want to stop generating traffic, run smm demoapp load stop.)

3. If you are installing Service Mesh Manager on a managed Kubernetes solution of a public cloud provider (for example, AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud), assign admin roles, so that you can tail the logs of your containers from the Service Mesh Manager UI, use Service Level Objectives and perform various tasks from the CLI that require custom permissions. Run the following command:

   kubectl create clusterrolebinding user-cluster-admin --clusterrole=cluster-admin --user=<gcp/aws/azure username>
   

   CAUTION:

   Assigning administrator roles might be very dangerous because it gives wide access to your infrastructure. Be careful and do that only when you’re confident in what you’re doing.

4. At this point, Service Mesh Manager is up and running. On the dashboard select MENU > TOPOLOGY to see how the traffic flows through your mesh, and experiment with any of the available features described in the documentation.

5. If you have purchased a commercial license for Service Mesh Manager, apply the license. For details, see Paid tier.

2.3.4 - Create multi-cluster mesh

Prerequisites

To create a multi-cluster mesh with Service Mesh Manager, you need:

• At least two Kubernetes clusters, with access to their kubeconfig files.
• The Service Mesh Manager CLI tool installed on your computer.
• Network connectivity properly configured between the participating clusters.

Create a multi-cluster mesh

To create a multi-cluster mesh with Service Mesh Manager, complete the following steps.

1. Install Service Mesh Manager to the primary cluster using the following command. This will install all Service Mesh Manager components to the cluster. Run smm install -a

   Note: If you are installing Service Mesh Manager on a managed Kubernetes solution of a public cloud provider (for example, Amazon EKS, AKS, or GKE) or kOps, the cluster name auto-discovered by Service Mesh Manager is incompatible with Kubernetes resource naming restrictions and Istio’s method of identifying clusters in a multicluster mesh.

   In earlier Service Mesh Manager versions, you had to manually use the --cluster-name parameter to set a cluster name that complies with the RFC 1123 DNS subdomain/label format (alphanumeric string without “_” or “.” characters). Starting with Service Mesh Manager version 1.11, non-compliant names are automatically converted using the following rules:

   • Replace ‘_’ characters with ‘-’
   • Replace ‘.’ characters with ‘-’
   • Replace ‘:’ characters with ‘-’
   • Truncate the name to 63 characters

   If you experience errors during the installation, try running the installation in verbose mode: smm install -v

   Calisti supports KUBECONFIG contexts having the following authentication methods:

   • certfile and keyfile
   • certdata and keydata
   • bearer token
   • exec/auth provider

   Username-password pairs are not supported.

   If you are installing Service Mesh Manager in a test environment, you can install it without requiring authentication by running:

   smm install --anonymous-auth -a
   

2. On the primary Service Mesh Manager cluster, attach the peer cluster to the mesh using one of the following commands.

   Note: To understand the difference between the remote Istio and primary Istio clusters, see the Istio control plane models section in the official Istio documentation. The short summary is that remote Istio clusters do not have a separate Istio control plane, while primary Istio clusters do.

   The following commands automate the process of creating the resources necessary for the peer cluster, generate and set up the kubeconfig for that cluster, and attach the cluster to the mesh.

   • To attach a remote Istio cluster with the default options, run:

     smm istio cluster attach <PEER_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG_FILE>
     

   • To attach a primary Istio cluster (one that has an active Istio control plane installed), run:

     smm istio cluster attach <PEER_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG_FILE> --active-istio-control-plane
     

     Note: If the name of the cluster cannot be used as a Kubernetes resource name (for example, because it contains the underscore, colon, or another special character), you must manually specify a name to use when you are attaching the cluster to the service mesh. For example:

     smm istio cluster attach <PEER_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG_FILE> --name <KUBERNETES_COMPLIANT_CLUSTER_NAME> --active-istio-control-plane
     

     Otherwise, the following error occurs when you try to attach the cluster:

     could not attach peer cluster: graphql: Secret "example-secret" is invalid: metadata.name: Invalid value: "gke_gcp-cluster_region": a DNS-1123 subdomain must consist of lower case alphanumeric characters, '-' or '.'**
     

3. Verify the name that will be used to refer to the cluster in the mesh. To use the name of the cluster, press Enter.

   Note: If you are installing Service Mesh Manager on a managed Kubernetes solution of a public cloud provider (for example, Amazon EKS, AKS, or GKE) or kOps, the cluster name auto-discovered by Service Mesh Manager is incompatible with Kubernetes resource naming restrictions and Istio’s method of identifying clusters in a multicluster mesh.

   In earlier Service Mesh Manager versions, you had to manually use the --cluster-name parameter to set a cluster name that complies with the RFC 1123 DNS subdomain/label format (alphanumeric string without “_” or “.” characters). Starting with Service Mesh Manager version 1.11, non-compliant names are automatically converted using the following rules:

   • Replace ‘_’ characters with ‘-’
   • Replace ‘.’ characters with ‘-’
   • Replace ‘:’ characters with ‘-’
   • Truncate the name to 63 characters

   ? Cluster must be registered. Please enter the name of the cluster (<current-name-of-the-cluster>)
   

4. Wait until the peer cluster is attached. Attaching the peer cluster takes some time, because it can be completed only after the ingress gateway address works. You can verify that the peer cluster is attached successfully with the following command:

   smm istio cluster status
   

   The process is finished when you see Available in the Status field of all clusters.

   To attach other clusters, or to customize the network settings of the cluster, see Attach a new cluster to the mesh.

5. Deploy the demo application. You can deploy the demo application in a distributed way to multiple clusters with the following commands:

   smm demoapp install -s frontpage,catalog,bookings,postgresql
   smm -c <PEER_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG_FILE> demoapp install -s movies,payments,notifications,analytics,database,mysql --peer
   

   After installation, the demo application automatically starts generating traffic, and the dashboard draws a picture of the data flow. (If it doesn’t, run the smm demoapp load start command, or Generate load on the UI. If you want to stop generating traffic, run smm demoapp load stop.)

   If you are looking to deploy your own application, check out Deploy custom application for some guidelines.

6. If you are installing Service Mesh Manager on a managed Kubernetes solution of a public cloud provider (for example, AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud), assign admin roles, so that you can tail the logs of your containers from the Service Mesh Manager UI, use Service Level Objectives and perform various tasks from the CLI that require custom permissions. Run the following command:

   kubectl create clusterrolebinding user-cluster-admin --clusterrole=cluster-admin --user=<gcp/aws/azure username>
   

   CAUTION:

   Assigning administrator roles might be very dangerous because it gives wide access to your infrastructure. Be careful and do that only when you’re confident in what you’re doing.

7. Open the dashboard and look around.

   smm dashboard
   

8. If you have purchased a commercial license for Service Mesh Manager, apply the license. For details, see Paid tier.

Kafka in the multi-cluster service mesh

You can install Streaming Data Manager on the primary Calisti cluster. After the installation, you can make the Kafka brokers on the primary cluster accessible from the peer clusters by setting up DNS resolution for them, as shown in the following section.

Kafka Broker Service DNS resolution

The Kafka brokers are accessible via any cluster in the service mesh. However, DNS resolution for the broker services is required for workloads in the peer clusters for the traffic to make it to the sidecar proxies. To achieve this, you can either:

• use Istio Proxy DNS (required to be setup in the global service mesh config), or
• add Kubernetes services for the Kafka brokers in the peer clusters.

The following solution uses the cluster-registry-controller to synchronize the services between clusters.

1. On the primary Calisti cluster with the Kafka brokers, run:

   cat <<EOF | kubectl apply -f -
   apiVersion: clusterregistry.k8s.cisco.com/v1alpha1
   kind: ClusterFeature
   metadata:
     name: kafka-source
   spec:
     featureName: smm.k8s.cisco.com/kafka-source
   EOF
   

2. On the peer clusters that need access to the Kafka brokers, run:

   kubectl create ns kafka --kubeconfig <PEER_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG_FILE>
   cat <<EOF | kubectl apply --kubeconfig <PEER_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG_FILE> -f -
   apiVersion: clusterregistry.k8s.cisco.com/v1alpha1
   kind: ResourceSyncRule
   metadata:
     labels:
     name: kafka-service-sink
   spec:
     clusterFeatureMatch:
     - featureName: smm.k8s.cisco.com/kafka-source
     groupVersionKind:
       kind: Service
       version: v1
     rules:
     - match:
       - labels:
         - matchLabels:
             app: kafka
             kafka_cr: kafka
         objectKey: {}
       mutations:
         overrides:
         - path: /spec/clusterIP
           type: remove
         - path: /spec/clusterIPs?
           type: remove
   EOF
   

Turn on Kafka client functionality in demoapp workloads

The demo application is made up of a general data traffic generator project called allspark. It has the capability to be configured as Kafka clients. The following commands setup the bookings service to produce to the KafkaTopic recommendations-topic. This topic was automatically created by the demoapp install command if run while Streaming Data Manager is installed.

kubectl set env deploy/bookings -c bookings REQUESTS="http://analytics:8080/#1 http://payments:8080/#1 kafka-produce://kafka-all-broker.kafka.svc.cluster.local:29092/recommendations-topic?message=bookings-message#1"

Setup the movies-v3 service in the peer cluster to consume from the recommendations-topic topic.

kubectl set env deploy/movies-v3 -c movies --kubeconfig <PEER_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG_FILE> KAFKASERVER_BOOTSTRAP_SERVER=kafka-all-broker.kafka.svc.cluster.local:29092 KAFKASERVER_TOPIC=recommendations-topic KAFKASERVER_CONSUMER_GROUP=recommendations-group

After the pods restart, enable the smm-demo and kafka namespaces on the Calisti dashboard to see the Kafka client traffic.

Cleanup

1. To remove the demo application from a peer cluster, run the following command:

   smm -c <PEER_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG_FILE> demoapp uninstall
   

2. To remove a peer cluster from the mesh, run the following command:

   smm istio cluster detach <PEER_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG_FILE>
   

For details, see Detach a cluster from the mesh.

2.3.5 - SMM Operator helm charts

You can deploy Service Mesh Manager by using Helm with the SMM Operator chart.

SMM Operator is a Kubernetes operator to deploy and manage Service Mesh Manager. In this chart the CRD is not managed by the operator, and we expect CI/CD tools to take care of updating CRD.

2.3.5.1 - Install SMM with the SMM Operator chart

SMM Operator is a Kubernetes operator to deploy and manage Service Mesh Manager. In this chart the CRD is not managed by the operator, and we expect CI/CD tools to take care of updating CRD.

In case you have your own cluster deployed and are authorized to fetch images from the Cisco provided repositories, then you can rely on BasicAuth(url, username, password) for authentication required to pull images.

You can get a Username and Password by signing up for the Free tier version of Service Mesh Manager.

Prerequisites

Helm version 3.7 or newer.

Steps

1. Create the cert-manager namespace:

   kubectl create ns cert-manager
   

2. Run the following helm commands. Replace <your-username> and <your-password> with the ones shown on your Service Mesh Manager download page.

   export HELM_EXPERIMENTAL_OCI=1
   echo <your-password> | helm registry login registry.eticloud.io -u '<your-username>' --password-stdin
   
   helm pull oci://registry.eticloud.io/smm-charts/smm-operator --version 1.12.0
   
   helm install \
     --create-namespace \
     --namespace=smm-registry-access \
     --set "global.ecr.enabled=false" \
     --set "global.basicAuth.username=<your-username>" \
     --set "global.basicAuth.password=<your-password>" \
     smm-operator \
     oci://registry.eticloud.io/smm-charts/smm-operator --version 1.12.0
   

   For multi-cluster setups, the Kubernetes API server address of one cluster must be reachable from other clusters. The API server addresses are private for certain clusters (for example, OpenShift) and not reachable by default from other clusters. In such case, use the --set "apiServerEndpointAddress=<PUBLIC_API_SERVER_ENDPOINT_ADDRESS>" flag to provide an address that’s reachable from the other clusters. This can be a public address, or one that’s routable from the other clusters.

   Expected output:

     Pulled: registry.eticloud.io/smm-charts/smm-operator:1.12.0
     Digest: sha256:c67150bca937103db8831d73574d695aace034590c55569bdc60c58d400f7a5b
     NAME: smm-operator
     LAST DEPLOYED: Thu May  4 09:23:14 2023
     NAMESPACE: smm-registry-access
     STATUS: deployed
     REVISION: 1
     TEST SUITE: None
   

   (The smm-registry-access namespace is used because smm-operator should be in the same namespace as the imagepullsecrets-controller.)

   Verify the helm install

   helm list -n smm-registry-access
   

   Expected output:

   NAME        	NAMESPACE          	REVISION	UPDATED                              	STATUS  	CHART                   	APP VERSION
   smm-operator	smm-registry-access	1       	2023-05-04 09:23:14.681227 +0200 CEST	deployed	smm-operator-1.12.0	v1.12.0
   

   Verify the operator pod is up and running

   kubectl get pods -n smm-registry-access
   

   Expected output:

   NAME             READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
   smm-operator-0   2/2     Running   0          5m5s
   

3. Install Service Mesh Manager by creating a ControlPlane resource. We recommend that you start with the following ControlPlane resource. This CR assumes that you are using docker-registry authentication, and the secret referenced in the .spec.registryAccess is used to pull smm-operator image and sync across other namespaces created by the smm-operator chart.

   For OpenShift 4.11 installation set the spec.platform=openshift field.

   Replace <cluster-name> with the name of your cluster. The cluster name format must comply with the RFC 1123 DNS subdomain/label format (alphanumeric string without “_” or “.” characters). Otherwise, you get an error message starting with: Reconciler error: cannot determine cluster name controller=controlplane, controllerGroup=smm.cisco.com, controllerKind=ControlPlane

   kubectl apply -f - << EOF
   apiVersion: smm.cisco.com/v1alpha1
   kind: ControlPlane
   metadata:
     name: smm
   spec:
     clusterName: <cluster-name>
     certManager:
       enabled: true
       namespace: cert-manager
     clusterRegistry:
       enabled: true
       namespace: cluster-registry
     log: {}
     meshManager:
       enabled: true
       istio:
         enabled: true
         istioCRRef:
           name: cp-v115x
           namespace: istio-system
         operators:
           namespace: smm-system
       namespace: smm-system
     nodeExporter:
       enabled: true
       namespace: smm-system
       psp:
         enabled: false
       rbac:
         enabled: true
     oneEye: {}
     registryAccess:
       enabled: true
       imagePullSecretsController: {}
       namespace: smm-registry-access
       pullSecrets:
         - name: smm-registry.eticloud.io-pull-secret
           namespace: smm-registry-access
     repositoryOverride:
       host: registry.eticloud.io
       prefix: smm
     role: active
     smm:
       als:
         enabled: true
         log: {}
       application:
         enabled: true
         log: {}
       auth:
         mode: impersonation
       certManager:
         enabled: true
       enabled: true
       federationGateway:
         enabled: true
         name: smm
         service:
           enabled: true
           name: smm-federation-gateway
           port: 80
       federationGatewayOperator:
         enabled: true
       impersonation:
         enabled: true
       istio:
         revision: cp-v115x.istio-system
       leo:
         enabled: true
         log: {}
       log: {}
       namespace: smm-system
       prometheus:
         enabled: true
         replicas: 1
       prometheusOperator: {}
       releaseName: smm
       role: active
       sre:
         enabled: true
       useIstioResources: true
   EOF
   

4. Verify all pods in the smm-system namespace is up and running

   kubectl get pods -n smm-system
   

   Expected output:

   NAME                                               READY   STATUS    RESTARTS      AGE
   istio-operator-v113x-7fd87bcd79-7g6wz              2/2     Running   0             26m
   istio-operator-v115x-657f9f58b8-mg8pw              2/2     Running   0             26m
   mesh-manager-0                                     2/2     Running   0             26m
   prometheus-node-exporter-9hrpr                     1/1     Running   0             23m
   prometheus-node-exporter-h866t                     1/1     Running   0             23m
   prometheus-node-exporter-j9ljd                     1/1     Running   0             23m
   prometheus-node-exporter-qsc2r                     1/1     Running   0             23m
   prometheus-smm-prometheus-0                        4/4     Running   0             24m
   smm-77c6d4fd6-czdbg                                2/2     Running   0             25m
   smm-77c6d4fd6-vrzqp                                2/2     Running   0             25m
   smm-als-8698db887b-vr96g                           2/2     Running   0             25m
   smm-authentication-57b44b8d94-spcbh                2/2     Running   0             25m
   smm-federation-gateway-6698684fb9-4l5q9            2/2     Running   0             24m
   smm-federation-gateway-operator-5f7868448c-59d6l   2/2     Running   0             25m
   smm-grafana-5c5bf778fb-zlg4s                       3/3     Running   0             25m
   smm-health-5994fcb477-n6f8v                        2/2     Running   0             25m
   smm-health-api-5d49fd6c84-v2jml                    2/2     Running   0             25m
   smm-ingressgateway-988b74656-cgb9x                 1/1     Running   0             25m
   smm-kubestatemetrics-58ff74d48c-mwvz5              2/2     Running   0             25m
   smm-leo-6f4dfccdbc-wm5gb                           2/2     Running   0             25m
   smm-prometheus-operator-b5dd94cc-7bg5z             3/3     Running   1 (24m ago)   25m
   smm-sre-alert-exporter-759547d77f-jffr4            2/2     Running   0             25m
   smm-sre-api-84cb7974c5-vhjcf                       2/2     Running   0             25m
   smm-sre-controller-6c999f7dfc-9szqq                2/2     Running   0             25m
   smm-tracing-6b9f9cdd74-gj9j5                       2/2     Running   0             25m
   smm-vm-integration-5b66db6c9c-xtlcv                2/2     Running   0             25m
   smm-web-75994644d8-cm996                           3/3     Running   0             25m
   

Uninstalling the chart

To uninstall/delete the ControlPlane resource and the smm-operator release, complete the following steps.

1. Run:

   kubectl delete controlplanes.smm.cisco.com smm
   

2. Wait until all pods are deleted. This will take a couple of minutes. After all pods are deleted run:

   helm uninstall --namespace=smm-registry-access smm-operator
   

3. Delete the following namespaces:

   kubectl delete namespaces cert-manager cluster-registry istio-system smm-registry-access smm-system
   

4. Delete the Cluster CR

   kubectl delete clusters.clusterregistry.k8s.cisco.com <cluster-name>
   

Chart configuration

The following table lists the configurable parameters of the Service Mesh Manager chart and their default values.

2.3.5.2 - The ControlPlane Custom Resource

Service Mesh Manager installs the ControlPlane Custom Resource with the following default values.

To understand how Service Mesh Manager can be customized through its CRs, see Customize Installation.

2.3.6 - Install SMM - GitOps - single cluster

This guide details how to set up a GitOps environment for Service Mesh Manager using Argo CD. The same principles can be used for other tools as well.

Architecture

The high level architecture for Argo CD with a single-cluster Service Mesh Manager consists of the following components:

• A git repository that stores the various charts and manifests,
• a management cluster that runs the Argo CD server, and
• the Service Mesh Manager cluster managed by Argo CD.

Prerequisites

To complete this procedure, you need:

• A free registration for the Service Mesh Manager download page
• A Kubernetes or OpenShift cluster to deploy Argo CD on (called management-cluster in the examples).
• A Kubernetes or OpenShift cluster to deploy Service Mesh Manager on (called workload-cluster-1 in the examples).

Procedure overview

The high-level steps of the procedure are:

1. Install Argo CD and register the clusters
2. Prepare the Git repository
3. Deploy Service Mesh Manager

Install Argo CD

Complete the following steps to install Argo CD on the management cluster.

Set up the environment

1. Set the KUBECONFIG location and context name for the management-cluster cluster.

   MANAGEMENT_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG=management_cluster_kubeconfig.yaml
   MANAGEMENT_CLUSTER_CONTEXT=management-cluster
   kubectl config --kubeconfig "${MANAGEMENT_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG}" get-contexts "${MANAGEMENT_CLUSTER_CONTEXT}"
   

   Expected output:

   CURRENT   NAME                 CLUSTER              AUTHINFO   NAMESPACE
   *         management-cluster   management-cluster
   

2. Set the KUBECONFIG location and context name for the workload-cluster-1 cluster.

   WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_KUBECONFIG=workload_cluster_1_kubeconfig.yaml
   WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_CONTEXT=workload-cluster-1
   kubectl config --kubeconfig "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_KUBECONFIG}" get-contexts "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_CONTEXT}"
   

   Expected output:

   CURRENT   NAME                 CLUSTER              AUTHINFO                                          NAMESPACE
   *         workload-cluster-1   workload-cluster-1
   

   Repeat this step for any additional workload clusters you want to use.

3. Add the cluster configurations to KUBECONFIG. Include any additional workload clusters you want to use.

   KUBECONFIG=$KUBECONFIG:$MANAGEMENT_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG:$WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_KUBECONFIG
   

4. Make sure the management-cluster Kubernetes context is the current context.

   kubectl config use-context "${MANAGEMENT_CLUSTER_CONTEXT}"
   

   Expected output:

   Switched to context "management-cluster".
   

Install Argo CD Server

1. Create the argocd namespace.

   kubectl create namespace argocd
   

   Expected output:

   namespace/argocd created
   

2. On OpenShift: Run the following command to grant the service accounts access to the argocd namespace.

   oc adm policy add-scc-to-group privileged system:serviceaccounts:argocd
   

   Expected output:

   clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/system:openshift:scc:privileged added: "system:serviceaccounts:argocd"
   

3. Deploy Argo CD.

   kubectl apply -n argocd -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/argoproj/argo-cd/stable/manifests/install.yaml
   

   Show expected output ↕

   customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/applications.argoproj.io created
   customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/applicationsets.argoproj.io created
   customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/appprojects.argoproj.io created
   serviceaccount/argocd-application-controller created
   serviceaccount/argocd-applicationset-controller created
   serviceaccount/argocd-dex-server created
   serviceaccount/argocd-notifications-controller created
   serviceaccount/argocd-redis created
   serviceaccount/argocd-repo-server created
   serviceaccount/argocd-server created
   role.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/argocd-application-controller created
   role.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/argocd-applicationset-controller created
   role.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/argocd-dex-server created
   role.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/argocd-notifications-controller created
   role.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/argocd-server created
   clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/argocd-application-controller created
   clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/argocd-server created
   rolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/argocd-application-controller created
   rolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/argocd-applicationset-controller created
   rolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/argocd-dex-server created
   rolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/argocd-notifications-controller created
   rolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/argocd-redis created
   rolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/argocd-server created
   clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/argocd-application-controller created
   clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/argocd-server created
   configmap/argocd-cm created
   configmap/argocd-cmd-params-cm created
   configmap/argocd-gpg-keys-cm created
   configmap/argocd-notifications-cm created
   configmap/argocd-rbac-cm created
   configmap/argocd-ssh-known-hosts-cm created
   configmap/argocd-tls-certs-cm created
   secret/argocd-notifications-secret created
   secret/argocd-secret created
   service/argocd-applicationset-controller created
   service/argocd-dex-server created
   service/argocd-metrics created
   service/argocd-notifications-controller-metrics created
   service/argocd-redis created
   service/argocd-repo-server created
   service/argocd-server created
   service/argocd-server-metrics created
   deployment.apps/argocd-applicationset-controller created
   deployment.apps/argocd-dex-server created
   deployment.apps/argocd-notifications-controller created
   deployment.apps/argocd-redis created
   deployment.apps/argocd-repo-server created
   deployment.apps/argocd-server created
   statefulset.apps/argocd-application-controller created
   networkpolicy.networking.k8s.io/argocd-application-controller-network-policy created
   networkpolicy.networking.k8s.io/argocd-applicationset-controller-network-policy created
   networkpolicy.networking.k8s.io/argocd-dex-server-network-policy created
   networkpolicy.networking.k8s.io/argocd-notifications-controller-network-policy created
   networkpolicy.networking.k8s.io/argocd-redis-network-policy created
   networkpolicy.networking.k8s.io/argocd-repo-server-network-policy created
   networkpolicy.networking.k8s.io/argocd-server-network-policy created
   

4. Wait until the installation is complete, then check that the Argo CD pods are up and running.

   kubectl get pods -n argocd
   

   The output should be similar to:

   NAME                                                    READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
   pod/argocd-application-controller-0                     1/1     Running   0          7h59m
   pod/argocd-applicationset-controller-78b8b554f9-pgwbl   1/1     Running   0          7h59m
   pod/argocd-dex-server-6bbc85c688-8p7zf                  1/1     Running   0          16h
   pod/argocd-notifications-controller-75847756c5-dbbm5    1/1     Running   0          16h
   pod/argocd-redis-f4cdbff57-wcpxh                        1/1     Running   0          7h59m
   pod/argocd-repo-server-d5c7f7ffb-c8962                  1/1     Running   0          7h59m
   pod/argocd-server-76497676b-pnvf4                       1/1     Running   0          7h59m
   

5. For the Argo CD UI, set the argocd-server service type to LoadBalancer.

   kubectl patch svc argocd-server -n argocd -p '{"spec": {"type": "LoadBalancer"}}'
   

   Expected output:

   service/argocd-server patched
   

6. Patch the App of Apps health check in Argo CD configuration to ignore diffs of controller/operator managed fields. For details about this patch, see the Argo CD documentation sections Resource Health and Diffing Customization.

   Apply the new Argo CD health check configurations:

   kubectl apply -f - <<EOF
   apiVersion: v1
   kind: ConfigMap
   metadata:
     name: argocd-cm
     namespace: argocd
     labels:
       app.kubernetes.io/name: argocd-cm
       app.kubernetes.io/part-of: argocd
   data:
     # App of app health check
     resource.customizations.health.argoproj.io_Application: |
       hs = {}
       hs.status = "Progressing"
       hs.message = ""
       if obj.status ~= nil then
         if obj.status.health ~= nil then
           hs.status = obj.status.health.status
           if obj.status.health.message ~= nil then
             hs.message = obj.status.health.message
           end
         end
       end
       return hs
     # Ignoring RBAC changes made by AggregateRoles
     resource.compareoptions: |
       # disables status field diffing in specified resource types
       ignoreAggregatedRoles: true
   
       # disables status field diffing in specified resource types
       # 'crd' - CustomResourceDefinition-s (default)
       # 'all' - all resources
       # 'none' - disabled
       ignoreResourceStatusField: all
   EOF
   

   Expected output:

   configmap/argocd-cm configured
   

7. Get the initial password for the admin user.

   kubectl -n argocd get secret argocd-initial-admin-secret -o jsonpath="{.data.password}" | base64 -d; echo
   

   Expected output:

   argocd-admin-password
   

8. Check the external-ip-or-hostname address of the argocd-server service.

   kubectl get service -n argocd argocd-server
   

   The output should be similar to:

   NAME                                      TYPE           CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP               PORT(S)                      AGE
   argocd-server                             LoadBalancer   10.108.14.130   external-ip-or-hostname   80:31306/TCP,443:30063/TCP   7d13h
   

9. Open the https://external-ip-or-hostname URL and log in to the Argo CD server using the password received in the previous step.

   # Exactly one of hostname or IP will be available and used for the remote URL.
   open https://$(kubectl get service -n argocd argocd-server -o jsonpath='{.status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].hostname}{.status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].ip}')
   

Install Argo CD CLI

1. Install Argo CD CLI on your computer. For details, see the Argo CD documentation.

2. Log in with the CLI:

   # Exactly one of hostname or IP will be available and used for the remote URL.
   argocd login $(kubectl get service -n argocd argocd-server -o jsonpath='{.status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].hostname}{.status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].ip}') --insecure --username admin --password $(kubectl -n argocd get secret argocd-initial-admin-secret -o jsonpath="{.data.password}" | base64 -d)
   

   Expected output:

   'admin:login' logged in successfully
   

For more details about Argo CD installation, see the Argo CD getting started guide.

Register clusters

1. Register the clusters that will run Service Mesh Manager in Argo CD. In this example, register workload-cluster-1 using one of the following methods.

   • Register the cluster from the command line by running:

     argocd cluster add --kubeconfig "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_KUBECONFIG}" "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_CONTEXT}"
     

     Expected output:

     WARNING: This will create a service account `argocd-manager` on the cluster referenced by context `workload-cluster-1` with full cluster level privileges. Do you want to continue [y/N]? y
     INFO[0005] ServiceAccount "argocd-manager" created in namespace "kube-system"
     INFO[0005] ClusterRole "argocd-manager-role" created
     INFO[0005] ClusterRoleBinding "argocd-manager-role-binding" created
     INFO[0011] Created bearer token secret for ServiceAccount "argocd-manager"
     Cluster 'https://workload-cluster-1-ip-or-hostname' added
     

   • Alternatively, you can register clusters declaratively as Kubernetes secrets. Modify the following command for your environment and apply it. For details, see the Argo CD documentation.

     WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_IP="https://workload-cluster-1-IP" ARGOCD_BEARER_TOKEN="authentication-token" ARGOCD_CA_B64="base64 encoded certificate" ; kubectl apply -f - <<EOF
     apiVersion: v1
     kind: Secret
     metadata:
       name: workload-cluster-1-secret
       labels:
         argocd.argoproj.io/secret-type: cluster
     type: Opaque
     stringData:
       name: workload-cluster-1
       server: "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_IP}"
       config: |
         {
           "bearerToken": "${ARGOCD_BEARER_TOKEN}",
           "tlsClientConfig": {
             "insecure": false,
             "caData": "${ARGOCD_CA_B64}"
           }
         }
     EOF
     

2. Make sure that the cluster is registered in Argo CD by running the following command:

   argocd cluster list
   

   The output should be similar to:

   SERVER                                      NAME                VERSION  STATUS   MESSAGE                                                  PROJECT
   https://kubernetes.default.svc              in-cluster                   Unknown  Cluster has no applications and is not being monitored.
   https://workload-cluster-1-ip-or-hostname   workload-cluster-1           Unknown  Cluster has no applications and is not being monitored.
   

Prepare Git repository

1. Create an empty repository called calisti-gitops on GitHub (or another provider that Argo CD supports) and initialize it with a README.md file so that you can clone the repository. Because Service Mesh Manager credentials will be stored in this repository, make it a private repository.

   GITHUB_ID="github-id"
   GITHUB_REPOSITORY_NAME="calisti-gitops"
   

2. Obtain a personal access token to the repository (on GitHub, see Creating a personal access token), that has the following permissions:

   • admin:org_hook
   • admin:repo_hook
   • read:org
   • read:public_key
   • repo

3. Log in with your personal access token with git.

   export GH_TOKEN="github-personal-access-token" # Note: this environment variable needs to be exported so the `git` binary is going to use it automatically for authentication.
   

4. Clone the repository into your local workspace.

   git clone "https://github.com/${GITHUB_ID}/${GITHUB_REPOSITORY_NAME}.git"
   

   Expected output:

   Cloning into 'calisti-gitops'...
   remote: Enumerating objects: 144, done.
   remote: Counting objects: 100% (144/144), done.
   remote: Compressing objects: 100% (93/93), done.
   remote: Total 144 (delta 53), reused 135 (delta 47), pack-reused 0
   Receiving objects: 100% (144/144), 320.08 KiB | 746.00 KiB/s, done.
   Resolving deltas: 100% (53/53), done.
   

5. Add the repository to Argo CD by running the following command. Alternatively, you can add it on Argo CD Web UI.

   argocd repo add "https://github.com/${GITHUB_ID}/${GITHUB_REPOSITORY_NAME}.git" --name "${GITHUB_REPOSITORY_NAME}" --username "${GITHUB_ID}" --password "${GH_TOKEN}"
   

   Expected output:

   Repository 'https://github.com/github-id/calisti-gitops.git' added
   

6. Verify that the repository is connected by running:

   argocd repo list
   

   In the output, Status should be Successful:

   TYPE  NAME            REPO                                             INSECURE  OCI    LFS    CREDS  STATUS      MESSAGE  PROJECT
   git   calisti-gitops  https://github.com/github-id/calisti-gitops.git  false     false  false  true   Successful
   

7. Change into the root directory of the cloned repository and create the following directories.

   cd "${GITHUB_REPOSITORY_NAME}"
   

   mkdir -p apps/demo-app apps/smm-controlplane apps/smm-operator charts demo-app manifests
   

   The final structure of the repository will look like this:

   .
   ├── apps
   │   ├── demo-app
   │   │   └── demo-app.yaml
   │   ├── smm-controlplane
   │   │   └── smm-controlplane.yaml
   │   └── smm-operator
   │       └── smm-operator.yaml
   ├── charts
   │   └── smm-operator
   │       └── ...
   ├── demo-app
   │   ├── demo-app-ns.yaml
   │   └── demo-app.yaml
   └── manifests
       ├── cert-manager-namespace.yaml
       └── smm-controlplane.yaml
   

   • The apps folder contains the Argo CD Application of the smm-operator, the smm-controlplane, and the demo-app.
   • The charts folder contains the Helm chart of the smm-operator.
   • The demo-app folder contains the manifest files of the demo application that represents your business application.
   • The manifests folder contains the smm-controlplane file and the cert-manager namespace file.

Prepare the helm charts

1. You need an active Service Mesh Manager registration to download the Service Mesh Manager charts and images. You can sign up for free, or obtain Enterprise credentials on the official Cisco Service Mesh Manager page. After registration, you can obtain your username and password from the Download Center. Set them as environment variables.

   CALISTI_USERNAME="<your-calisti-username>"
   

   CALISTI_PASSWORD="<your-calisti-password>"
   

2. Download the smm-operator chart from registry.eticloud.io into the charts directory of your Service Mesh Manager GitOps repository and extract it. Run the following commands:

   export HELM_EXPERIMENTAL_OCI=1 # Needed prior to Helm version 3.8.0
   
   echo "${CALISTI_PASSWORD}" | helm registry login registry.eticloud.io -u "${CALISTI_USERNAME}" --password-stdin
   

   Expected output:

   Login Succeeded
   

   helm pull oci://registry.eticloud.io/smm-charts/smm-operator --destination ./charts/ --untar --version 1.12.0
   

   Expected output:

   Pulled: registry.eticloud.io/smm-charts/smm-operator:latest-stable-version
   Digest: sha256:someshadigest
   

Deploy Service Mesh Manager

Deploy the smm-operator application

Complete the following steps to deploy the smm-operator chart using Argo CD.

1. Create an Argo CD Application CR for smm-operator.

   Before running the following command, edit it if needed:

   • If you are not using a GitHub repository, set the repoURL field to your repository.

   • For multi-cluster setups, the Kubernetes API server address of one cluster must be reachable from other clusters. The API server addresses are private for certain clusters (for example, OpenShift) and not reachable by default from other clusters. In such case, use the PUBLIC_API_SERVER_ENDPOINT_ADDRESS variable to provide an address that’s reachable from the other clusters. This can be a public address, or one that’s routable from the other clusters.

   ARGOCD_CLUSTER_NAME="${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_CONTEXT}" PUBLIC_API_SERVER_ENDPOINT_ADDRESS="" ; cat > "apps/smm-operator/smm-operator-app.yaml" <<EOF
   # apps/smm-operator/smm-operator-app.yaml
   apiVersion: argoproj.io/v1alpha1
   kind: Application
   metadata:
     name: smm-operator
     namespace: argocd
     finalizers:
       - resources-finalizer.argocd.argoproj.io
   spec:
     project: default
     source:
       repoURL: https://github.com/${GITHUB_ID}/${GITHUB_REPOSITORY_NAME}.git
       targetRevision: HEAD
       path: charts/smm-operator
       helm:
         parameters:
         - name: "global.ecr.enabled"
           value: 'false'
         - name: "global.basicAuth.username"
           value: "${CALISTI_USERNAME}"
         - name: "global.basicAuth.password"
           value: "${CALISTI_PASSWORD}"
         - name: "apiServerEndpointAddress"
           value: "${PUBLIC_API_SERVER_ENDPOINT_ADDRESS}" # The publicly accessible address of the k8s api server. Some Cloud providers have different API Server endpoint for internal and for public access. In that case the public endpoint needs to be specified here.
     destination:
       name: ${ARGOCD_CLUSTER_NAME}
       namespace: smm-registry-access
     syncPolicy:
       automated:
         prune: true
         selfHeal: true
       syncOptions:
         - Validate=false
         - PruneLast=true
         - CreateNamespace=true
         - Replace=true
   EOF
   

2. Commit and push the calisti-gitops repository.

   git add apps/smm-operator charts/smm-operator
   git commit -m "add smm-operator app"
   

   Show expected output ↕

   [main e6c4b4a] add smm-operator app
   36 files changed, 80324 insertions(+)
   create mode 100644 apps/smm-operator/smm-operator-app.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/.helmignore
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/Chart.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/README.md
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/crds/clusterfeature-crd.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/crds/clusters-crd.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/crds/crd-alertmanagerconfigs.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/crds/crd-alertmanagers.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/crds/crd-podmonitors.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/crds/crd-probes.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/crds/crd-prometheuses.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/crds/crd-prometheusrules.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/crds/crd-servicemonitors.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/crds/crd-thanosrulers.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/crds/crds.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/crds/health.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/crds/istio-operator-v1-crds.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/crds/istio-operator-v2-crds.gen.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/crds/istiooperator-crd.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/crds/koperator-crds.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/crds/metadata-crd.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/crds/resourcesyncrules-crd.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/crds/sre.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/templates/_helpers.tpl
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/templates/authproxy-rbac.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/templates/authproxy-service.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/templates/cert-manager-namespace.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/templates/ecr.deployment.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/templates/ecr.secret.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/templates/ecr.service-account.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/templates/namespace.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/templates/operator-psp-basic.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/templates/operator-rbac.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/templates/operator-service.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/templates/operator-statefulset.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/values.yaml
   

   git push
   

   Expected output:

   Enumerating objects: 48, done.
   Counting objects: 100% (48/48), done.
   Delta compression using up to 12 threads
   Compressing objects: 100% (44/44), done.
   Writing objects: 100% (47/47), 282.18 KiB | 1.99 MiB/s, done.
   Total 47 (delta 20), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 0
   remote: Resolving deltas: 100% (20/20), done.
   To github.com:pregnor/calisti-gitops.git
   + 8dd47c2...db9e7af main -> main (forced update)
   

3. Apply the Application manifest.

   kubectl apply -f "apps/smm-operator/smm-operator-app.yaml"
   

   Expected output:

   application.argoproj.io/smm-operator created
   

4. Verify that the applications have been added to Argo CD and are healthy.

   argocd app list
   

   Expected output:

   NAME          CLUSTER             NAMESPACE            PROJECT  STATUS  HEALTH   SYNCPOLICY  CONDITIONS  REPO                                             PATH                 TARGET
   smm-operator  workload-cluster-1  smm-registry-access  default  Synced  Healthy  Auto-Prune  <none>      https://github.com/github-id/calisti-gitops.git  charts/smm-operator  HEAD
   

5. Check the smm-operator application on the Argo CD Web UI.

   

Deploy the smm-controlplane application

1. Create the following namespace for the Service Mesh Manager ControlPlane.

   cat > manifests/cert-manager-namespace.yaml <<EOF
   # manifests/cert-manager-namespace.yaml
   apiVersion: v1
   kind: Namespace
   metadata:
     annotations:
       argocd.argoproj.io/sync-wave: "1"
     name: cert-manager
   EOF
   

2. Create the smm-controlplane CR for the ControlPlane. For OpenShift installations, add platform: openshift to the spec section.

   ARGOCD_CLUSTER_NAME="${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_CONTEXT}" ISTIO_MINOR_VERSION="1.15" ; cat > "manifests/smm-controlplane.yaml" <<EOF
   # manifests/smm-controlplane.yaml
   apiVersion: smm.cisco.com/v1alpha1
   kind: ControlPlane
   metadata:
     annotations:
       argocd.argoproj.io/sync-wave: "10"
     name: smm
   spec:
     # platform: openshift # Uncomment for OpenShift installations
     certManager:
       enabled: true
       namespace: cert-manager
     clusterName: ${ARGOCD_CLUSTER_NAME}
     clusterRegistry:
       enabled: true
       namespace: cluster-registry
     log: {}
     meshManager:
       enabled: true
       istio:
         enabled: true
         istioCRRef:
           name: cp-v${ISTIO_MINOR_VERSION/.}x
           namespace: istio-system
         operators:
           namespace: smm-system
       namespace: smm-system
     nodeExporter:
       enabled: true
       namespace: smm-system
       psp:
         enabled: false
       rbac:
         enabled: true
     oneEye: {}
     registryAccess:
       enabled: true
       imagePullSecretsController: {}
       namespace: smm-registry-access
       pullSecrets:
       - name: smm-registry.eticloud.io-pull-secret
         namespace: smm-registry-access
     repositoryOverride:
       host: registry.eticloud.io
       prefix: smm
     role: active
     smm:
       exposeDashboard:
         meshGateway:
           enabled: true
       als:
         enabled: true
         log: {}
       application:
         enabled: true
         log: {}
       auth:
         forceUnsecureCookies: true
         mode: anonymous
       certManager:
         enabled: true
       enabled: true
       federationGateway:
         enabled: true
         name: smm
         service:
           enabled: true
           name: smm-federation-gateway
           port: 80
       federationGatewayOperator:
         enabled: true
       impersonation:
         enabled: true
       istio:
         revision: cp-v${ISTIO_MINOR_VERSION/.}x.istio-system
       leo:
         enabled: true
         log: {}
       log: {}
       namespace: smm-system
       prometheus:
         enabled: true
         replicas: 1
       prometheusOperator: {}
       releaseName: smm
       role: active
       sre:
         enabled: true
       useIstioResources: true
   EOF
   

3. Create the Argo CD Application CR for the smm-controlplane.

   ARGOCD_CLUSTER_NAME="${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_CONTEXT}" ; cat > "apps/smm-controlplane/smm-controlplane-app.yaml" <<EOF
   # apps/smm-controlplane/smm-controlplane-app.yaml
   apiVersion: argoproj.io/v1alpha1
   kind: Application
   metadata:
     name: smm-controlplane
     namespace: argocd
     finalizers:
       - resources-finalizer.argocd.argoproj.io
   spec:
     project: default
     source:
       repoURL: https://github.com/${GITHUB_ID}/${GITHUB_REPOSITORY_NAME}.git
       targetRevision: HEAD
       path: manifests
     destination:
       name: ${ARGOCD_CLUSTER_NAME}
     syncPolicy:
       automated:
         prune: true
         selfHeal: true
       syncOptions:
       - Validate=false
       - CreateNamespace=true
       - PrunePropagationPolicy=foreground
       - PruneLast=true
       - Replace=true
   EOF
   

4. Commit the changes and push the calisti-gitops repository.

   git add apps/smm-controlplane manifests
   git commit -m "add smm-controlplane app"
   

   Expected output:

   [main 25ba7e8] add smm-controlplane app
   3 files changed, 212 insertions(+)
   create mode 100644 apps/smm-controlplane/smm-controlplane-app.yaml
   create mode 100644 manifests/cert-manager-namespace.yaml
   create mode 100644 manifests/smm-controlplane.yaml
   

   git push
   

   Expected output:

   Enumerating objects: 12, done.
   Counting objects: 100% (12/12), done.
   Delta compression using up to 10 threads
   Compressing objects: 100% (10/10), done.
   Writing objects: 100% (10/10), 2.70 KiB | 2.70 MiB/s, done.
   Total 10 (delta 1), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 0
   remote: Resolving deltas: 100% (1/1), done.
   To github.com:<username>/calisti-gitops.git
     529545a..25ba7e8  main -> main
   

5. Apply the Application manifest.

   kubectl apply -f "apps/smm-controlplane/smm-controlplane-app.yaml"
   

   Expected output:

   application.argoproj.io/smm-controlplane created
   

6. Verify that the application has been added to Argo CD and is healthy.

   argocd app list
   

   Expected output:

   NAME              CLUSTER             NAMESPACE            PROJECT  STATUS     HEALTH   SYNCPOLICY  CONDITIONS  REPO                                             PATH                 TARGET
   smm-controlplane  workload-cluster-1                       default  Synced     Healthy  Auto-Prune  <none>      https://github.com/github-id/calisti-gitops.git  manifests            HEAD
   smm-operator      workload-cluster-1  smm-registry-access  default  Synced     Healthy  Auto-Prune  <none>      https://github.com/github-id/calisti-gitops.git  charts/smm-operator  HEAD
   

7. Check that all pods are healthy and running in the smm-system namespace of workload-cluster-1.

   kubectl get pods -n smm-system --kubeconfig "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_KUBECONFIG}" --context "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_CONTEXT}"
   

   Show expected output ↕

   NAME                                               READY   STATUS    RESTARTS        AGE
   istio-operator-v115x-85495cd76f-q7n22              2/2     Running   4 (7m36s ago)   17m
   mesh-manager-0                                     2/2     Running   4 (7m35s ago)   18m
   prometheus-smm-prometheus-0                        4/4     Running   0               15m
   smm-7f95479ff7-rzh2g                               2/2     Running   0               16m
   smm-7f95479ff7-v52vp                               2/2     Running   0               16m
   smm-als-8487fdf4f7-ddklg                           2/2     Running   0               16m
   smm-authentication-7888dfc6d7-w7tdq                2/2     Running   0               16m
   smm-federation-gateway-84f9fbf54d-7glvp            2/2     Running   0               16m
   smm-federation-gateway-operator-6cb99c5798-9fj25   2/2     Running   4 (7m36s ago)   16m
   smm-grafana-95ff96dd9-m6rx6                        3/3     Running   0               16m
   smm-health-86dc8c98d6-pv7bk                        2/2     Running   3 (7m35s ago)   16m
   smm-health-api-5df5b76bf5-lvbsp                    2/2     Running   0               16m
   smm-ingressgateway-7d59684cf7-jsj7f                1/1     Running   0               16m
   smm-ingressgateway-external-59f9874787-p55wr       1/1     Running   0               16m
   smm-kubestatemetrics-f4766d7b8-9mc9f               2/2     Running   0               16m
   smm-leo-9fc8db6db-vlzpw                            2/2     Running   0               16m
   smm-prometheus-operator-6558dbddc8-bgdh9           3/3     Running   1 (16m ago)     16m
   smm-sre-alert-exporter-6656f98dd8-8wvdx            2/2     Running   0               16m
   smm-sre-api-77b65ff6bd-spzk2                       2/2     Running   0               16m
   smm-sre-controller-59d6cdd588-7cvbk                2/2     Running   3 (7m35s ago)   16m
   smm-tracing-6c85986bfd-xjjqw                       2/2     Running   0               16m
   smm-vm-integration-cdd8d8688-sk79s                 2/2     Running   3 (7m35s ago)   16m
   smm-web-84d697fdb4-2fbkm                           3/3     Running   0               16m
   

8. Check the application on Argo CD Web UI.

   # Exactly one of hostname or IP will be available and used for the remote URL.
   open https://$(kubectl get service -n argocd argocd-server -o jsonpath='{.status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].hostname}{.status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].ip}')
   

   

At this point, you have successfully installed smm-operator and smm-controlplane on workload-cluster-1.

Deploy an application

If you want to deploy an application into the service mesh, complete the following steps. The examples use the Service Mesh Manager demo application.

1. Create a namespace for the application: create the demo-app-ns.yaml file.

   cat > demo-app/demo-app-ns.yaml << EOF
   apiVersion: v1
   kind: Namespace
   metadata:
     labels:
       app.kubernetes.io/instance: smm-demo
       app.kubernetes.io/name: smm-demo
       app.kubernetes.io/part-of: smm-demo
       app.kubernetes.io/version: 0.1.4
       istio.io/rev: cp-v115x.istio-system
     name: smm-demo
   EOF
   

2. Create a manifest for Network Attachment Definitions.

   cat > demo-app/smm-demo-nad.yaml << EOF
   apiVersion: k8s.cni.cncf.io/v1
   kind: NetworkAttachmentDefinition
   metadata:
     name: istio-cni-cp-v${ISTIO_MINOR_VERSION/.}x-istio-system
     namespace: smm-demo
     annotations:
       argocd.argoproj.io/sync-wave: "3"
   EOF
   

3. Create the demo-app.yaml file.

   cat > demo-app/demo-app.yaml << EOF
   apiVersion: smm.cisco.com/v1alpha1
   kind: DemoApplication
   metadata:
     name: smm-demo
     namespace: smm-demo
   spec:
     autoscaling:
       enabled: true
     controlPlaneRef:
       name: smm
     deployIstioResources: true
     deploySLOResources: true
     enabled: true
     enabledComponents:
     - frontpage
     - catalog
     - bookings
     - postgresql
     - payments
     - notifications
     - movies
     - analytics
     - database
     - mysql
     istio:
       revision: cp-v115x.istio-system
     load:
       enabled: true
       maxRPS: 30
       minRPS: 10
       swingPeriod: 1380000000000
     replicas: 1
     resources:
       limits:
         cpu: "2"
         memory: 192Mi
       requests:
         cpu: 40m
         memory: 64Mi
   EOF
   

4. Create an Argo CD Application file for the application. Create the demo-app.yaml file.

   ARGOCD_CLUSTER_NAME="${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_CONTEXT}" ; cat > apps/demo-app/demo-app.yaml << EOF
   apiVersion: argoproj.io/v1alpha1
   kind: Application
   metadata:
     name: demo-app
     namespace: argocd
     finalizers:
       - resources-finalizer.argocd.argoproj.io
   spec:
     project: default
     source:
       repoURL: https://github.com/${GITHUB_ID}/${GITHUB_REPOSITORY_NAME}.git
       targetRevision: HEAD
       path: demo-app
     destination:
       name: ${ARGOCD_CLUSTER_NAME}
       namespace: smm-demo
     syncPolicy:
       automated:
         prune: true
         selfHeal: true
       syncOptions:
       - Validate=false
       - CreateNamespace=true
       - PruneLast=true
       - Replace=true
   EOF
   

5. Commit and push the calisti-gitops repository.

   git add apps/demo-app demo-app
   git commit -m "add demo app"
   

   Expected output:

   [main 58a236e] add demo app
   3 files changed, 74 insertions(+)
   create mode 100644 apps/demo-app/demo-app.yaml
   create mode 100644 demo-app/demo-app-ns.yaml
   create mode 100644 demo-app/demo-app.yaml
   

   git push
   

   Expected output:

   Enumerating objects: 10, done.
   Counting objects: 100% (10/10), done.
   Delta compression using up to 10 threads
   Compressing objects: 100% (7/7), done.
   Writing objects: 100% (8/8), 1.37 KiB | 1.37 MiB/s, done.
   Total 8 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 0
   To github.com:<username>/calisti-gitops.git
     e16549e..58a236e  main -> main
   

6. Deploy the application.

   kubectl apply -f apps/demo-app/demo-app.yaml
   

7. Wait until all the pods in the application namespace (smm-demo) are up and running.

   kubectl get pods -n smm-demo --kubeconfig "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_KUBECONFIG}" --context "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_CONTEXT}"
   

   Expected output:

   NAME                                READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
   analytics-v1-7899bd4d4-bnf24        2/2     Running   0          109s
   bombardier-6455fd74f6-jndpv         2/2     Running   0          109s
   bookings-v1-559768454c-7vhzr        2/2     Running   0          109s
   catalog-v1-99b7bb56d-fjvhl          2/2     Running   0          109s
   database-v1-5cb4b4ff67-95ttk        2/2     Running   0          109s
   frontpage-v1-5b4dcbfcb4-djr72       2/2     Running   0          108s
   movies-v1-78fcf666dc-z8c2z          2/2     Running   0          108s
   movies-v2-84d9f5658f-kc65j          2/2     Running   0          108s
   movies-v3-86bbbc9745-r84bl          2/2     Running   0          108s
   mysql-d6b6b78fd-b7dwb               2/2     Running   0          108s
   notifications-v1-794c5dd8f6-lndh4   2/2     Running   0          108s
   payments-v1-858d4b4ffc-vtxxl        2/2     Running   0          108s
   postgresql-555fd55bdb-jn5pq         2/2     Running   0          108s
   

8. Verify that the application appears on the Argo CD admin view, it is Healthy, and Synced.

   

Access the Service Mesh Manager dashboard

1. You can access the Service Mesh Manager dashboard via the smm-ingressgateway-external LoadBalancer external-ip-or-hostname address. Run the following command to retrieve the IP address:

   kubectl get services -n smm-system smm-ingressgateway-external --kubeconfig "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_KUBECONFIG}" --context "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_CONTEXT}"
   

   Expected output:

   NAME                          TYPE           CLUSTER-IP   EXTERNAL-IP                PORT(S)        AGE
   smm-ingressgateway-external   LoadBalancer   10.0.0.199   external-ip-or-hostname    80:32505/TCP   2m28s
   

2. Open the Service Mesh Manager dashboard using one of the following methods:

   • Open the http://<external-ip-or-hostname> URL in your browser.

   • Run the following command to open the dashboard with your default browser:

     # Exactly one of hostname or IP will be available and used for the remote URL.
     open http://$(kubectl get services -n smm-system smm-ingressgateway-external -o jsonpath='{.status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].hostname}{.status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].ip}' --kubeconfig "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_KUBECONFIG}" --context "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_CONTEXT}")
     

   • If you have installed the Service Mesh Manager CLI on your machine, run the following command to open the Service Mesh Manager Dashboard in the default browser.

     smm dashboard --kubeconfig "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_KUBECONFIG}" --context "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_CONTEXT}"
     

     Expected output:

     ✓ validate-kubeconfig ❯ checking cluster reachability...
     ✓ opening Service Mesh Manager at http://127.0.0.1:50500
     

3. Check the deployments on the dashboard, for example, on the MENU > Overview, MENU > MESH, and MENU > TOPOLOGY pages.

2.3.7 - Install SMM - GitOps - multi-cluster

This guide details how to set up a multi-cluster Service Mesh Manager scenario in a GitOps environment for Service Mesh Manager using Argo CD. The same principles can be used for other tools as well.

Architecture

Service Mesh Manager supports multiple mesh topologies, so you can use the one that best fits your use cases. In multi-cluster configurations it provides automatic locality load-balancing.

The high level architecture for Argo CD with a multi-cluster Service Mesh Manager setup consists of the following components:

• A git repository that stores the various charts and manifests,
• a management cluster that runs the Argo CD server, and
• the Service Mesh Manager clusters managed by Argo CD.

Deployment models

When deploying Service Mesh Manager in a multi-cluster scenario you can deploy Service Mesh Manager in an active-passive model. For details on Service Mesh Manager clusters and their relationship to Istio clusters, see Istio clusters and SMM clusters.

Prerequisites

• A free registration for the Service Mesh Manager download page
• A Kubernetes cluster to deploy Argo CD on (called management-cluster in the examples).
• Two Kubernetes clusters to deploy Service Mesh Manager on (called workload-cluster-1 and workload-cluster-2 in the examples).

Install Argo CD

Complete the following steps to install Argo CD on the management cluster.

Set up the environment

1. Set the KUBECONFIG location and context name for the management-cluster cluster.

   MANAGEMENT_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG=management_cluster_kubeconfig.yaml
   MANAGEMENT_CLUSTER_CONTEXT=management-cluster
   kubectl config --kubeconfig "${MANAGEMENT_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG}" get-contexts "${MANAGEMENT_CLUSTER_CONTEXT}"
   

   Expected output:

   CURRENT   NAME                 CLUSTER              AUTHINFO   NAMESPACE
   *         management-cluster   management-cluster
   

2. Set the KUBECONFIG location and context name for the workload-cluster-1 cluster.

   WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_KUBECONFIG=workload_cluster_1_kubeconfig.yaml
   WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_CONTEXT=workload-cluster-1
   kubectl config --kubeconfig "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_KUBECONFIG}" get-contexts "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_CONTEXT}"
   

   Expected output:

   CURRENT   NAME                 CLUSTER              AUTHINFO                                          NAMESPACE
   *         workload-cluster-1   workload-cluster-1
   

   Repeat this step for any additional workload clusters you want to use.

3. Add the cluster configurations to KUBECONFIG. Include any additional workload clusters you want to use.

   KUBECONFIG=$KUBECONFIG:$MANAGEMENT_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG:$WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_KUBECONFIG
   

4. Make sure the management-cluster Kubernetes context is the current context.

   kubectl config use-context "${MANAGEMENT_CLUSTER_CONTEXT}"
   

   Expected output:

   Switched to context "management-cluster".
   

Install Argo CD Server

1. Create the argocd namespace.

   kubectl create namespace argocd
   

   Expected output:

   namespace/argocd created
   

2. On OpenShift: Run the following command to grant the service accounts access to the argocd namespace.

   oc adm policy add-scc-to-group privileged system:serviceaccounts:argocd
   

   Expected output:

   clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/system:openshift:scc:privileged added: "system:serviceaccounts:argocd"
   

3. Deploy Argo CD.

   kubectl apply -n argocd -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/argoproj/argo-cd/stable/manifests/install.yaml
   

   Show expected output ↕

   customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/applications.argoproj.io created
   customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/applicationsets.argoproj.io created
   customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/appprojects.argoproj.io created
   serviceaccount/argocd-application-controller created
   serviceaccount/argocd-applicationset-controller created
   serviceaccount/argocd-dex-server created
   serviceaccount/argocd-notifications-controller created
   serviceaccount/argocd-redis created
   serviceaccount/argocd-repo-server created
   serviceaccount/argocd-server created
   role.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/argocd-application-controller created
   role.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/argocd-applicationset-controller created
   role.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/argocd-dex-server created
   role.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/argocd-notifications-controller created
   role.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/argocd-server created
   clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/argocd-application-controller created
   clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/argocd-server created
   rolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/argocd-application-controller created
   rolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/argocd-applicationset-controller created
   rolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/argocd-dex-server created
   rolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/argocd-notifications-controller created
   rolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/argocd-redis created
   rolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/argocd-server created
   clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/argocd-application-controller created
   clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/argocd-server created
   configmap/argocd-cm created
   configmap/argocd-cmd-params-cm created
   configmap/argocd-gpg-keys-cm created
   configmap/argocd-notifications-cm created
   configmap/argocd-rbac-cm created
   configmap/argocd-ssh-known-hosts-cm created
   configmap/argocd-tls-certs-cm created
   secret/argocd-notifications-secret created
   secret/argocd-secret created
   service/argocd-applicationset-controller created
   service/argocd-dex-server created
   service/argocd-metrics created
   service/argocd-notifications-controller-metrics created
   service/argocd-redis created
   service/argocd-repo-server created
   service/argocd-server created
   service/argocd-server-metrics created
   deployment.apps/argocd-applicationset-controller created
   deployment.apps/argocd-dex-server created
   deployment.apps/argocd-notifications-controller created
   deployment.apps/argocd-redis created
   deployment.apps/argocd-repo-server created
   deployment.apps/argocd-server created
   statefulset.apps/argocd-application-controller created
   networkpolicy.networking.k8s.io/argocd-application-controller-network-policy created
   networkpolicy.networking.k8s.io/argocd-applicationset-controller-network-policy created
   networkpolicy.networking.k8s.io/argocd-dex-server-network-policy created
   networkpolicy.networking.k8s.io/argocd-notifications-controller-network-policy created
   networkpolicy.networking.k8s.io/argocd-redis-network-policy created
   networkpolicy.networking.k8s.io/argocd-repo-server-network-policy created
   networkpolicy.networking.k8s.io/argocd-server-network-policy created
   

4. Wait until the installation is complete, then check that the Argo CD pods are up and running.

   kubectl get pods -n argocd
   

   The output should be similar to:

   NAME                                                    READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
   pod/argocd-application-controller-0                     1/1     Running   0          7h59m
   pod/argocd-applicationset-controller-78b8b554f9-pgwbl   1/1     Running   0          7h59m
   pod/argocd-dex-server-6bbc85c688-8p7zf                  1/1     Running   0          16h
   pod/argocd-notifications-controller-75847756c5-dbbm5    1/1     Running   0          16h
   pod/argocd-redis-f4cdbff57-wcpxh                        1/1     Running   0          7h59m
   pod/argocd-repo-server-d5c7f7ffb-c8962                  1/1     Running   0          7h59m
   pod/argocd-server-76497676b-pnvf4                       1/1     Running   0          7h59m
   

5. For the Argo CD UI, set the argocd-server service type to LoadBalancer.

   kubectl patch svc argocd-server -n argocd -p '{"spec": {"type": "LoadBalancer"}}'
   

   Expected output:

   service/argocd-server patched
   

6. Patch the App of Apps health check in Argo CD configuration to ignore diffs of controller/operator managed fields. For details about this patch, see the Argo CD documentation sections Resource Health and Diffing Customization.

   Apply the new Argo CD health check configurations:

   kubectl apply -f - <<EOF
   apiVersion: v1
   kind: ConfigMap
   metadata:
     name: argocd-cm
     namespace: argocd
     labels:
       app.kubernetes.io/name: argocd-cm
       app.kubernetes.io/part-of: argocd
   data:
     # App of app health check
     resource.customizations.health.argoproj.io_Application: |
       hs = {}
       hs.status = "Progressing"
       hs.message = ""
       if obj.status ~= nil then
         if obj.status.health ~= nil then
           hs.status = obj.status.health.status
           if obj.status.health.message ~= nil then
             hs.message = obj.status.health.message
           end
         end
       end
       return hs
     # Ignoring RBAC changes made by AggregateRoles
     resource.compareoptions: |
       # disables status field diffing in specified resource types
       ignoreAggregatedRoles: true
   
       # disables status field diffing in specified resource types
       # 'crd' - CustomResourceDefinition-s (default)
       # 'all' - all resources
       # 'none' - disabled
       ignoreResourceStatusField: all
   EOF
   

   Expected output:

   configmap/argocd-cm configured
   

7. Get the initial password for the admin user.

   kubectl -n argocd get secret argocd-initial-admin-secret -o jsonpath="{.data.password}" | base64 -d; echo
   

   Expected output:

   argocd-admin-password
   

8. Check the external-ip-or-hostname address of the argocd-server service.

   kubectl get service -n argocd argocd-server
   

   The output should be similar to:

   NAME                                      TYPE           CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP               PORT(S)                      AGE
   argocd-server                             LoadBalancer   10.108.14.130   external-ip-or-hostname   80:31306/TCP,443:30063/TCP   7d13h
   

9. Open the https://external-ip-or-hostname URL and log in to the Argo CD server using the password received in the previous step.

   # Exactly one of hostname or IP will be available and used for the remote URL.
   open https://$(kubectl get service -n argocd argocd-server -o jsonpath='{.status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].hostname}{.status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].ip}')
   

Install Argo CD CLI

1. Install Argo CD CLI on your computer. For details, see the Argo CD documentation.

2. Log in with the CLI:

   # Exactly one of hostname or IP will be available and used for the remote URL.
   argocd login $(kubectl get service -n argocd argocd-server -o jsonpath='{.status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].hostname}{.status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].ip}') --insecure --username admin --password $(kubectl -n argocd get secret argocd-initial-admin-secret -o jsonpath="{.data.password}" | base64 -d)
   

   Expected output:

   'admin:login' logged in successfully
   

For more details about Argo CD installation, see the Argo CD getting started guide.

Register clusters

1. Register the clusters that will run Service Mesh Manager in Argo CD. In this example, register workload-cluster-1 and workload-cluster-2 using one of the following methods.

   • Register the cluster from the command line by running:

     argocd cluster add --kubeconfig "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_KUBECONFIG}" "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_CONTEXT}"
     

     Expected output:

     WARNING: This will create a service account `argocd-manager` on the cluster referenced by context `workload-cluster-1` with full cluster level privileges. Do you want to continue [y/N]? y
     INFO[0005] ServiceAccount "argocd-manager" created in namespace "kube-system"
     INFO[0005] ClusterRole "argocd-manager-role" created
     INFO[0005] ClusterRoleBinding "argocd-manager-role-binding" created
     INFO[0011] Created bearer token secret for ServiceAccount "argocd-manager"
     Cluster 'https://workload-cluster-1-ip-or-hostname' added
     

     argocd cluster add --kubeconfig "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_2_KUBECONFIG}" "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_2_CONTEXT}"
     

     Expected output:

     WARNING: This will create a service account `argocd-manager` on the cluster referenced by context `workload-cluster-2` with full cluster level privileges. Do you want to continue [y/N]? y
     INFO[0005] ServiceAccount "argocd-manager" created in namespace "kube-system"
     INFO[0005] ClusterRole "argocd-manager-role" created
     INFO[0005] ClusterRoleBinding "argocd-manager-role-binding" created
     INFO[0011] Created bearer token secret for ServiceAccount "argocd-manager"
     Cluster 'https://workload-cluster-2-ip-or-hostname' added
     

   • Alternatively, you can register clusters declaratively as Kubernetes secrets. Modify the following command for your environment and apply it. For details, see the Argo CD documentation.

     WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_IP="https://workload-cluster-1-IP" ARGOCD_BEARER_TOKEN="authentication-token" ARGOCD_CA_B64="base64 encoded certificate" ; kubectl apply -f - <<EOF
     apiVersion: v1
     kind: Secret
     metadata:
       name: workload-cluster-1-secret
       labels:
         argocd.argoproj.io/secret-type: cluster
     type: Opaque
     stringData:
       name: workload-cluster-1
       server: "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_IP}"
       config: |
         {
           "bearerToken": "${ARGOCD_BEARER_TOKEN}",
           "tlsClientConfig": {
             "insecure": false,
             "caData": "${ARGOCD_CA_B64}"
           }
         }
     EOF
     

     WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_2_IP="https://workload-cluster-2-IP" ARGOCD_BEARER_TOKEN="authentication-token" ARGOCD_CA_B64="base64 encoded certificate" ; kubectl apply -f - <<EOF
     apiVersion: v1
     kind: Secret
     metadata:
       name: workload-cluster-2-secret
       labels:
         argocd.argoproj.io/secret-type: cluster
     type: Opaque
     stringData:
       name: workload-cluster-2
       server: "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_2_IP}"
       config: |
         {
           "bearerToken": "${ARGOCD_BEARER_TOKEN}",
           "tlsClientConfig": {
             "insecure": false,
             "caData": "${ARGOCD_CA_B64}"
           }
         }
     EOF
     

2. Make sure that the cluster is registered in Argo CD by running the following command:

   argocd cluster list
   

   The output should be similar to:

   SERVER                                      NAME                VERSION  STATUS   MESSAGE                                                  PROJECT
   https://kubernetes.default.svc              in-cluster                   Unknown  Cluster has no applications and is not being monitored.
   https://workload-cluster-1-ip-or-hostname   workload-cluster-1           Unknown  Cluster has no applications and is not being monitored.
   https://workload-cluster-2-ip-or-hostname   workload-cluster-2           Unknown  Cluster has no applications and is not being monitored.
   

Prepare Git repository

1. Create an empty repository called calisti-gitops on GitHub (or another provider that Argo CD supports) and initialize it with a README.md file so that you can clone the repository. Because Service Mesh Manager credentials will be stored in this repository, make it a private repository.

   GITHUB_ID="github-id"
   GITHUB_REPOSITORY_NAME="calisti-gitops"
   

2. Obtain a personal access token to the repository (on GitHub, see Creating a personal access token), that has the following permissions:

   • admin:org_hook
   • admin:repo_hook
   • read:org
   • read:public_key
   • repo

3. Log in with your personal access token with git.

   export GH_TOKEN="github-personal-access-token" # Note: this environment variable needs to be exported so the `git` binary is going to use it automatically for authentication.
   

4. Clone the repository into your local workspace, for example:

   git clone "https://${GITHUB_ID}:${GH_TOKEN}@github.com/${GITHUB_ID}/${GITHUB_REPOSITORY_NAME}.git"
   

   Expected output:

   Cloning into 'calisti-gitops'...
   remote: Enumerating objects: 144, done.
   remote: Counting objects: 100% (144/144), done.
   remote: Compressing objects: 100% (93/93), done.
   remote: Total 144 (delta 53), reused 135 (delta 47), pack-reused 0
   Receiving objects: 100% (144/144), 320.08 KiB | 746.00 KiB/s, done.
   Resolving deltas: 100% (53/53), done.
   

5. Add the repository to Argo CD by running the following command. Alternatively, you can add it on Argo CD Web UI.

   argocd repo add "https://github.com/${GITHUB_ID}/${GITHUB_REPOSITORY_NAME}.git" --name "${GITHUB_REPOSITORY_NAME}" --username "${GITHUB_ID}" --password "${GH_TOKEN}"
   

   Expected output:

   Repository 'https://github.com/github-id/calisti-gitops.git' added
   

6. Verify that the repository is connected by running:

   argocd repo list
   

   In the output, Status should be Successful:

   TYPE  NAME            REPO                                             INSECURE  OCI    LFS    CREDS  STATUS      MESSAGE  PROJECT
   git   calisti-gitops  https://github.com/github-id/calisti-gitops.git  false     false  false  true   Successful
   

7. Change into the directory of the cloned repository (for example, calisti-gitops) and create the following directories.

   cd "${GITHUB_REPOSITORY_NAME}"
   

   mkdir -p apps/smm-controlplane apps/smm-operator apps/demo-app charts manifests/smm-controlplane/base manifests/smm-controlplane/overlays/workload-cluster-1 manifests/smm-controlplane/overlays/workload-cluster-2 manifests/demo-app/base manifests/demo-app/overlays/workload-cluster-1 manifests/demo-app/overlays/workload-cluster-2
   

   The final structure of the repository will look like this:

   .
   ├── README.md
   ├── apps
   │   ├── smm-controlplane
   │   │   └── app-set.yaml
   │   ├── smm-operator
   │   │   └── app-set.yaml
   │   └── demo-app
   │       └── app-set.yaml
   ├── charts
   │   └── smm-operator
   │       ├── Chart.yaml
   │       └── ...
   ├── export-secrets.sh
   └── manifests
      ├── smm-controlplane
      │   ├── base
      │   │   ├── control-plane.yaml
      │   │   ├── cert-manager-namespace.yaml
      │   │   ├── istio-system-namespace.yaml
      │   │   ├── istio-cp-v115x.yaml
      │   │   └── kustomization.yaml
      │   └── overlays
      │       ├── workload-cluster-1
      │       │   ├── control-plane.yaml
      │       │   ├── istio-cp-v115x.yaml
      │       │   └── kustomization.yaml
      │       └── workload-cluster-2
      │           ├── control-plane.yaml
      │           ├── istio-cp-v115x.yaml
      │           └── kustomization.yaml
      └── demo-app
          ├── base
          │   ├── demo-app-namespace.yaml
          │   ├── demo-app.yaml
          │   └── kustomization.yaml
          └── overlays
              ├── workload-cluster-1
              │   ├── demo-app.yaml
              │   └── kustomization.yaml
              └── workload-cluster-2
                  ├── demo-app.yaml
                  └── kustomization.yaml
   

   • The apps folder contains the Argo CD Application of the smm-operator, the smm-controlplane, and the demo-app.
   • The charts folder contains the Helm chart of the smm-operator.
   • The manifests/demo-app folder contains the manifest files of the demo application that represents your business application.
   • The manifests/smm-controlplane folder contains the manifest files of the SMM ControlPlane.

Prepare the helm charts

1. You need an active Service Mesh Manager registration to download the Service Mesh Manager charts and images. You can sign up for free, or obtain Enterprise credentials on the official Cisco Service Mesh Manager page. After registration, you can obtain your username and password from the Download Center. Set them as environment variables.

   CALISTI_USERNAME="<your-calisti-username>"
   

   CALISTI_PASSWORD="<your-calisti-password>"
   

2. Download the smm-operator chart from registry.eticloud.io into the charts directory of your Service Mesh Manager GitOps repository and extract it. Run the following commands:

   export HELM_EXPERIMENTAL_OCI=1 # Needed prior to Helm version 3.8.0
   
   echo "${CALISTI_PASSWORD}" | helm registry login registry.eticloud.io -u "${CALISTI_USERNAME}" --password-stdin
   

   Expected output:

   Login Succeeded
   

   helm pull oci://registry.eticloud.io/smm-charts/smm-operator --destination ./charts/ --untar --version 1.12.0
   

   Expected output:

   Pulled: registry.eticloud.io/smm-charts/smm-operator:latest-stable-version
   Digest: sha256:someshadigest
   

Deploy Service Mesh Manager

Deploy the smm-operator application set

Complete the following steps to deploy the smm-operator chart using Argo CD.

1. Create the smm-operator’s Argo CD ApplicationSet CR. Argo CD ApplicationSet is perfect for deploying the same application on to different clusters. You can use list generators with cluster data in the ApplicationSet.

   Before running the following command, edit it if needed:

   • If you are not using a GitHub repository, set the repoURL field to your repository.

   • For multi-cluster setups, the Kubernetes API server address of one cluster must be reachable from other clusters. The API server addresses are private for certain clusters (for example, OpenShift) and not reachable by default from other clusters. In such case, use the PUBLIC_API_SERVER_ENDPOINT_ADDRESS variable to provide an address that’s reachable from the other clusters. This can be a public address, or one that’s routable from the other clusters.

   PUBLIC_API_SERVER_ENDPOINT_ADDRESS_1="" PUBLIC_API_SERVER_ENDPOINT_ADDRESS_2="" ;
   cat > "apps/smm-operator/app-set.yaml" <<EOF
   # apps/smm-operator/app-set.yaml
   apiVersion: argoproj.io/v1alpha1
   kind: ApplicationSet
   metadata:
     name: smm-operator-appset
     namespace: argocd
   spec:
     generators:
     - list:
         elements:
         - cluster: "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_CONTEXT}"
           apiServerEndpointAddress: "${PUBLIC_API_SERVER_ENDPOINT_ADDRESS_1}"
         - cluster: "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_2_CONTEXT}"
           apiServerEndpointAddress: "${PUBLIC_API_SERVER_ENDPOINT_ADDRESS_2}"
     template:
       metadata: 
         name: 'smm-operator-{{cluster}}'
         namespace: argocd
       spec:
         project: default
         source:
           repoURL: https://github.com/${GITHUB_ID}/${GITHUB_REPOSITORY_NAME}.git
           targetRevision: HEAD
           path: charts/smm-operator
           helm:
             parameters:
             - name: "global.ecr.enabled"
               value: 'false'
             - name: "global.basicAuth.username"
               value: "${CALISTI_USERNAME}"
             - name: "global.basicAuth.password"
               value: "${CALISTI_PASSWORD}"
             - name: "apiServerEndpointAddress"
               value: '{{apiServerEndpointAddress}}'
         destination:
           namespace: smm-registry-access
           name: '{{cluster}}'
         ignoreDifferences:
         - kind: ValidatingWebhookConfiguration
           group: admissionregistration.k8s.io
           jsonPointers:
           - /webhooks
         syncPolicy:
           automated:
             prune: true
             selfHeal: true
           retry:
             limit: 5
             backoff:
               duration: 5s
               maxDuration: 3m0s
               factor: 2
           syncOptions:
             - Validate=false
             - PruneLast=true
             - CreateNamespace=true
             - Replace=true
   EOF
   

2. Commit and push the calisti-gitops repository.

   git add apps/smm-operator charts/smm-operator
   

   git commit -m "add smm-operator app"
   

   Show expected output ↕

   [main d4f6809] add smm-operator app
   35 files changed, 80310 insertions(+)
   create mode 100644 apps/smm-operator/app-set.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/.helmignore
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/Chart.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/README.md
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/crds/clusterfeature-crd.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/crds/clusters-crd.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/crds/crd-alertmanagerconfigs.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/crds/crd-alertmanagers.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/crds/crd-podmonitors.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/crds/crd-probes.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/crds/crd-prometheuses.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/crds/crd-prometheusrules.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/crds/crd-servicemonitors.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/crds/crd-thanosrulers.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/crds/crds.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/crds/health.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/crds/istio-operator-v1-crds.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/crds/istio-operator-v2-crds.gen.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/crds/istiooperator-crd.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/crds/koperator-crds.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/crds/metadata-crd.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/crds/resourcesyncrules-crd.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/crds/sre.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/templates/_helpers.tpl
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/templates/authproxy-rbac.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/templates/authproxy-service.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/templates/ecr.deployment.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/templates/ecr.secret.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/templates/ecr.service-account.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/templates/namespace.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/templates/operator-psp-basic.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/templates/operator-rbac.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/templates/operator-service.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/templates/operator-statefulset.yaml
   create mode 100644 charts/smm-operator/values.yaml
   

   git push
   

3. Apply the Application manifests.

   kubectl apply -f "apps/smm-operator/app-set.yaml"
   

4. Verify that the applications have been added to Argo CD and are healthy.

   argocd app list
   

   Expected output:

   NAME                                    CLUSTER             NAMESPACE            PROJECT  STATUS  HEALTH   SYNCPOLICY  CONDITIONS  REPO                                                         PATH                 TARGET
   argocd/smm-operator-workload-cluster-1  workload-cluster-1  smm-registry-access  default  Synced  Healthy  Auto-Prune  <none>      https://github.com/<github-user>/calisti-gitops-multi-cluster.git  charts/smm-operator  HEAD
   argocd/smm-operator-workload-cluster-2  workload-cluster-2  smm-registry-access  default  Synced  Healthy  Auto-Prune  <none>      https://github.com/<github-user>/calisti-gitops-multi-cluster.git  charts/smm-operator  HEAD
   

5. Check the smm-operator application on the Argo CD Web UI.

   

Deploy the smm-controlplane application

The following steps show you how to deploy the smm-controlplane application as an active-passive deployment. To create and active-active deployment, follow the same steps, there is an optional step that changes the active-passive deployment to active-active. For details, see Deployment models.

Deploy the smm-controlplane application using Kustomize: the active on workload-cluster-1 and the passive on workload-cluster-2. The active cluster receives every component, while the passive cluster only a few required components. This part of the repository will look like this:

└── manifests
    ├── smm-controlplane
    │   ├── base
    │   │   ├── control-plane.yaml
    │   │   ├── cert-manager-namespace.yaml
    │   │   ├── istio-system-namespace.yaml
    │   │   ├── istio-cp-v115x.yaml
    │   │   └── kustomization.yaml
    │   └── overlays
    │       ├── workload-cluster-1
    │       │   ├── control-plane.yaml
    │       │   ├── istio-cp-v115x.yaml
    │       │   └── kustomization.yaml
    │       └── workload-cluster-2
    │           ├── control-plane.yaml
    │           ├── istio-cp-v115x.yaml
    │           └── kustomization.yaml

1. Create the following namespaces files.

   cat > manifests/smm-controlplane/base/cert-manager-namespace.yaml <<EOF
   apiVersion: v1
   kind: Namespace
   metadata:
     annotations:
       argocd.argoproj.io/sync-wave: "1"
     name: cert-manager
   EOF
   

   cat > manifests/smm-controlplane/base/istio-system-namespace.yaml << EOF
   apiVersion: v1
   kind: Namespace
   metadata:
     annotations:
       argocd.argoproj.io/sync-wave: "2"
     name: istio-system
   EOF
   

2. Create the IstioControlPlane file.

   cat > manifests/smm-controlplane/base/istio-cp-v115x.yaml << EOF
   apiVersion: servicemesh.cisco.com/v1alpha1
   kind: IstioControlPlane
   metadata:
     annotations:
       argocd.argoproj.io/sync-wave: "5"
     name: cp-v115x
     namespace: istio-system
   spec:
     containerImageConfiguration:
       imagePullPolicy: Always
       imagePullSecrets:
       - name: smm-pull-secret
     distribution: cisco
     istiod:
       deployment:
         env:
         - name: ISTIO_MULTIROOT_MESH
           value: "true"
         image: registry.eticloud.io/smm/istio-pilot:v1.15.3-bzc.0
     k8sResourceOverlays:
     - groupVersionKind:
         group: apps
         kind: Deployment
         version: v1
       objectKey:
         name: istiod-cp-v115x
         namespace: istio-system
       patches:
       - path: /spec/template/spec/containers/0/args/-
         type: replace
         value: --tls-cipher-suites=TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384,TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256,TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256,TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384,TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256
     meshConfig:
       defaultConfig:
         envoyAccessLogService:
           address: smm-als.smm-system.svc.cluster.local:50600
           tcpKeepalive:
             interval: 10s
             probes: 3
             time: 10s
           tlsSettings:
             mode: ISTIO_MUTUAL
         holdApplicationUntilProxyStarts: true
         proxyMetadata:
           ISTIO_META_ALS_ENABLED: "true"
           PROXY_CONFIG_XDS_AGENT: "true"
         tracing:
           tlsSettings:
             mode: ISTIO_MUTUAL
           zipkin:
             address: smm-zipkin.smm-system.svc.cluster.local:59411
       enableEnvoyAccessLogService: true
       enableTracing: true
     meshExpansion:
       enabled: true
       gateway:
         deployment:
           podMetadata:
             labels:
               app: istio-meshexpansion-gateway
               istio: meshexpansiongateway
         service:
           ports:
           - name: tcp-smm-als-tls
             port: 50600
             protocol: TCP
             targetPort: 50600
           - name: tcp-smm-zipkin-tls
             port: 59411
             protocol: TCP
             targetPort: 59411
     meshID: mesh1
     mode: ACTIVE
     networkName: network1
     proxy:
       image: registry.eticloud.io/smm/istio-proxyv2:v1.15.3-bzc.0
     proxyInit:
       cni:
         daemonset:
           image: registry.eticloud.io/smm/istio-install-cni:v1.15.3-bzc.0
       image: registry.eticloud.io/smm/istio-proxyv2:v1.15.3-bzc.0
     sidecarInjector:
       deployment:
         image: registry.eticloud.io/smm/istio-sidecar-injector:v1.15.3-bzc.0
     version: 1.15.3
   EOF
   

3. Create the kustomization.yaml file.

   cat > manifests/smm-controlplane/base/kustomization.yaml <<EOF
   apiVersion: kustomize.config.k8s.io/v1beta1
   kind: Kustomization
   metadata:
     name: cluster-secrets
   
   
   resources:
   - cert-manager-namespace.yaml
   - istio-system-namespace.yaml
   - istio-cp-v115x.yaml
   - control-plane.yaml
   EOF
   

4. Create the manifests/smm-controlplane/base/control-plane.yaml file. You don’t need to set the CLUSTER-NAME here, you will set it with the overlays customization.

   cat > manifests/smm-controlplane/base/control-plane.yaml <<EOF
   apiVersion: smm.cisco.com/v1alpha1
   kind: ControlPlane
   metadata:
     annotations:
       argocd.argoproj.io/sync-wave: "10"
     name: smm
   spec:
     certManager:
       namespace: cert-manager
     clusterName: CLUSTER-NAME
     clusterRegistry:
       enabled: true
       namespace: cluster-registry
     log: {}
     meshManager:
       enabled: true
       istio:
         enabled: true
         istioCRRef:
           name: cp-v115x
           namespace: istio-system
         operators:
           namespace: smm-system
       namespace: smm-system
     nodeExporter:
       enabled: true
       namespace: smm-system
       psp:
         enabled: false
       rbac:
         enabled: true
     oneEye: {}
     registryAccess:
       enabled: true
       imagePullSecretsController: {}
       namespace: smm-registry-access
       pullSecrets:
       - name: smm-registry.eticloud.io-pull-secret
         namespace: smm-registry-access
     repositoryOverride:
       host: registry.eticloud.io
       prefix: smm
     role: active
     smm:
       als:
         enabled: true
         log: {}
       application:
         enabled: true
         log: {}
       auth:
         mode: impersonation
       certManager:
         enabled: true
       enabled: true
       federationGateway:
         enabled: true
         name: smm
         service:
           enabled: true
           name: smm-federation-gateway
           port: 80
       federationGatewayOperator:
         enabled: true
       impersonation:
         enabled: true
       istio:
         revision: cp-v115x.istio-system
       leo:
         enabled: true
         log: {}
       log: {}
       namespace: smm-system
       prometheus:
         enabled: true
         replicas: 1
       prometheusOperator: {}
       releaseName: smm
       role: active
       sdm:
         enabled: false
       sre:
         enabled: true
       useIstioResources: true
   EOF
   

5. Create the kustomization.yaml file for workload-cluster-1.

   cat > manifests/smm-controlplane/overlays/workload-cluster-1/kustomization.yaml <<EOF
   apiVersion: kustomize.config.k8s.io/v1beta1
   kind: Kustomization
   
   bases:
     - ../../base
   
   patchesStrategicMerge:
     - istio-cp-v115x.yaml
     - control-plane.yaml
   EOF
   

6. Set the clusterName by overriding some settings coming from the base configuration. Create the following files.

   cat > manifests/smm-controlplane/overlays/workload-cluster-1/control-plane.yaml <<EOF
   apiVersion: smm.cisco.com/v1alpha1
   kind: ControlPlane
   metadata:
     name: smm
   spec:
     clusterName: workload-cluster-1
     certManager:
       enabled: true
     smm:
       exposeDashboard:
         meshGateway:
           enabled: true
       auth:
         forceUnsecureCookies: true
         mode: anonymous
   EOF
   

   cat > manifests/smm-controlplane/overlays/workload-cluster-1/istio-cp-v115x.yaml <<EOF
   apiVersion: servicemesh.cisco.com/v1alpha1
   kind: IstioControlPlane
   metadata:
     annotations:
       argocd.argoproj.io/sync-wave: "5"
     name: cp-v115x
     namespace: istio-system
   spec:
     meshID: mesh1
     mode: ACTIVE
     networkName: network1
   EOF
   

7. Create the kustomization.yaml file for workload-cluster-2.

   cat > manifests/smm-controlplane/overlays/workload-cluster-2/kustomization.yaml <<EOF
   apiVersion: kustomize.config.k8s.io/v1beta1
   kind: Kustomization
   
   bases:
     - ../../base
   
   patchesStrategicMerge:
     - istio-cp-v115x.yaml
     - control-plane.yaml
   EOF
   

8. Create the following files for workload-cluster-2. This sets the clusterName, and also overrides some settings of the base configuration.

   cat > manifests/smm-controlplane/overlays/workload-cluster-2/control-plane.yaml <<EOF
   apiVersion: smm.cisco.com/v1alpha1
   kind: ControlPlane
   metadata:
     name: smm
   spec:
     clusterName: workload-cluster-2
     role: passive
     smm:
       als:
         enabled: true
         log: {}
       application:
         enabled: false
         log: {}
       auth:
         mode: impersonation
       certManager:
         enabled: false
       enabled: true
       federationGateway:
         enabled: false
         name: smm
         service:
           enabled: true
           name: smm-federation-gateway
           port: 80
       federationGatewayOperator:
         enabled: true
       grafana:
         enabled: false
       impersonation:
         enabled: true
       istio:
         revision: cp-v115x.istio-system
       kubestatemetrics:
         enabled: true
       leo:
         enabled: false
         log: {}
       log: {}
       namespace: smm-system
       prometheus:
         enabled: true
         replicas: 1
         retentionTime: 8h
       prometheusOperator: {}
       releaseName: smm
       role: passive
       sdm:
         enabled: false
       sre:
         enabled: false
       tracing:
         enabled: true
       useIstioResources: false
       web:
         enabled: false
   EOF
   

   cat > manifests/smm-controlplane/overlays/workload-cluster-2/istio-cp-v115x.yaml <<EOF
   apiVersion: servicemesh.cisco.com/v1alpha1
   kind: IstioControlPlane
   metadata:
     annotations:
       argocd.argoproj.io/sync-wave: "5"
     name: cp-v115x
     namespace: istio-system
   spec:
     meshID: mesh1
     mode: PASSIVE
     networkName: workload-cluster-2
   EOF
   

9. (Optional) If you want to change your active-passive deployment to active-active, complete this step. Otherwise, continue with the Commit deployment step. Run the following commands to modify the control planes of workload-cluster-2.

   cat > manifests/smm-controlplane/overlays/workload-cluster-2/control-plane.yaml <<EOF
   apiVersion: smm.cisco.com/v1alpha1
   kind: ControlPlane
   metadata:
     name: smm
   spec:
     clusterName: workload-cluster-2
     role: active
   EOF
   

   cat > manifests/smm-controlplane/overlays/workload-cluster-2/istio-cp-v115x.yaml <<EOF
   apiVersion: servicemesh.cisco.com/v1alpha1
   kind: IstioControlPlane
   metadata:
     annotations:
       argocd.argoproj.io/sync-wave: "5"
     name: cp-v115x
     namespace: istio-system
   spec:
     meshID: mesh1
     mode: ACTIVE
     networkName: network1
   EOF
   

10. Create the smm-controlplane’s Argo CD ApplicationSet CR.

    cat > apps/smm-controlplane/app-set.yaml <<EOF
    apiVersion: argoproj.io/v1alpha1
    kind: ApplicationSet
    metadata:
      name: smm-cp-appset
      namespace: argocd
    spec:
      generators:
      - list:
          elements:
          - cluster: "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_CONTEXT}"
            path: "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_CONTEXT}"
          - cluster: "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_2_CONTEXT}"
            path: "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_2_CONTEXT}"
      template:
        metadata: 
          name: 'smm-cp-{{cluster}}'
          namespace: argocd
        spec:
          project: default
          source:
            repoURL: https://github.com/${GITHUB_ID}/${GITHUB_REPOSITORY_NAME}.git
            targetRevision: HEAD
            path: manifests/smm-controlplane/overlays/{{path}}
          destination:
            name: '{{cluster}}'
          syncPolicy:
            automated:
              prune: true
              selfHeal: true
            retry:
              limit: 5
                backoff:
                  duration: 5s
                  maxDuration: 3m0s
                  factor: 2
            syncOptions:
              - Validate=false
              - PruneLast=true
              - CreateNamespace=true
              - Replace=true
    EOF
    

11. Commit and push the calisti-gitops repository.

    git add apps/smm-controlplane manifests
    

    git commit -m "add smm-controlplane app"
    

    git push
    

12. Apply the Application manifests.

    kubectl apply -f "apps/smm-controlplane/app-set.yaml"
    

13. Verify that the applications have been added to Argo CD and are healthy.

    argocd app list
    

14. To create trust between workload-cluster-1 and workload-cluster-2, you must exchange the Secret CRs of the clusters. The cluster registry controller helps to form a group of Kubernetes clusters and synchronize any resources across those clusters arbitrarily.

    Create the following bash script and run it on workload-cluster-1.

    cat > export-secrets.sh <<EOF
    set -e
    
    kubectl --context workload-cluster-1 get cluster workload-cluster-1 -o yaml | kubectl --context workload-cluster-2 apply -f -
    kubectl --context workload-cluster-1 -n cluster-registry get secrets workload-cluster-1 -o yaml | kubectl --context workload-cluster-2 apply -f -
    
    kubectl --context workload-cluster-2 get cluster workload-cluster-2 -o yaml | kubectl --context workload-cluster-1 apply -f -
    kubectl --context workload-cluster-2 -n cluster-registry get secrets workload-cluster-2 -o yaml | kubectl --context workload-cluster-1 apply -f -
    
    echo "Exporting cluster and secrets CRs successfully."
    EOF
    

    chmod +x export-secrets.sh
    ./export-secrets.sh
    

    Expected output:

    cluster.clusterregistry.k8s.cisco.com/workload-cluster-1 created
    secret/workload-cluster-1 created
    cluster.clusterregistry.k8s.cisco.com/workload-cluster-2 created
    secret/workload-cluster-2 created
    Exporting cluster and secrets CRs successfully.
    

15. Check that all pods are healthy and running in the smm-system namespace on workload-cluster-1 and workload-cluster-2. Note that it takes some time while the ControlPlane operator reconciles the resources.

    For workload-cluster-1:

    kubectl get pods -n smm-system --kubeconfig "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_KUBECONFIG}" --context "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_CONTEXT}"
    

    Expected output:

    NAME                                               READY   STATUS    RESTARTS        AGE
    istio-operator-v115x-7d77fc549f-fxmtd              2/2     Running   0               8m15s
    mesh-manager-0                                     2/2     Running   0          19m
    prometheus-node-exporter-9xnmj                     1/1     Running   0          17m
    prometheus-node-exporter-bf7g5                     1/1     Running   0          17m
    prometheus-node-exporter-cl69q                     1/1     Running   0          17m
    prometheus-smm-prometheus-0                        4/4     Running   0          18m
    smm-7f4d5d4fff-4dlcp                               2/2     Running   0          18m
    smm-7f4d5d4fff-59k7g                               2/2     Running   0          18m
    smm-als-7cc4bfb998-wjsr6                           2/2     Running   0          18m
    smm-authentication-569484f748-fj5zk                2/2     Running   0          18m
    smm-federation-gateway-6964fb956f-pb5pv            2/2     Running   0          18m
    smm-federation-gateway-operator-6664774695-9tmzj   2/2     Running   0          18m
    smm-grafana-59c54f67f4-9snc5                       3/3     Running   0          18m
    smm-health-75bf4f49c5-z9tqg                        2/2     Running   0          18m
    smm-health-api-7767d4f46-744wn                     2/2     Running   0          18m
    smm-ingressgateway-6ffdfc6d79-jttjz                1/1     Running   0          11m
    smm-ingressgateway-external-8c9bb9445-kjt8h        1/1     Running   0          11m
    smm-kubestatemetrics-86c6f96789-lp576              2/2     Running   0          18m
    smm-leo-67cd7d49b5-gmcvf                           2/2     Running   0          18m
    smm-prometheus-operator-ffbfb8b67-fwj6g            3/3     Running   0          18m
    smm-sre-alert-exporter-6654968479-fthk6            2/2     Running   0          18m
    smm-sre-api-86c9fb7cd7-mq7cm                       2/2     Running   0          18m
    smm-sre-controller-6889685f9-hxxh5                 2/2     Running   0          18m
    smm-tracing-5886d59dd-v8nb8                        2/2     Running   0          18m
    smm-vm-integration-5b89c4f7c9-wz4bt                2/2     Running   0          18m
    smm-web-d5b49c7f6-jgz7b                            3/3     Running   0          18m
    

    For workload-cluster-2:

    kubectl get pods -n smm-system --kubeconfig "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_2_KUBECONFIG}" --context "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_2_CONTEXT}"
    

    Expected output:

    NAME                                       READY   STATUS    RESTARTS        AGE
    istio-operator-v115x-7d77fc549f-s5wnz      2/2     Running   0               9m5s
    mesh-manager-0                            2/2     Running   0             21m
    prometheus-node-exporter-fzdn4            1/1     Running   0             5m18s
    prometheus-node-exporter-rkbcl            1/1     Running   0             5m18s
    prometheus-node-exporter-x2mwp            1/1     Running   0             5m18s
    prometheus-smm-prometheus-0               3/3     Running   0             5m20s
    smm-ingressgateway-5db7859d45-6d6ns       1/1     Running   0             12m
    smm-kubestatemetrics-86c6f96789-j64q2     2/2     Running   0             19m
    smm-prometheus-operator-ffbfb8b67-zwqn2   3/3     Running   1 (11m ago)   19m
    

16. Check the applications on the Argo CD Web UI.

    

At this point, you have successfully installed smm-operator and workload-cluster-1 and workload-cluster-2. You can open the Service Mesh Manager dashboard to check them, or deploy an application.

Deploy an application

If you want to deploy want to deploy an application into the service mesh, complete the following steps. The examples use the Service Mesh Manager demo application.

The file structure for the demo application looks like this:

.
├── README.md
├── apps
│   ├── demo-app
│   │   └── app-set.yaml
│   └── ...
...manifests
   └── demo-app
        ├── base
        │   ├── demo-app-namespace.yaml
        │   ├── demo-app.yaml
        │   └── kustomization.yaml
        └── overlays
            ├── workload-cluster-1
            │   ├── demo-app.yaml
            │   └── kustomization.yaml
            └── workload-cluster-2
                ├── demo-app.yaml
                └── kustomization.yaml
...

1. Create the application manifest files.

   cat > manifests/demo-app/base/kustomization.yaml <<EOF
   apiVersion: kustomize.config.k8s.io/v1beta1
   kind: Kustomization
   metadata:
     name: demo-app
   
   resources:
   - demo-app-namespace.yaml
   - demo-app.yaml
   EOF
   

   cat > manifests/demo-app/base/demo-app-namespace.yaml <<EOF
   apiVersion: v1
   kind: Namespace
   metadata:
     labels:
       app.kubernetes.io/instance: smm-demo
       app.kubernetes.io/name: smm-demo
       app.kubernetes.io/part-of: smm-demo
       app.kubernetes.io/version: 0.1.4
       istio.io/rev: cp-v115x.istio-system
     name: smm-demo
   EOF
   

   cat > manifests/demo-app/base/demo-app.yaml <<EOF
   apiVersion: smm.cisco.com/v1alpha1
   kind: DemoApplication
   metadata:
     name: smm-demo
     namespace: smm-demo
   spec:
     autoscaling:
       enabled: true
     controlPlaneRef:
       name: smm
   EOF
   

   cat > manifests/demo-app/overlays/workload-cluster-1/kustomization.yaml <<EOF
   apiVersion: kustomize.config.k8s.io/v1beta1
   kind: Kustomization
   
   bases:
     - ../../base
   
   patchesStrategicMerge:
     - demo-app.yaml
   EOF
   

   cat > manifests/demo-app/overlays/workload-cluster-1/demo-app.yaml <<EOF
   apiVersion: smm.cisco.com/v1alpha1
   kind: DemoApplication
   metadata:
     name: smm-demo
     namespace: smm-demo
   spec:
     autoscaling:
       enabled: true
     controlPlaneRef:
       name: smm
     deployIstioResources: true
     deploySLOResources: true
     enabled: true
     enabledComponents:
     - frontpage
     - catalog
     - bookings
     - postgresql
     istio:
       revision: cp-v115x.istio-system
     load:
       enabled: true
       maxRPS: 30
       minRPS: 10
       swingPeriod: 1380000000000
     replicas: 1
     resources:
       limits:
         cpu: "2"
         memory: 192Mi
       requests:
         cpu: 40m
         memory: 64Mi
   EOF
   

   cat > manifests/demo-app/overlays/workload-cluster-2/kustomization.yaml <<EOF
   apiVersion: kustomize.config.k8s.io/v1beta1
   kind: Kustomization
   
   bases:
     - ../../base
   
   patchesStrategicMerge:
     - demo-app.yaml
   EOF
   

   cat > manifests/demo-app/overlays/workload-cluster-2/demo-app.yaml <<EOF
   apiVersion: smm.cisco.com/v1alpha1
   kind: DemoApplication
   metadata:
     name: smm-demo
     namespace: smm-demo
   spec:
     autoscaling:
       enabled: true
     controlPlaneRef:
       name: smm
     deployIstioResources: false
     deploySLOResources: false
     enabled: true
     enabledComponents:
     - movies
     - payments
     - notifications
     - analytics
     - database
     - mysql
     istio:
       revision: cp-v115x.istio-system
     replicas: 1
     resources:
       limits:
         cpu: "2"
         memory: 192Mi
       requests:
         cpu: 40m
         memory: 64Mi
   EOF
   

2. Create the Demo application ApplicationSet.

   cat > apps/demo-app/app-set.yaml <<EOF
   apiVersion: argoproj.io/v1alpha1
   kind: ApplicationSet
   metadata:
     name: demo-app-appset
     namespace: argocd
   spec:
     generators:
     - list:
         elements:
         - cluster: "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_CONTEXT}"
           path: "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_CONTEXT}"
         - cluster: "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_2_CONTEXT}"
           path: "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_2_CONTEXT}"
     template:
       metadata: 
         name: 'demo-app-{{cluster}}'
         namespace: argocd
       spec:
         project: default
         source:
           repoURL: https://github.com/${GITHUB_ID}/${GITHUB_REPOSITORY_NAME}.git
           targetRevision: HEAD
           path: manifests/demo-app/overlays/{{path}}
         destination:
           name: '{{cluster}}'
         syncPolicy:
           automated:
             prune: true
             selfHeal: true
           retry:
             limit: 5
             backoff:
               duration: 5s
               maxDuration: 3m0s
               factor: 2
           syncOptions:
             - Validate=false
             - PruneLast=true
             - CreateNamespace=true
             - Replace=true
   EOF
   

3. Commit and push the calisti-gitops repository.

   git add apps/demo-app manifests
   git commit -m "add demo application"
   git push origin
   

4. Deploy the demo application on the clusters.

   kubectl apply -f apps/demo-app/app-set.yaml
   

5. Wait until all the pods in the smm-demo namespace are up and running.

   kubectl get pods -n smm-demo --kubeconfig "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_KUBECONFIG}" --context "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_CONTEXT}"
   

   Expected output:

   NAME                           READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
   bombardier-5f59948978-zx99c    2/2     Running   0          3m21s
   bookings-v1-68dd865855-fdcxk   2/2     Running   0          3m21s
   catalog-v1-6d564bbcb8-qmhbx    2/2     Running   0          3m21s
   frontpage-v1-b4686759b-fhfmv   2/2     Running   0          3m21s
   postgresql-7cf55cd596-grs46    2/2     Running   0          3m21s
   

   kubectl get pods -n smm-demo --kubeconfig "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_2_KUBECONFIG}" --context "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_2_CONTEXT}"
   

   Expected output:

   NAME                                READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
   analytics-v1-799d668f84-p4nkk       2/2     Running   0          3m58s
   database-v1-6896cd4b59-9xxgg        2/2     Running   0          3m58s
   movies-v1-9594fff5f-8hv9l           2/2     Running   0          3m58s
   movies-v2-5559c5567c-2279n          2/2     Running   0          3m58s
   movies-v3-649b99d977-nkdxc          2/2     Running   0          3m58s
   mysql-669466cc8d-bs4s9              2/2     Running   0          3m58s
   notifications-v1-79bc79c89b-4bbss   2/2     Running   0          3m58s
   payments-v1-547884bfdf-dg2dm        2/2     Running   0          3m58s
   

6. Check the applications on the Argo CD web UI.

   

7. Open the Service Mesh Manager web interface, select MENU > TOPOLOGY, then select the smm-demo namespace.

   

Access the Service Mesh Manager dashboard

1. You can access the Service Mesh Manager dashboard via the smm-ingressgateway-external LoadBalancer external-ip-or-hostname address. Run the following command to retrieve the IP address:

   kubectl get services -n smm-system smm-ingressgateway-external --kubeconfig "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_KUBECONFIG}" --context "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_CONTEXT}"
   

   Expected output:

   NAME                          TYPE           CLUSTER-IP   EXTERNAL-IP                PORT(S)        AGE
   smm-ingressgateway-external   LoadBalancer   10.0.0.199   external-ip-or-hostname    80:32505/TCP   2m28s
   

2. Open the Service Mesh Manager dashboard using one of the following methods:

   • Open the http://<external-ip-or-hostname> URL in your browser.

   • Run the following command to open the dashboard with your default browser:

     # Exactly one of hostname or IP will be available and used for the remote URL.
     open http://$(kubectl get services -n smm-system smm-ingressgateway-external -o jsonpath='{.status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].hostname}{.status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].ip}' --kubeconfig "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_KUBECONFIG}" --context "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_CONTEXT}")
     

   • If you have installed the Service Mesh Manager CLI on your machine, run the following command to open the Service Mesh Manager Dashboard in the default browser.

     smm dashboard --kubeconfig "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_KUBECONFIG}" --context "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_CONTEXT}"
     

     Expected output:

     ✓ validate-kubeconfig ❯ checking cluster reachability...
     ✓ opening Service Mesh Manager at http://127.0.0.1:50500
     

3. Check the deployments on the dashboard, for example, on the MENU > Overview, MENU > MESH, and MENU > TOPOLOGY pages.

2.3.8 - OpenShift integration

Red Hat OpenShift provides scalable and reliable solutions to monitor microservices and offers full-fledged container security. With a Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS (ROSA) setup, you can seamlessly install Calisti on Red Hat OpenShift clusters. Calisti avoids vendor lock-in so that you can mix-n-match your cluster cloud providers and transition or continue using mixed multi-clusters (GKE, EKS, AKS, OpenShift).

Supported OpenShift Versions

Prerequisites

• Prepare a ROSA cluster.
• Install the oc command-line tool.
• Check the supported ROSA versions before installing Calisti.

Install Calisti on OpenShift

• To install Calisti using the CLI, run the Calisti installation command with --platform=openshift flag:

  smm install --platform=openshift
  

• To install Calisti as a Kubernetes operator, set the spec.platform field to openshift in the Calisti control plane manifest:

  spec:
    platform: openshift
  

Istio Container Network Interface and NetworkAttachmentDefinition

Calisti performs the following two steps to have istio-cni work well in OpenShift.

Install Istio CNI pods

The Container Network Interface (CNI) on OpenShift is managed by Multus and istio-cni is not enabled in OpenShift by default. Calisti can invoke istio-cni with ease. During the Calisti installation process, the following CNI configuration is automatically patched to the existing Istio control plane manifest:

cni:
  binDir: /var/lib/cni/bin
  chained: false
  confDir: /etc/cni/multus/net.d
  confFileName: istio-cni.conf
  daemonset:
  image: registry.eticloud.io/smm/istio-install-cni:v1.15.3-bzc.0
    securityContext:
      privileged: true
  enabled: true

The meaning of the fields is:

• binDir is the directory path to store CNI binaries.
• chained determines whether to install CNI plugin as chained or standalone.
• confDir is the directory path on the host where CNI network plugins are installed.
• confFileName specifies the name of the CNI configuration file.

With the CNI configuration pathched, the istio-operator invokes istio-cni on OpenShift. After the Istio control plane is updated, the istio-operator reconciles and deploys istio-cni DaemonSets which create related pods on every node in the cluster.

For more details on how istio-cni works, see the Istio CNI plugin documentation.

Install NetworkAttachmentDefinition objects

The network Redirect method via the istio-cni is also required for Openshift support. The NetworkAttachmentDefinition custom resource objects are required for the istio-cni to be invoked. Calisti automatically deploys NetworkAttachmentDefinition into the data plane namespaces with Istio sidecar enabled (for example, smm-system, supertubes-system).

For details, see the Istio documentation.

SecurityContextConstraints

The Calisti container security configurations align with OpenShift’s pod and container security standards.

Note: Calisti components that are installed on Openshift adhere to the SecurityContextConstraints set forth by the Red Hat SCC standards.

UID/PID 1337 for Istio sidecars

The Istio network redirect layer assumes the istio-proxy is running in the pod with UID/GID 1337. This is not configurable in Istio. The Istio injection templates for sidecars and gateways enable the istio-proxy containers' securityContext field with:

runAsGroup: 1337
runAsNonRoot: true
runAsUser: 1337

The default OpenShift SecurityContextConstraints reject the UID/GID of 1337 as it’s not in the [1001190000, 1001199999] range.

To allow pods with istio-proxy sidecars/gateways to come up, the service account for the pod needs to be added to the nonroot-v2 policy. One or more of the following SecurityContextConstraints approaches need to be implemented to attach to nonroot-v2 SCC policy.

RBAC bindings to SecurityContextConstraints

The Istio control-plane component service accounts require RBAC bindings to SecurityContextConstraints (SCC). Here is the list of SCC bindings Calisti deploys for Istio:

• istiod and istio meshgateway: nonroot-v2 SCC binding for UID/GID 1337
• istio-cni-node pods: privileged SCC binding for NET_ADMIN to allow iptables setup and hostnetwork SCC binding for access to the node’s network namespaces (netns)

Calisti deploys Prometheus node-exporter. To have node-exporters functioning properly, Calisti also deploys the following SCC bindings for node-exporters:

• node-exporter SCC binding for privileged accesses to the node resources
• hostwork SCC binding to allow node-exporter having configuration hostNetwork=true

For more details regarding SCC policies, see Important OpenShift changes to Pod Security Standards.

Calisti Prometheus OpenShift integration

Calisti leverages its own Prometheus chart to provide the functionality to monitor all kinds of different metrics. Given that the memory requirement varies in the OpenShift environment, the memory limits of k8sproxy container deployed by the Prometheus operator are increased when installing Calisti on OpenShift.

resources:
      limits:
        cpu: 100m
        memory: 1000Mi
      requests:
        cpu: 50m
        memory: 500Mi

2.3.9 - Install FIPS images

To install the FIPS-compliant build of Service Mesh Manager, complete the following steps.

1. Download the following YAML file. It contains the list of FIPS-compliant images the installer should use.

2. Follow any of the regular installation guides (for example, Create single cluster mesh or Create multi-cluster mesh), but use the following customized YAML file with the initial installation command to use the FIPS-compliant versions of the images. For example, for a non-interactive single-cluster installation, run:

   smm install  -a --istio-cr-file istio-fips.yaml
   

2.3.10 - Customize installation

The installation of Service Mesh Manager can be customized through its CRs. This page covers the most frequently used configuration options for Service Mesh Manager.

Configure container images

Service Mesh Manager images

The ControlPlane CR can be configured to set the following container images:

The IstioOperator CR can be configured to set the istio-operator container image:

If you installed Service Mesh Manager in operator mode, the changes in these CRs should be reflected automatically on your cluster.

If you don’t have the Service Mesh Manager operator installed, run the following command so that the changes take effect:

smm operator reconcile

Istio images

The IstioControlPlane CR can be configured to set the following Istio container images:

These changes should be automatically reflected on your cluster after editing the CR.

List of configurable images

Based on the CRs above, you can configure the following components in Service Mesh Manager:

(Updated as of May 5, 2023)

If there is a Service Mesh Manager related image that you’d like to change and that image is not listed here, contact us!

Customize IstioControlPlane CR

You can customize the ControlPlane CR to change the configuration of the IstioControlPlane CR. Set your custom values under the spec.meshManager.istio.istioCROverrides of the ControlPlane CR, and Service Mesh Manager merges them to the IstioControlPlane CR.

For example to enable basic DNS proxying, you can set the ISTIO_META_DNS_CAPTURE field using a similar configuration:

apiVersion: smm.cisco.com/v1alpha1
kind: ControlPlane
metadata:
 name: smm
spec:
...
    meshmanager:
      istio:
      ...
        istioCROverrides: |
          spec:
            meshConfig:
              defaultConfig:
                proxyMetadata:
                  # Enable basic DNS proxying
                  ISTIO_META_DNS_CAPTURE: "true"
                  # Enable automatic address allocation, optional
                  ISTIO_META_DNS_AUTO_ALLOCATE: "true"

Customize Istio namespace

Istio is installed to the istio-system namespace by default. To configure this namespace during installation, use one of these methods:

• Use the --istio-namespace CLI flag. For example:

  smm install -a --istio-namespace custom-istio-namespace
  

• Create a YAML file that contains the istioCRRef.namespace field (see the following example), then use the --additional-cp-settings CLI flag.

  spec:
    meshManager:
      enabled: true
      istio:
        enabled: true
        istioCRRef:
          name: cp-test
          namespace: custom-istio-namespace
  

  An example of the command:

  smm install -a --additional-cp-settings /path/to/file.yaml
  

Note: The --istio-namespace CLI flag has the highest priority. If you specify both flags at the same time, the value from the --istio-namespace flag is used.

2.4 - Upgrade

Calisti provides safe upgrades for its main components and their dependencies:

• Service Mesh Manager,
• Streaming Data Manager, and
• the Istio control plane.

Istio follows a rolling support cycle: only the last few versions are supported by the Istio community. The Cisco Istio Distribution included in Service Mesh Manager follows the same model.

Service Mesh Manager follows semantic versioning. To support a new Istio version, a new minor version is created (for example, Istio 1.11 was introduced in Service Mesh Manager 1.8, Istio 1.12 was introduced in Service Mesh Manager 1.9). Always consult the What’s new page to see if a new version of Istio has been introduced.

Overview of the upgrade procedure

Upgrading Calisti consists of the following high-level steps. The exact method to perform each step depends on the way you have installed Calisti (from the CLI, in operator mode, or using GitOps methodology).

1. Upgrading the Service Mesh Manager control plane. This is needed regardless of the target Istio version. This step ensures that all Service Mesh Manager components are containing the latest features and security fixes.

   This upgrade also upgrades Istio to the latest patch level. For example: if before the upgrade the cluster had Istio 1.11.0, and the target Service Mesh Manager version contains Istio 1.11.2, then this step upgrades Istio to 1.11.2.

   For details on performing this step, see How to upgrade.

2. If the new version of Service Mesh Manager contains a new minor or major version of Istio (for example, you have Istio 1.11.2 installed, and the new version contains Istio 1.12), complete the Upgrading your business applications procedure after upgrading Service Mesh Manager.

   Service Mesh Manager avoids big changes to the production traffic by running two versions of the Istio control planes in parallel (for example, 1.11.2 and 1.12.0) on the same cluster. After the upgrade, the existing workloads continue using the older version of Istio (for example, 1.11.2). You can gradually (on a per-namespace basis) move workloads to the new (in the example the 1.12.0) version. This allows operators to start moving services with less business value or risk associated to the new Istio version before moving on to more mission critical services.

3. If you have Streaming Data Manager installed, upgrade Streaming Data Manager. For details, see Upgrade.

2.4.1 - How to upgrade

The procedure to upgrade Calisti depends on how you have installed Calisti.

• If you have installed Calisti in imperative mode, upgrade it using the CLI.
• If you have installed Calisti in operator mode, upgrade the operator.
• If you have installed Calisti using the GitOps guide, see Upgrade SMM - GitOps - single cluster.

2.4.2 - CLI - single cluster upgrade

In case you have installed your Calisti deployment using the Calisti CLI, use the CLI to upgrade to the new version.

• If you are using Calisti on a single cluster, follow this guide.
• If you are using Calisti in a multi-cluster setup, see CLI - multi-cluster upgrade.

1. Download the Service Mesh Manager command-line tool for version 1.12.0. The archive contains the smm and supertubes binaries. Extract these binaries and update your local copy on your machine. For details, see Accessing the Service Mesh Manager binaries.

2. Deploy a new version of Service Mesh Manager.

   The following command upgrades the Service Mesh Manager control plane. The new version has the same Istio control plane (version 1.15.3), so there is no need to restart workloads.

   In the following examples, smm refers to version 1.12.0 of the binary.

   • If you want to upgrade only Service Mesh Manager:

     smm install -a
     

   • If you want to upgrade both Service Mesh Manager and Streaming Data Manager use below command

     smm install -a --install-sdm
     

     • In case you want to have custom settings for your Istio control plane, you can provide that during the installation:

       smm install -a --istio-cr-file <custom-istio-cr-file.yaml>
       

3. Check that the Service Mesh Manager control plane is upgraded and already uses the new Istio control plane.

   • If you are upgrading only Service Mesh Manager, run the following command to verify that the installation is complete.

     kubectl get pods -n=smm-system -L istio.io/rev
     

     The output should be similar to:

     NAME                                              READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE   REV
     istio-operator-v113x-64bc574fdf-mdtwj             2/2     Running   0          21m
     istio-operator-v115x-8558dbb88c-6r6fx             2/2     Running   0          21m
     mesh-manager-0                                    2/2     Running   0          21m
     prometheus-node-exporter-76jwv                    1/1     Running   0          18m
     prometheus-node-exporter-ptbwk                    1/1     Running   0          18m
     prometheus-node-exporter-w86lc                    1/1     Running   0          18m
     prometheus-smm-prometheus-0                       4/4     Running   0          19m   cp-v115x.istio-system
     smm-6b5575474d-l88lg                              2/2     Running   0          19m   cp-v115x.istio-system
     smm-6b5575474d-wp727                              2/2     Running   0          19m   cp-v115x.istio-system
     smm-als-6b995458c-z8jt9                           2/2     Running   0          19m   cp-v115x.istio-system
     smm-authentication-78d96d6fc9-hg89p               2/2     Running   0          19m   cp-v115x.istio-system
     smm-federation-gateway-7c7d9b7fb5-xgv5t           2/2     Running   0          19m   cp-v115x.istio-system
     smm-federation-gateway-operator-ff8598cb7-xj7pk   2/2     Running   0          19m   cp-v115x.istio-system
     smm-grafana-7bcf9f5885-jhwpg                      3/3     Running   0          19m   cp-v115x.istio-system
     smm-health-56896f5b9b-r54w8                       2/2     Running   0          19m   cp-v115x.istio-system
     smm-health-api-665d4787-pw7z4                     2/2     Running   0          19m   cp-v115x.istio-system
     smm-ingressgateway-b6d5b5b84-l5llx                1/1     Running   0          17m   cp-v115x.istio-system
     smm-kubestatemetrics-5455b9697-5tbgq              2/2     Running   0          19m   cp-v115x.istio-system
     smm-leo-7b64559786-2sj4c                          2/2     Running   0          19m   cp-v115x.istio-system
     smm-prometheus-operator-66dbdb499d-sz6t8          3/3     Running   1          19m   cp-v115x.istio-system
     smm-sre-alert-exporter-668d9cbd68-926t5           2/2     Running   0          19m   cp-v115x.istio-system
     smm-sre-api-86cf44fbbb-lxvxd                      2/2     Running   0          19m   cp-v115x.istio-system
     smm-sre-controller-858b984df6-6b5r6               2/2     Running   0          19m   cp-v115x.istio-system
     smm-tracing-76c688ff6f-7ctjk                      2/2     Running   0          19m   cp-v115x.istio-system
     smm-vm-integration-5df64bdb4b-68xgh               2/2     Running   0          19m   cp-v115x.istio-system
     smm-web-677b9f4f5b-ss9zs                          3/3     Running   0          19m   cp-v115x.istio-system
     

   • If you are upgrading both Service Mesh Manager and Streaming Data Manager, run the following command to verify that the installation is complete.

     kubectl get pods -A -L istio.io/rev
     

     The output should be similar to:

     NAMESPACE                  NAME                                                      READY   STATUS      RESTARTS        AGE     REV
     cert-manager               cert-manager-67575448dd-8qbws                             1/1     Running     0               5h56m
     cert-manager               cert-manager-cainjector-79f8d775c7-ww7fw                  1/1     Running     0               5h56m
     cert-manager               cert-manager-webhook-5949cc4b67-gwknv                     1/1     Running     0               5h56m
     cluster-registry           cluster-registry-controller-b86f8857c-44jh8               1/1     Running     0               5h57m
     csr-operator-system        csr-operator-5955b44674-bvl9p                             2/2     Running     0               5h56m
     istio-system               istio-meshexpansion-v115x-d8555488f-btdx6              1/1     Running     0               37m     v115x.istio-system
     istio-system               istiod-v115x-555749b797-dcwwm                          1/1     Running     0               5h55m   v115x.istio-system
     istio-system               istiod-sdm-iv115x-6c8cfb5fc5-85w2d                     1/1     Running     0               5h55m   sdm-iv115x.istio-system
     kafka                      kafka-operator-operator-76df6db8d4-l4kkq                  3/3     Running     2 (5h52m ago)   5h53m   sdm-iv115x.istio-system
     smm-registry-access        imagepullsecrets-controller-6c45b46459-qb9j8              1/1     Running     0               6h1m
     smm-system                 istio-operator-v113x-6fb944b86b-xgpbd                     2/2     Running     0               5h55m
     smm-system                 istio-operator-v115x-68dcbc59c8-vt2mp                     2/2     Running     0               5h55m
     smm-system                 mesh-manager-0                                            2/2     Running     0               5h56m
     smm-system                 prometheus-node-exporter-74dcm                            1/1     Running     0               5h53m
     smm-system                 prometheus-node-exporter-8s458                            1/1     Running     0               5h59m
     smm-system                 prometheus-node-exporter-vmth4                            1/1     Running     0               5h59m
     smm-system                 prometheus-node-exporter-xsk8j                            1/1     Running     0               5h59m
     smm-system                 prometheus-smm-prometheus-0                               4/4     Running     0               5h55m   v115x.istio-system
     smm-system                 smm-656d45f7cc-c2kd6                                      2/2     Running     0               5h55m   v115x.istio-system
     smm-system                 smm-656d45f7cc-xrx9n                                      2/2     Running     0               5h55m   v115x.istio-system
     smm-system                 smm-als-855c6878b7-55gvd                                  2/2     Running     0               5h55m   v115x.istio-system
     smm-system                 smm-authentication-666547f79f-hwt6t                       2/2     Running     0               5h55m   v115x.istio-system
     smm-system                 smm-federation-gateway-fd4bbb4f8-4nql8                    2/2     Running     1 (5h54m ago)   5h55m   v115x.istio-system
     smm-system                 smm-federation-gateway-operator-bd94d8444-nbvjz           2/2     Running     0               5h55m   v115x.istio-system
     smm-system                 smm-grafana-59c54f67f4-tft2h                              3/3     Running     0               5h55m   v115x.istio-system
     smm-system                 smm-health-86b8dbdf68-k8bfr                               2/2     Running     0               5h55m   v115x.istio-system
     smm-system                 smm-health-api-69bc97d89-gkdp5                            2/2     Running     0               5h55m   v115x.istio-system
     smm-system                 smm-ingressgateway-9875bc895-v95m9                        1/1     Running     0               37m     v115x.istio-system
     smm-system                 smm-kubestatemetrics-86c6f96789-cxsrb                     2/2     Running     0               5h55m   v115x.istio-system
     smm-system                 smm-leo-8446486596-2w7fc                                  2/2     Running     0               5h55m   v115x.istio-system
     smm-system                 smm-prometheus-operator-77cd64556d-ghz5r                  3/3     Running     1 (5h55m ago)   5h55m   v115x.istio-system
     smm-system                 smm-sre-alert-exporter-5dd8b64d58-ccrnh                   2/2     Running     0               5h55m   v115x.istio-system
     smm-system                 smm-sre-api-998fc554b-lpvsq                               2/2     Running     0               5h55m   v115x.istio-system
     smm-system                 smm-sre-controller-68c974c9db-grb44                       2/2     Running     0               5h55m   v115x.istio-system
     smm-system                 smm-tracing-5886d59dd-7k6kt                               2/2     Running     0               5h55m   v115x.istio-system
     smm-system                 smm-vm-integration-5cb96cdd78-mh5lh                       2/2     Running     0               5h55m   v115x.istio-system
     smm-system                 smm-web-55f45cc8c5-gd894                                  3/3     Running     0               5h55m   v115x.istio-system
     supertubes-control-plane   supertubes-control-plane-5bdbfcf5b6-85bw7                 2/2     Running     0               5h57m
     supertubes-system          prometheus-operator-grafana-5fd88bcf86-55kgg              4/4     Running     0               5h53m   sdm-iv115x.istio-system
     supertubes-system          prometheus-operator-kube-state-metrics-5dbf8656db-wlzfw   2/2     Running     2 (5h53m ago)   5h53m   sdm-iv115x.istio-system
     supertubes-system          prometheus-operator-operator-7bdc575546-b4n94             2/2     Running     1 (5h53m ago)   5h53m   sdm-iv115x.istio-system
     supertubes-system          prometheus-operator-prometheus-node-exporter-69cmx        1/1     Running     0               5h53m
     supertubes-system          prometheus-operator-prometheus-node-exporter-75b7q        1/1     Running     0               5h53m
     supertubes-system          prometheus-operator-prometheus-node-exporter-skksk        1/1     Running     0               5h53m
     supertubes-system          prometheus-operator-prometheus-node-exporter-v2pll        1/1     Running     0               5h53m
     supertubes-system          prometheus-prometheus-operator-prometheus-0               3/3     Running     0               5h53m   sdm-iv115x.istio-system
     supertubes-system          supertubes-6f6b86b497-c5zqf                               3/3     Running     1 (5h54m ago)   5h54m   sdm-iv115x.istio-system
     supertubes-system          supertubes-ui-backend-c97564f84-c2vd6                     2/2     Running     2 (5h54m ago)   5h54m   sdm-iv115x.istio-system
     zookeeper                  zookeeper-operator-6ff85cf58d-6kxhk                       2/2     Running     1 (5h54m ago)   5h54m   sdm-iv115x.istio-system
     zookeeper                  zookeeper-operator-post-install-upgrade-qq4kf             0/1     Completed   0               5h54m
     

Restarting workloads

After the upgrade has completed, the Pods running in applications' namespaces are still running the old version of Istio proxy sidecar.

1. To obtain the latest security patches, restart these Controllers (Deployments, StatefulSets, and so on) either using the kubectl rollout command, or by instructing the CI/CD systems enabled on the cluster. For example, to restart the deployments in a namespace, you can run:

   kubectl rollout restart deployment --namespace <name-of-your-namespace>
   

2. If the upgrade also involved a minor or major version upgrade of Istio, the kubectl rollout command will only ensure that the latest patch level is being used on the Pods.

   For example: Service Mesh Manager 1.8.2 comes with Istio 1.11, while Service Mesh Manager 1.9.0 is bundled with Istio 1.12. By upgrading from Service Mesh Manager 1.8.2 to 1.9.0, and then restarting the Controllers will only result in the latest 1.11 Istio sidecar proxy to be started in the Pods.

   To upgrade to the new minor/major version of Istio on your workloads, complete the Upgrading your business applications procedure.

2.4.3 - CLI - multi-cluster upgrade

This document shows you how to upgrade Service Mesh Manager in a multi-cluster mesh scenario. For details on how to set up a multi-cluster mesh, see the multi-cluster installation guide. To access the latest binary files, see Accessing the Service Mesh Manager binaries.

Upgrade from 1.11.0 to 1.12.0

To upgrade Service Mesh Manager from 1.11.0 to 1.12.0 for a multi-cluster setup, complete the following steps.

1. Download the Service Mesh Manager command-line tool for version 1.12.0. The archive contains the smm and supertubes binaries. Extract these binaries and update your local copy on your machine. For details, see Accessing the Service Mesh Manager binaries.

   smm --version
   

   The output should be similar to:

   Service Mesh Manager CLI version  1.12.0 (4c8509faa) built on 2023-05-05T20:57:58Z
   

2. Deploy a new version of Service Mesh Manager.

   The following command upgrades the Service Mesh Manager control plane. The new version 1.12.0 has the same Istio control plane (version 1.15.3) from the previous version, so there is no need to worry about upgrading istio version for Service Mesh Manager from 1.11.0 to 1.12.0.

   In the following examples, smm refers to version 1.12.0 of the binary.

   • If you want to upgrade only Service Mesh Manager:

     smm install -a
     

     • In case you want to have custom settings for your Istio control plane, you can provide that during the installation:

       smm install -a --istio-cr-file <custom-istio-cr-file.yaml>
       

3. Rerun the attach command with --force flag to upgrade Service Mesh Manager on the peer cluster:

   smm istio cluster attach <PEER_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG_FILE> --force
   

Upgrade existing workloads

The new version 1.12.0 has the same Istio control plane (version 1.15.3) as the previous version, so there is no need to upgrade and restart workloads.

2.4.4 - Operator mode

If have installed your Calisti deployment in operator mode, the upgrade procedure only consists of installing a newer version of the operator helm chart and allowing it to reconcile the cluster. Complete the following steps.

Service Mesh Manager upgrade

1. Uninstall the previous version (1.11.0) of the smm-operator chart.

   helm uninstall smm-operator --namespace smm-registry-access
   

2. Install the new version (1.12.0) of the smm-operator chart.

   helm install \
     --namespace=smm-registry-access \
     --set "global.ecr.enabled=false" \
     --set "global.basicAuth.username=<your-username>" \
     --set "global.basicAuth.password=<your-password>" \
     smm-operator \
     oci://registry.eticloud.io/smm-charts/smm-operator --version 1.12.0
   

   Note: If the system uses helm for deploying the chart (and not some other CI/CD solution such as Argo CD), then the CustomResourceDefinitions (CRDs) will not be automatically upgraded. In this case, fetch the helm chart locally using the helm pull command and apply the CRDs in the crds folder of the helm chart manually.

3. After the operator has been started, monitor the status of the ControlPlane resource until it finishes the upgrade (reconciliation). Run the following command:

   kubectl describe cp
   

   After the upgrade is finished, the output should be similar to the following. The Status: Succeeded line shows that the deployment has been upgraded. In case of any errors, consult the Kubernetes logs of the operator (installed by Helm) for further information.

   ...
   Status:
     Components:
       Cert Manager:
         Status:  Available
       Cluster Registry:
         Status:  Available
       Mesh Manager:
         Status:  Available
       Node Exporter:
         Status:  Available
       Registry Access:
         Status:  Available
       Smm:
         Status:  Available
     Status:      Succeeded
   

Streaming Data Manager upgrade

1. Upgrade to the new version ( version 1.9.0) of the supertubes-control-plane chart.

   helm upgrade \
     --namespace supertubes-control-plane \
     --set imagePullSecrets\[0\].name=smm-pull-secret \
     --set operator.image.repository="registry.eticloud.io/sdm/supertubes-control-plane" \
     supertubes-control-plane \
     oci://registry.eticloud.io/sdm-charts/supertubes-control-plane --version 1.9.0
   

2. After the operator has been started, monitor the status of the applicationmanifest resource until it finishes the upgrade (reconciliation). Run the following command:

   kubectl describe applicationmanifests.supertubes.banzaicloud.io -n supertubes-control-plane sdm-applicationmanifest
   

   The output should be similar to:

   ...
   Status:
     Components:
       Cluster Registry:
         Status:  Removed
       Csr Operator:
         Status:  Available
       Imps Operator:
         Image Pull Secret Status:  Unmanaged
         Status:                    Removed
       Istio Operator:
         Status:  Removed
       Kafka Operator:
         Status:  Available
       Monitoring:
         Status:  Available
       Supertubes:
         Status:  Available
       Zookeeper Operator:
         Status:  Available
     Status:      Succeeded
   

3. If the following error shows up in the ApplicationManifest under the Message field:

   resource type is not allowed to be recreated: Job.batch "zookeeper-operator-post-install-upgrade" is invalid...
   

   Delete the zookeeper-operator-post-install-upgrade job so it is recreated when ZooKeeper is reconciled:

   kubectl delete job -n zookeeper zookeeper-operator-post-install-upgrade
   

Restarting workloads

After the upgrade has completed, the Pods running in applications' namespaces are still running the old version of Istio proxy sidecar.

1. To obtain the latest security patches, restart these Controllers (Deployments, StatefulSets, and so on) either using the kubectl rollout command, or by instructing the CI/CD systems enabled on the cluster. For example, to restart the deployments in a namespace, you can run:

   kubectl rollout restart deployment --namespace <name-of-your-namespace>
   

2. If the upgrade also involved a minor or major version upgrade of Istio, the kubectl rollout command will only ensure that the latest patch level is being used on the Pods.

   For example: Service Mesh Manager 1.8.2 comes with Istio 1.11, while Service Mesh Manager 1.9.0 is bundled with Istio 1.12. By upgrading from Service Mesh Manager 1.8.2 to 1.9.0, and then restarting the Controllers will only result in the latest 1.11 Istio sidecar proxy to be started in the Pods.

   To upgrade to the new minor/major version of Istio on your workloads, complete the Upgrading your business applications procedure.

2.4.5 - Upgrade SMM - GitOps - single cluster

This document describes how to upgrade Calisti and a business application.

• If you are using Calisti on a single cluster, follow this guide.
• If you are using Calisti in a multi-cluster setup, see Upgrade SMM - GitOps - multi-cluster.

Prerequisites

To complete this procedure, you need:

• A free registration for the Calisti download page
• A Kubernetes cluster running Argo CD (called management-cluster in the examples).
• A Kubernetes cluster running the previous version of Calisti (called workload-cluster-1 in the examples). It is assumed that Calisti has been installed on this cluster as described in the Calisti 1.11.0 documentation, and that the cluster meets the resource requirements of Calisti version 1.12.0.

This document describes how to upgrade Service Mesh Manager version 1.11.0 to Service Mesh Manager version 1.12.0.

Set up the environment

1. Set the KUBECONFIG location and context name for the management-cluster cluster.

   MANAGEMENT_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG=management_cluster_kubeconfig.yaml
   MANAGEMENT_CLUSTER_CONTEXT=management-cluster
   kubectl config --kubeconfig "${MANAGEMENT_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG}" get-contexts "${MANAGEMENT_CLUSTER_CONTEXT}"
   

   Expected output:

   CURRENT   NAME                 CLUSTER              AUTHINFO   NAMESPACE
   *         management-cluster   management-cluster
   

2. Set the KUBECONFIG location and context name for the workload-cluster-1 cluster.

   WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_KUBECONFIG=workload_cluster_1_kubeconfig.yaml
   WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_CONTEXT=workload-cluster-1
   kubectl config --kubeconfig "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_KUBECONFIG}" get-contexts "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_CONTEXT}"
   

   Expected output:

   CURRENT   NAME                 CLUSTER              AUTHINFO                                          NAMESPACE
   *         workload-cluster-1   workload-cluster-1
   

   Repeat this step for any additional workload clusters you want to use.

3. Add the cluster configurations to KUBECONFIG. Include any additional workload clusters you want to use.

   KUBECONFIG=$KUBECONFIG:$MANAGEMENT_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG:$WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_KUBECONFIG
   

4. Make sure the management-cluster Kubernetes context is the current context.

   kubectl config use-context "${MANAGEMENT_CLUSTER_CONTEXT}"
   

   Expected output:

   Switched to context "management-cluster".
   

Upgrade Service Mesh Manager

The high-level steps of the upgrade process are:

• Upgrade the smm-operator.
• If you are also running Streaming Data Manager on your Calisti cluster and have installed it using the GitOps guide, upgrade the sdm-operator chart.
• Upgrade the business applications (demo-app) to use the new control plane.

Upgrade the smm-operator

1. Clone your calisti-gitops repository.

2. Remove the old version (1.11.0) of the smm-operator Helm chart.

   rm -rf charts/smm-operator
   

3. Pull the new version (1.12.0) of the smm-operator Helm chart and extract it into the charts folder.

   helm pull oci://registry.eticloud.io/smm-charts/smm-operator --destination ./charts/ --untar --version 1.12.0
   

4. Commit and push the changes to the Git repository.

   git add .
   
   git commit -m "upgrade smm to 1.12.0"
   
   git push
   

5. Wait a few minutes until the upgrade is completed.

6. Open the Service Mesh Manager dashboard.

   On the Dashboard Overview page everything should be fine, except for some validation issues. The validation issues show that the business application (demo-app) is behind the smm-controlplane and the business application should be updated.

   

   

Upgrade the sdm-operator

If you are also running Streaming Data Manager on your Calisti cluster and have installed it using the GitOps guide, upgrade the sdm-operator chart. Otherwise, skip this section and upgrade your business applications.

1. Check your username and password on the download page.

2. Remove the previously installed sdm-operator chart from the GitOps repository with the following command:

   rm -rf charts/supertubes-control-plane
   

3. Download the sdm-operator chart from registry.eticloud.io into the charts directory of your Streaming Data Manager GitOps repository and extract it. Run the following commands:

   export HELM_EXPERIMENTAL_OCI=1 # Needed prior to Helm version 3.8.0
   
   echo "${CALISTI_PASSWORD}" | helm registry login registry.eticloud.io -u "${CALISTI_USERNAME}" --password-stdin
   

   Expected output:

   Login Succeeded
   

    helm pull oci://registry.eticloud.io/sdm-charts/supertubes-control-plane --destination ./charts/ --untar --version 1.12.0
   

   Expected output:

   Pulled: registry.eticloud.io/sdm-charts/supertubes-control-plane:1.12.0
   Digest: sha256:someshadigest
   

4. Modify the sdm-operator Application CR by editing the apps/sdm-operator/sdm-operator-app.yaml file from the GitOps repository.

   Note: This is needed because of a change in the sdm-operator helm chart. The imagePullSecret helm value needs to be extended with a name key tag as in the following example.

   spec:
   ...
     source:
     ...
       helm:
         helm:
           values: |
             imagePullSecrets:
               - name: "smm-registry.eticloud.io-pull-secret"
   ...
   

5. Commit the changes and push the repository.

   git add .
   git commit -m "Update sdm-operator"
   git push origin
   

6. Apply the modified Application CR.

   kubectl apply -f "apps/sdm-operator/sdm-operator-app.yaml"
   

   Expected output:

   application.argoproj.io/sdm-operator configured
   

7. Follow the progress of the upgrade by checking the status of the ApplicationManifest. You can do this on the Argo CD UI, or with the following command:

   kubectl describe applicationmanifests.supertubes.banzaicloud.io -n smm-registry-access applicationmanifest
   

   Expected output when the upgrade is finished:

   Status:
     Cluster ID:  ...
     Components:
       Cluster Registry:
         Image:   ghcr.io/cisco-open/cluster-registry-controller:...
         Status:  Removed
       Csr Operator:
         Image:   registry.eticloud.io/csro/csr-operator:...
         Status:  Available
       Imps Operator:
         Image Pull Secret Status:  Unmanaged
         Status:                    Removed
       Istio Operator:
         Status:  Removed
       Kafka Operator:
         Image:   ghcr.io/banzaicloud/kafka-operator:...
         Status:  Available
       Monitoring:
         Status:  Available
       Supertubes:
         Image:   registry.eticloud.io/sdm/supertubes:...
         Status:  Available
       Zookeeper Operator:
         Image:   pravega/zookeeper-operator:...
         Status:  Available
     Status:      Succeeded
   

8. If the following error shows up in the ApplicationManifest under the Message field:

   resource type is not allowed to be recreated: Job.batch "zookeeper-operator-post-install-upgrade" is invalid...
   

   Delete the zookeeper-operator-post-install-upgrade job so it is recreated when ZooKeeper is reconciled:

   kubectl delete job -n zookeeper zookeeper-operator-post-install-upgrade
   

Upgrade Demo application

1. Update the demo-app.

   kubectl –context “${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_CONTEXT}” -n smm-demo rollout restart deploy

2. Check the dashboard.

   

2.4.6 - Upgrade SMM - GitOps - multi-cluster

This document describes how to upgrade Calisti and the business applications.

Prerequisites

To complete this procedure, you need:

• A free registration for the Calisti download page
• A Kubernetes cluster running Argo CD (called management-cluster in the examples).
• Two Kubernetes clusters running the previous version of Calisti (called workload-cluster-1 and workload-cluster-2 in the examples). It is assumed that Calisti has been installed on these clusters as described in the Calisti 1.11.0 documentation, and that the clusters meet the resource requirements of Calisti version 1.12.0.
• If the primary Calisti cluster is running Streaming Data Manager, it is assumed that you have installed it using the GitOps guide.

This document describes how to upgrade Calisti version 1.11.0 to Calisti version 1.12.0.

Set up the environment

1. Set the KUBECONFIG location and context name for the management-cluster cluster.

   MANAGEMENT_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG=management_cluster_kubeconfig.yaml
   MANAGEMENT_CLUSTER_CONTEXT=management-cluster
   kubectl config --kubeconfig "${MANAGEMENT_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG}" get-contexts "${MANAGEMENT_CLUSTER_CONTEXT}"
   

   Expected output:

   CURRENT   NAME                 CLUSTER              AUTHINFO   NAMESPACE
   *         management-cluster   management-cluster
   

2. Set the KUBECONFIG location and context name for the workload-cluster-1 cluster.

   WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_KUBECONFIG=workload_cluster_1_kubeconfig.yaml
   WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_CONTEXT=workload-cluster-1
   kubectl config --kubeconfig "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_KUBECONFIG}" get-contexts "${WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_CONTEXT}"
   

   Expected output:

   CURRENT   NAME                 CLUSTER              AUTHINFO                                          NAMESPACE
   *         workload-cluster-1   workload-cluster-1
   

   Repeat this step for any additional workload clusters you want to use.

3. Add the cluster configurations to KUBECONFIG. Include any additional workload clusters you want to use.

   KUBECONFIG=$KUBECONFIG:$MANAGEMENT_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG:$WORKLOAD_CLUSTER_1_KUBECONFIG
   

4. Make sure the management-cluster Kubernetes context is the current context.

   kubectl config use-context "${MANAGEMENT_CLUSTER_CONTEXT}"
   

   Expected output:

   Switched to context "management-cluster".
   

Upgrade Calisti

The high-level steps of the upgrade process are:

• Upgrade the Calisti operator.
• Note that both 1.11.0 and 1.12.0 Calisti are using istio-cp-v115x on the workload clusters.
• Upgrade the business applications (the demo applications) to use the new istio-cp-v115x istio control plane.

1. Remove the old version (1.11.0) of the smm-operator Helm chart.

   rm -rf charts/smm-operator
   

2. Pull the new version (1.12.0) of the smm-operator Helm chart and extract it into the charts folder.

   helm pull oci://registry.eticloud.io/smm-charts/smm-operator --destination ./charts/ --untar --version 1.12.0
   

3. Commit and push the changes to the Git repository.

   git add .
   
   git commit -m "upgrade Calisti to 1.12.0"
   
   git push
   

4. Open the Calisti dashboard.

   On the MENU > OVERVIEW page everything should be fine

   

   As you can see on the MENU > MESH page, the Calisti control plane is using the cp-v115x.istio-system istio control plane.

   

Upgrade Streaming Data Manager

If the primary Calisti cluster is running Streaming Data Manager, and you have installed it using the GitOps guide, upgrade the sdm-operator as described in Upgrade the sdm-operator.

Restart Demo applications

1. If you have existing demo applications pods on both clusters, after upgrading Calisti, you will see validation errors on the MENU > OVERVIEW page. This is due to the mismatch between the previously cached istio sidecar injector config and the new config which is created after the upgrade.

   

   To solve this, you could run the following command on both the workload clusters to restart the demo application:

   kubectl -n smm-demo rollout restart deploy
   

2. Check the MENU > TOPOLOGY page.

   

2.4.7 - Upgrading your business applications

Overview

When a Calisti upgrade includes a new minor or major Istio release, Calisti runs both versions of the Istio control plane on the upgraded cluster, so you can gradually migrate your workloads to the new Istio version.

To list the available control planes, run:

kubectl get istiocontrolplanes -n istio-system

The output should be similar to:

NAME       MODE     NETWORK    STATUS      MESH EXPANSION   EXPANSION GW IPS                   ERROR   AGE
cp-v113x   ACTIVE   network1   Available   true             ["3.122.28.53","3.122.43.249"]             87m
cp-v115x   ACTIVE   network1   Available   true             ["3.122.31.252","18.195.79.209"]           66m

Here cp-v113x is running Istio 1.13.x, while cp-v115x is running Istio 1.15.3.

A special label on the namespaces specifies which Istio control plane the proxies use in that namespace. In the following example the smm-demo namespace is attached to the cp-v113x.istio-system control plane (where the .istio-system is the name of the namespace of the Istio control plane).

kubctl get ns smm-demo -o yaml

The output should be similar to:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Namespace
metadata:
  ...
  labels:
    istio.io/rev: cp-v113x.istio-system
  name: smm-demo
spec:
  finalizers:
  - kubernetes
status:
  phase: Active

Both cp-v113x and cp-v115x are able to discover services in all namespaces. This means that:

• Workloads can communicate with each other regardless which Istio control plane they are attached to.
• In case of an error, any namespace can be rolled back to use the previous version of the Istio control plane by simply changing the annotation

Migrate workload to a new Istio control plane

After upgrading Calisti to a new version that includes a new minor or major Istio version, you have to modify your workloads to use the new Istio control plane. Complete the following steps.

1. Before starting the migration of the workloads to the new Istio control plane, check the Validation UI and fix any errors with your configuration.

2. Find the name of the new Istio control plane by running the following command:

   kubectl get istiocontrolplanes -n istio-system
   

   The output should be similar to:

   NAME       MODE     NETWORK    STATUS      MESH EXPANSION   EXPANSION GW IPS                   ERROR   AGE
   cp-v113x   ACTIVE   network1   Available   true             ["3.122.28.53","3.122.43.249"]             87m
   cp-v115x   ACTIVE   network1   Available   true             ["3.122.31.252","18.195.79.209"]           66m
   

   In this case the new Istio Control Plane is called cp-v115x which is running Istio 1.15.3.

3. Migrate a namespace to the new Istio control plane. Complete the following steps.

   1. Select a namespace, preferably one with the least impact on production traffic. Edit the istio.io/rev label on the namespace by running:

      kubectl label ns <your-namespace> istio.io/rev=cp-v115x.istio-system --overwrite
      

      Expected output:

      namespace/<your-namespace> labeled
      

   2. Restart all Controllers (Deployments, StatefulSets, and so on) in the namespace. After the restart, the workloads in the namespace are attached to the new Istio control plane. For example, to restart the deployments in a namespace, you can run:

      kubectl rollout restart deployment -n <name-of-your-namespace>
      

   3. Test your application to verify that it works with the new control plane as expected. In case of any issues, refer to the rollback section to roll back to the original Istio control plane.

4. Migrate your other namespaces.

5. After all of the applications has been migrated to the new control plane and you have verified that the applications work as expected, you can delete the old Istio control plane.

Roll back the data plane to the old control plane in case of issues

1. If there is a problem and you want to roll the namespace back to the old control plane, set the istio.io/rev label on the namespace to point to the old Istio control plane, and restart the pod using the kubectl rollout restart deployment command:

   kubectl label ns <name-of-your-namespace-with-issues> istio.io/rev=cp-v113x.istio-system
   kubectl rollout restart deployment -n <name-of-your-namespace-with-issues>
   

2.4.8 - Delete old Istio control plane

After upgrading Calisti to a new version that includes a new minor or major Istio version, you can delete the old Istio control plane if it’s not needed anymore.

Prerequisites

Before deleting the old Istio control plane, make sure that:

• The new control plane is working as expected with your applications.

Steps

1. Open the Service Mesh Manager dashboard and navigate to the MAIN MENU > MESH page.

2. Verify that you have migrated every application to use the new control plane. This means that no Pods are attached to the old Istio control plane (the number of proxies for the old control plane should be 0).

3. Delete the old Istio control plane:

   kubectl delete istiocontrolplanes -n istio-system cp-v113x
   

Note: Deleting the prometheus-smm-prometheus-x pod erases historic timeline data. To persist timeline data for Prometheus rollout, see Set up Persistent Volumes for Prometheus.

2.5 - Dashboard

Service Mesh Manager provides a dashboard interface that can be used to diagnose any issues with the underlying deployment. This section provides an introduction to the list of available features on this user interface.

Accessing the dashboard

To access the dashboard, set your KUBECONFIG file to the cluster where the Service Mesh Manager control plane is running, then run the following command to open a browser window to the dashboard.

smm dashboard --kubeconfig <path/to/kubeconfig>

In case you are executing this command on a remote machine, complete the following additional steps.

1. Check the output of the command and forward the indicated port to your local machine.

2. Open a browser window and navigate to http://127.0.0.1:50500/.

3. Service Mesh Manager asks for login credentials. To acquire the credentials, follow the instructions on the user interface.

   Alternatively, you can complete the following steps.

   1. Set your KUBECONFIG file to the cluster where the Service Mesh Manager control plane is running, then run the following command.

      smm login --kubeconfig <path/to/kubeconfig>
      

      A temporary login token is displayed. Now you can perform other actions from the command line.

2.5.1 - Dashboard overview

The MENU > OVERVIEW page on the Service Mesh Manager web interface shows information about your the traffic in your mesh and the health of your services and workloads.

If your application hasn’t received any traffic yet, there will be no metrics in the system so you won’t see any visualization yet. To send some traffic to your services as a test, see Generate test load.

The page shows the following information and controls:

• Metrics
• Dashboards
• Validations

Metrics

• Requests per second
• Average latency (95th percentile)
• Error rate (for 5XX errors). Client-side errors (with 4XX status code) are not included.
• Clusters (number of clusters in the mesh)
• Services (number of services in the mesh / total number of services)
• Workloads (number of workloads in the mesh / total number of workloads)
• Pods (number of pods in the mesh / total number of pods)
• Validation issues

Dashboards

The OVERVIEW page shows charts about the health of the services and workloads, as well as the aggregated status of your service level objectives (SLOs). Click on the chart to get more information, for example, about the SLO burn rates that display warnings.

The OVERVIEW page also shows the following live Grafana dashboards:

• Requests per second
• Average latency (95th percentile)
• Error rate (for 5XX errors). Client-side errors (with 4XX status code) are not included.

Validations

To check the validation status of your YAML configuration files, select OVERVIEW > VALIDATION ISSUES. For details, see Validation.

2.5.2 - Mesh

The MENU > MESH page on the Service Mesh Manager web interface shows information about your service mesh and the control planes.

The page shows the following real-time information:

• The mesh in numbers
• Clusters in the mesh
• Information and metrics about the Istio control planes

The mesh in numbers

• CONTROL PLANES: The number of Istio control planes in the mesh.
• CLUSTERS: The number of clusters in the mesh.
• ISTIO PROXIES MEMORY USAGE: Current memory usage of the Istio proxies (sidecars).
• ISTIO PROXIES CPU USAGE: Current CPU usage of the Istio proxies (sidecars).
• ISTIO PROXIES NOT RUNNING: The Istio proxies (sidecars) that are not running for some reason.

Clusters

Displays basic status information about the clusters in the mesh.

This is mostly useful in the multi-cluster setup when multiple clusters are in the mesh.

Control planes

This section displays information and metrics about the Istio control planes in the mesh, including version and revision information, and validation errors.

Click on a specific control plane to display information about:

• The pods of the control plane.
• The proxies of the control plane and their synchronization status.
• List of validation issues found in the configurations.
• The trust bundles defined for the control plane.
• Detailed metrics about the resource usage of Istiod and the proxies.

In addition, selecting a control plane also shows the following basic information:

• CLUSTER NAME: The name of the cluster the control plane is running on.
• VERSION: The Istio version of the service mesh.
• ROOT NAMESPACE: The administrative root namespace for Istio configuration of the service mesh.
• TRUST DOMAIN: The list of trust domains.
• AUTOMATIC MTLS: Shows whether automatic mutual TLS is enabled for the service mesh.
• OUTBOUND TRAFFIC POLICY: The default outbound traffic policy for accessing external services set for the mesh. For details, see External Services.
• PROXIES: The number of sidecar proxies in the mesh.
• CONFIG: Click the icon to display the configuration of the control plane.

Pods

Shows information and status about the pods of the control plane.

Proxies

Lists the proxies managed by the control plane, and the synchronization status of the cluster discovery service (CDS), listener discovery service (LDS), endpoint discovery service(EDS), and route discovery service (RDS) for the proxy.

Trust bundles

Shows the trust bundles defined for the control plane.

Validation issues

Lists the validation issues for the entire control plane.

Metrics

The timeline charts show the version and revision of the Istio proxies used in the mesh, as well as error metrics from the Istio Pilot agent, for example, rejected CDS and EDS configurations. (Istio Pilot agent runs in the sidecar or gateway container and bootstraps Envoy.)

To display more detailed metrics about the resource usage of Istiod and the proxies, click on a control plane in the Control planes section.

2.5.2.1 - Validation

The Service Mesh Manager product:

• simplifies service mesh configuration and management,
• guides you through setting up complex traffic routing rules
• takes care of creating, merging and validating the YAML configuration.

And unlike some other similar products, it’s working in both directions: you can edit the YAML files manually, and you can still view and manipulate the configuration from Service Mesh Manager. That’s possible because there’s no intermediate configuration layer in Service Mesh Manager.

To support the bi-directional mesh configuration, Service Mesh Manager provides a validation subsystem for the entire mesh. Istio itself provides some syntactic and semantic validation for the individual Istio resources, but Service Mesh Manager goes even further. Service Mesh Manager performs complex validations which take the whole cluster state and related resources into account to check whether everything is configured correctly within the whole mesh.

Service Mesh Manager performs a lot of syntactical and semantical validation checks for various aspects of the configuration. The validation checks are constantly curated and new checks added with every release. For example:

• Sidecar injection template validation: Validates whether there are any pods in the environment that run with outdated sidecar proxy image or configuration.
• Gateway port protocol configuration conflict validation: Detects conflicting port configuration in different Gateway resources.
• Multiple gateways with the same TLS certificate validation: Configuring multiple gateways to use the same TLS certificate causes most browsers to produce 404 errors when accessing a second host after a connection to another host has already been established.

Check validation results on the Service Mesh Manager UI

The validations are constantly running in the background. To display the actual results, navigate to OVERVIEW > VALIDATION ISSUES. You can use the NAMESPACES field to select the namespaces you want to observe.

To display the invalid part of the configuration in the invalid resource, click the icon.

To display every validation error of a control plane as a list, navigate to MENU > MESH, and click on the control plane in the Control planes section, then select VALIDATIONS. For details, see Validation issues.

Check validation results from the CLI

To check the results of the validation from the CLI, run the smm analyze command. To show only results affecting a specific namespace, use the –namespace option, for example: smm analyze --namespace smm-demo, or smm analyze --namespace istio-system

The smm analyze command can also produce JSON output, for example:

smm analyze --namespace istio-system -o json

Example output:

{
  "gateway.networking.istio.io:master:istio-system:demo-gw-demo1": [
    {
      "checkID": "gateway/reused-cert",
      "istioRevision": "cp-v115x.istio-system",
      "subjectContextKey": "gateway.networking.istio.io:master:istio-system:demo-gw-demo1",
      "passed": false,
      "error": {},
      "errorMessage": "multiple gateways configured with same TLS certificate"
    }
  ],
  "gateway.networking.istio.io:master:istio-system:demo-gw-demo2": [
    {
      "checkID": "gateway/reused-cert",
      "istioRevision": "cp-v115x.istio-system",
      "subjectContextKey": "gateway.networking.istio.io:master:istio-system:demo-gw-demo2",
      "passed": false,
      "error": {},
      "errorMessage": "multiple gateways configured with same TLS certificate"
    }
  ]
}

2.5.3 - Topology view

The MENU > TOPOLOGY page of the Service Mesh Manager web interface displays the topology of services and workloads inside the mesh, and annotates it with real-time and information about latency, throughput, or HTTP request failures. You can also display historical data by adjusting the timeline.

The topology view is almost entirely based on metrics: metrics received from Prometheus and enhanced with information from Kubernetes.

The topology page serves as a starting point of diagnosing problems within the mesh. Service Mesh Manager is integrated with Grafana and Jaeger for easy access to in-depth monitoring and distributed traces) of various services.

The nodes in the graph are services or workloads, while the arrows represent network connections between different services. This is based on Istio metrics retrieved from Prometheus.

For certain services like MySQL and PostgreSQL, protocol-specific metrics normally not available in Istio are also shown, for example, sessions or transactions per second.

Note: Protocol-specific metrics for MySQL and PostgreSQL are available only for certain versions of MySQL and PostgreSQL. For details, see the documentation of the MySQL and the PostgreSQL Envoy filters.

For example, the following image shows SQL sessions and transactions per second.

The graph serves as a visual monitoring tool, as it displays various errors and metrics in the system. Click the ? icon on the left to show a legend of the graph to better understand what the icons mean in the graph. Virtual machines integrated into the mesh are displayed as workloads with the icon in their corner.

If your application hasn’t received any traffic yet, there will be no metrics in the system so you won’t see any visualization yet. To send some traffic to your services as a test, see Generate test load.

Select the data displayed

You can select and configure what is displayed on the graph in the top bar of the screen. You can also display historical data using the TIMELINE.

Namespaces

Display data only for the selected namespaces.

Resources

You can select the type of resources you want to display in the graph. The following resources can be displayed in a cluster: clusters, namespaces, apps, services, and workloads.

Workloads are always shown, they cannot be disabled.

Here’s an example when only apps, services and workloads are shown:

Showing clusters is important in multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud environments. For details, see Multi-cluster.

Edge labels

The labels on the edges of the graph can display various real-time information about the traffic between services. You can display the following information:

• the protocol used in the communication (HTTP, gRPC, TCP) and the request rate (or throughput for TCP connections),
• actual P95 latency, or
• whether the connection is using mTLS or not.

For certain services like MySQL and PostgreSQL, protocol-specific metrics normally not available in Istio are also shown, for example, sessions or transactions per second.

Note: Protocol-specific metrics for MySQL and PostgreSQL are available only for certain versions of MySQL and PostgreSQL. For details, see the documentation of the MySQL and the PostgreSQL Envoy filters.

Timeline

By default, the graph displays the current data. The timeline view allows you to select a specific point in time, and then move minutes back and forth to see how your most important metrics have changed. For example, you can use it to check how things changed for a specific service, when did the error rates go up, or how your latency values have changed over time when RPS values increased. This can be a good indicator to know where to look for errors in the logs, or to notice if something else has changed in the cluster that can be related to a specific failure.

• To display the timeline, select TIMELINE on the left, then use the timeline bar to adjust the date and the time. The date corresponding to the displayed data is shown below the topology graph.
• To return to the current real-time data, select LIVE.

Drill-down to the pods and nodes

You can drill-down from the MENU > TOPOLOGY page by selecting a service or a workload in the Istio service mesh. You can trace back an issue from the top-level service mesh layer by navigating deeper in the stack, and see the status and most important metrics of your Kubernetes controllers, pods, and nodes.

See Drill-down for details.

2.5.3.1 - Drill-down

You can drill-down from the MENU > TOPOLOGY page by selecting a service or a workload in the Istio service mesh. You can trace back an issue from the top-level service mesh layer by navigating deeper in the stack, and see the status and most important metrics of your Kubernetes controllers, pods, and nodes.

For an example on how you can diagnose and solve a real-life problem using the drill-down view, see the Service Mesh Manager drill-down blog post.

Drill-down from the Topology view

The highest level of the Topology view is the service mesh layer. This level contains the most important network-level metrics, and an overview of the corresponding Kubernetes controllers.

Click on a workload ( ) or service ( ) to display its details on the right. Workloads running on virtual machines have a blue icon in the corner ( ).

From the details overview, you can drill down through the following levels to the underlying resources of the infrastructure:

• For services: Overview > Service > Pod > Node
• For workloads: Overview > Controller > Pod > Node
• For workloads running on virtual machines: Overview > Controller > Workloadentry

To display the metrics-based health of the workload or the service, select the HEALTH tab. You can scroll down to display the charts of the selected metric (for example, saturation, latency, or success rate). Note that for workloads running on virtual machines, the total saturation of the virtual machine is shown.

Service overview

The following details of the service are displayed:

• Namespace: The namespace the service belongs to.

• APP: The application exposed using the service.

• PORTS: The ports where the service is accessible, for example:

  http         8080/TCP → 8080
  grpc         8082/TCP → 8082
  tcp          8083/TCP → 8083
  

• Services: The services exposed in this resource. Click on the name of the service to display the details of the service.

• Metrics: Dashboards of the most important metrics. Click to open the related dashboards in Grafana.

• Traces: Click to run tracing with Jaeger.

CAUTION:

If you have installed Service Mesh Manager in Anonymous mode, you won’t be able to access the Metrics and Traces dashboards from the UI. Clicking the or icon in anonymous mode causes the RBAC: access denied error message.

Details of the workload

The following details of the workload are displayed:

• Namespace: The namespace the workload belongs to.
• APP: The application running in the workload.
• VERSION: The version number of the workload, for example, v2.
• REPLICAS: The number of replicas for the workload.
• LABELS: The list of Kubernetes labels assigned to the resource.
• Controllers: The controllers related to the workload. Click on a controller to display its details.
• Metrics: Dashboards of the most important metrics. Click to open the related dashboards in Grafana.

Service details

Select a Service in the SERVICE section of a service overview to display the details of the service.

The following details of the service are displayed:

• Namespace: The namespace the service belongs to.

• CLUSTER: The name of the Kubernetes cluster the service belongs to.

• SELECTOR: The label selector used to select the set of Pods targeted by the Service.

• PORTS: The ports where the service is accessible, for example:

  http         8080/TCP → 8080
  grpc         8082/TCP → 8082
  tcp          8083/TCP → 8083
  

• TYPE: The ServiceType indicates how your service is exposed, for example, ClusterIP or LoadBalancer.

• CLUSTER IP: The IP address corresponding to the ServiceType.

• CREATED: The date when the service was started.

• LABELS: The list of Kubernetes labels assigned to the resource.

• Pods: The list of pods running this service, including their name, number of containers in the pod, and their status. Click on the name of the pod to display the details of the pod.

• Events: Recent events related to the service resource.

Workload controller details

Select a deployment in the CONTROLLER section of a workload to display the details of the deployment.This view contains detailed information about the Kubernetes controller.

While the service mesh layer displays network level metrics and an aggregated view of the corresponding controllers, this view focuses on CPU and memory metrics, and the Kubernetes resources, like related pods or events. It’s also possible that multiple controllers belong to the same service mesh entity, for example, in a shared control plane multi-cluster scenario, when multiple clusters are running controllers that belong to the same logical workload.

The following details of the workload controller are displayed:

• Namespace: The namespace the workload belongs to.
• CLUSTER: The name of the Kubernetes cluster the workload belongs to.
• Kind: The type of the controller, for example, Deployment. If the workload is running on a virtual machine, the kind of the controller is WorkloadGroup.
• APP: The application running in the workload.
• VERSION: The version number of the workload, for example, v2.
• REPLICAS: The number of replicas for the workload.
• CREATED: The date when the workload was started.
• LABELS: The list of Kubernetes labels assigned to the resource.
• Pods: The list of pods running this workload. Click on the name of the pod to display the details of the pod.
• WorkloadEntries: The list of virtual machines running this workload. Click on the name of the WorkloadEntry to display the details of the WorkloadEntry.
• Events: Recent events related to the resource.

Details of the pod

To check the details of a pod, select a pod in the CONTROLLER > POD or the SERVICE > POD section.

The following details of the pod are displayed:

• Namespace: The namespace the pod belongs to.
• CLUSTER: The name of the Kubernetes cluster the pod belongs to.
• NODE: The hostname of the node the pod is running on, for example, ip-192-168-1-1.us-east-2.compute.internal. Click on the name of the node to display the details of the node.
• IP: The IP address of the pod.
• STARTED: The date when the pod was started.
• LABELS: The list of Kubernetes labels assigned to the resource.
• Containers: The list of containers in the pod. Also includes the Name, Image, and Status of the container.
• Events: Recent events related to the resource.
• Metrics: Dashboards of the most important metrics. Click to open the related dashboards in Grafana.

  CAUTION:

  If you have installed Service Mesh Manager in Anonymous mode, you won’t be able to access the Metrics and Traces dashboards from the UI. Clicking the or icon in anonymous mode causes the RBAC: access denied error message.

To display the logs of the pod, click the icon. The pod logs are displayed at the bottom of the screen.

Note: In multi-cluster scenarios, live log streaming is available only for pods running on the primary cluster.

Details of the node

To check the health of a node, select a node in the pod details view. The node view is the deepest layer of the drill-down view and shows information about a Kubernetes node.

The following details of the node that the pod is running on are displayed:

• CLUSTER: The name of the Kubernetes cluster the node belongs to.
• OS: The operating system running on the node, for example: linux amd64 (Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS)
• STARTED: The date when the node was started.
• TAINTS: The list of Kubernetes taints assigned to the node.
• LABELS: The list of Kubernetes labels assigned to the node.
• Conditions: The status of the node, for example, disk and memory pressure, or network and kubelet status.
• Pods: The list of pods currently running on the node.
• Events: Recent events related to the node.
• Metrics: Dashboards of the most important metrics. Click to open the related dashboards in Grafana.

  CAUTION:

  If you have installed Service Mesh Manager in Anonymous mode, you won’t be able to access the Metrics and Traces dashboards from the UI. Clicking the or icon in anonymous mode causes the RBAC: access denied error message.

Details of the WorkloadEntry

The following details of the pod are displayed:

• NAMESPACE: The namespace the pod belongs to.
• CLUSTER: The name of the Kubernetes cluster the pod belongs to.
• NETWORK: The name of the network the virtual machine running the workload belongs to.
• ADDRESS: The IP address of the virtual machine.
• PORTS: The open ports and related protocols of the WorkloadGroup.
• LABELS: The list of Kubernetes labels assigned to the resource.
• Events: Recent events related to the resource.
• Metrics: Dashboards of the most important metrics. Click to open the related dashboards in Grafana.

2.5.3.2 - Generate test load

There are several places in the Service Mesh Manager interface where you can’t see anything if your application hasn’t received any traffic yet. For example, if there are no metrics in the system you won’t see any visualization on the MENU > OVERVIEW page.

Generate load on the UI

To send generated traffic to an endpoint, complete the following steps.

1. On the Service Mesh Manager web interface, select MENU > TOPOLOGY.
2. Click HTTP on the left side of the screen.
3. Complete the form with the endpoint details and click SEND to generate test traffic to your services.
4. In a few seconds a graph of your services appears.

Generate load in the CLI

If needed, you can generate constant traffic in the demo application by running: smm demoapp load start

2.5.3.3 - Pod logs

You can display the logs of Kubernetes pods on the Service Mesh Manager web interface to help troubleshooting your infrastructure.

If you are installing Service Mesh Manager on a managed Kubernetes solution of a public cloud provider (for example, AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud), assign admin roles, so that you can tail the logs of your containers from the Service Mesh Manager UI, use Service Level Objectives and perform various tasks from the CLI that require custom permissions. Run the following command:

kubectl create clusterrolebinding user-cluster-admin --clusterrole=cluster-admin --user=<gcp/aws/azure username>

Note: In multi-cluster scenarios, live log streaming is available only for pods running on the primary cluster.

To display the logs of a pod, complete the following steps.

1. Open the Service Mesh Manager dashboard.
2. Drill down to the pod you want to inspect.
3. Click the icon. The pod logs are displayed at the bottom of the screen.
4. You can also filter the logs to a specific container.

From the pod level, you can also go up or down in your infrastructure to inspect other components.

2.5.4 - Workloads

You can drill-down from the MENU > TOPOLOGY page by selecting a service or a workload in the Istio service mesh. You can trace back an issue from the top-level service mesh layer by navigating deeper in the stack, and see the status and most important metrics of your Kubernetes controllers, pods, and nodes.

List of workloads

The MENU > WORKLOADS page contains information about the workloads in your service mesh. Above the list of workloads, there is a summary dashboard about the state of your workloads, showing the following information:

• Requests per second: Requests per second for the workloads.
• Average latency: Average latency for the workloads (95th percentile latency in milliseconds).
• Error rate: The percentage of requests returning a 5xx status code. Client-side errors (with 4XX status code) are not included.
• Clusters: The number of clusters in the service mesh.
• Workloads: The number of workloads in the mesh and the total number of workloads.
• Pods: The number of running pods and the desired number of pods.

The list displays the workloads (grouped by namespaces), and a timeline of the metrics-based health score of each workload. The icon indicates Kubernetes workloads, while the icon indicates workloads running on virtual machines. You can filter the list to show only the selected namespaces, and display historical data by adjusting the timeline.

• To display the details of a workload, click the name of the workload.
• To open the Grafana dashboards related to the workload, click .
• To display the detailed health metrics of a workload, click the health indicator of the workload for the selected period.

From the mesh workload overview, you can drill down through the following levels to the underlying resources of the infrastructure:

• For workloads: Overview > Controller > Pod > Node.
• For workloads running on virtual machines: Overview > Controller > Workloadentry.

Workload details

Select a Workload from the list to display its details.

The following details of the workload are displayed:

• NAMESPACE: The namespace the workload belongs to.
• APP: The application running in the workload.
• VERSION: The version number of the workload, for example, v2.
• REPLICAS: The number of replicas for the workload.
• LABELS: The list of Kubernetes labels assigned to the resource.
• HEALTH: Indicates the health score of the workload. Click the chart to display more details.
• Controller: The controllers related to the workload. Click on a controller to display its details.
• CLUSTER: The name of the Kubernetes cluster the workload belongs to.
• KIND: The kind of the workload, for example, DaemonSet, Deployment, ReplicaSet, or StatefulSet.
• Pods: The list of pods running this workload. Click on the name of the pod to display the details of the pod. You can also display and filter logs of the pod.
• Events: Recent events related to the resource.
• Metrics: Dashboards of the most important metrics. Click to open the related dashboards in Grafana.

Pod details

To check the details of a pod, click the name of a pod in the Pods section.

The following details of the pod are displayed:

• Namespace: The namespace the pod belongs to.
• CLUSTER: The name of the Kubernetes cluster the pod belongs to.
• NODE: The hostname of the node the pod is running on, for example, ip-192-168-1-1.us-east-2.compute.internal. Click on the name of the node to display the details of the node.
• IP: The IP address of the pod.
• STARTED: The date when the pod was started.
• LABELS: The list of Kubernetes labels assigned to the resource.
• Containers: The list of containers in the pod. Also includes the Name, Image, and Status of the container.
• Events: Recent events related to the resource.
• Metrics: Dashboards of the most important metrics. Click to open the related dashboards in Grafana.

  CAUTION:

  If you have installed Service Mesh Manager in Anonymous mode, you won’t be able to access the Metrics and Traces dashboards from the UI. Clicking the or icon in anonymous mode causes the RBAC: access denied error message.

To display the logs of the pod, click the icon. The pod logs are displayed at the bottom of the screen.

Note: In multi-cluster scenarios, live log streaming is available only for pods running on the primary cluster.

Node details

To check the health of a node, select a node in the pod details view. The node view is the deepest layer of the drill-down view and shows information about a Kubernetes node.

The following details of the node that the pod is running on are displayed:

• CLUSTER: The name of the Kubernetes cluster the node belongs to.
• OS: The operating system running on the node, for example: linux amd64 (Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS)
• STARTED: The date when the node was started.
• TAINTS: The list of Kubernetes taints assigned to the node.
• LABELS: The list of Kubernetes labels assigned to the node.
• Conditions: The status of the node, for example, disk and memory pressure, or network and kubelet status.
• Pods: The list of pods currently running on the node.
• Events: Recent events related to the node.
• Metrics: Dashboards of the most important metrics. Click to open the related dashboards in Grafana.

  CAUTION:

  If you have installed Service Mesh Manager in Anonymous mode, you won’t be able to access the Metrics and Traces dashboards from the UI. Clicking the or icon in anonymous mode causes the RBAC: access denied error message.

WorkloadEntry details

The following details of the pod are displayed:

• NAMESPACE: The namespace the pod belongs to.
• CLUSTER: The name of the Kubernetes cluster the pod belongs to.
• NETWORK: The name of the network the virtual machine running the workload belongs to.
• ADDRESS: The IP address of the virtual machine.
• PORTS: The open ports and related protocols of the WorkloadGroup.
• LABELS: The list of Kubernetes labels assigned to the resource.
• Events: Recent events related to the resource.
• Metrics: Dashboards of the most important metrics. Click to open the related dashboards in Grafana.

2.5.5 - Services

You can drill-down from the MENU > TOPOLOGY page by selecting a service or a workload in the Istio service mesh. You can trace back an issue from the top-level service mesh layer by navigating deeper in the stack, and see the status and most important metrics of your Kubernetes controllers, pods, and nodes.

List of services

The MENU > SERVICES page contains information about the services in your service mesh. Above the list of services, there is a summary dashboard about the state of your services, showing the following information:

• Services: The total number of services in the selected namespaces.
• Services out of error budget: These services do not meet their Service Level Objectives (SLOs).
• Services without SLOs set: There are no Service Level Objectives (SLOs) set for these services.
• Services without alerts set: There are no alerts set for these services.
• Alerts firing: The number of active alerts.

The list displays the services (grouped by namespaces), and a timeline of the metrics-based health score of each service. You can filter the list to show only the selected namespaces, and display historical data by adjusting the timeline.

• To display the details of a service, click the name of the service.
• To open the Grafana dashboards related to the service, click .
• To run tracing with Jaeger click .

  CAUTION:

  If you have installed Service Mesh Manager in Anonymous mode, you won’t be able to access the Metrics and Traces dashboards from the UI. Clicking the or icon in anonymous mode causes the RBAC: access denied error message.
• To display the detailed health metrics of a service, click the health indicator of the service for the selected period.

From the services list, you can drill down through the following levels to the underlying resources of the infrastructure: List of services > Mesh Service > Service > Pod > Node.

Mesh Service details

• Mesh Service: The multi-cluster mesh service available in the current mesh. Select a service from the SERVICE field to display the details of the service in any of the attached clusters.

• Namespace: The namespace the service belongs to.

• APP: The application exposed using the service.

• PORTS: The ports where the service is accessible, for example:

  http         8080/TCP → 8080
  grpc         8082/TCP → 8082
  tcp          8083/TCP → 8083
  

• HEALTH: Indicates the health score of the workload. Click the chart to display more details.

• Service Level Objectives: The details of the Service Level Objectives (SLOs) defined for the service. Click on an SLO to display its details.

• Services: The list of services belonging to the mesh service.

• Metrics: Dashboards of the most important metrics. Click on a service to display its details.

  • To open the related Grafana dashboards, click .
  • To run tracing with Jaeger click .

Display service details

Select a Service from the list to display its details.

• To run tracing with Jaeger click . In case of a multi-cluster setup, you can select which cluster’s data to display.

The following details of the service are displayed:

• Service: The services exposed in this resource. To display the details of the service, click the name of the service.

• Namespace: The namespace the service belongs to.

• CLUSTER: The name of the Kubernetes cluster the service belongs to.

• SELECTOR: The label selector used to select the set of Pods targeted by the Service.

• PORTS: The ports where the service is accessible, for example:

  http         8080/TCP → 8080
  grpc         8082/TCP → 8082
  tcp          8083/TCP → 8083
  

• TYPE: The ServiceType indicates how your service is exposed, for example, ClusterIP or LoadBalancer.

• CLUSTER IP: The IP address corresponding to the ServiceType.

• CREATED: The date when the service was started.

• LABELS: The list of Kubernetes labels assigned to the resource.

• Pods: The list of pods running this service, including their name, number of containers in the pod, and their status. Click on the name of the pod to display the details of the pod.

• Events: Recent events related to the service resource.

Display pod details

To check the details of a pod, click the name of the pod in the PODS section.

The following details of the pod are displayed:

• Namespace: The namespace the pod belongs to.
• CLUSTER: The name of the Kubernetes cluster the pod belongs to.
• NODE: The hostname of the node the pod is running on, for example, ip-192-168-1-1.us-east-2.compute.internal. Click on the name of the node to display the details of the node.
• IP: The IP address of the pod.
• STARTED: The date when the pod was started.
• LABELS: The list of Kubernetes labels assigned to the resource.
• Containers: The list of containers in the pod. Also includes the Name, Image, and Status of the container.
• Events: Recent events related to the resource.
• Metrics: Dashboards of the most important metrics. Click to open the related dashboards in Grafana.

  CAUTION:

  If you have installed Service Mesh Manager in Anonymous mode, you won’t be able to access the Metrics and Traces dashboards from the UI. Clicking the or icon in anonymous mode causes the RBAC: access denied error message.

To display the logs of the pod, click the icon. The pod logs are displayed at the bottom of the screen.

Note: In multi-cluster scenarios, live log streaming is available only for pods running on the primary cluster.

Display node details

To check the health of a node, select a node in the pod details view. The node view is the deepest layer of the drill-down view and shows information about a Kubernetes node.

The following details of the node that the pod is running on are displayed:

• CLUSTER: The name of the Kubernetes cluster the node belongs to.
• OS: The operating system running on the node, for example: linux amd64 (Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS)
• STARTED: The date when the node was started.
• TAINTS: The list of Kubernetes taints assigned to the node.
• LABELS: The list of Kubernetes labels assigned to the node.
• Conditions: The status of the node, for example, disk and memory pressure, or network and kubelet status.
• Pods: The list of pods currently running on the node.
• Events: Recent events related to the node.
• Metrics: Dashboards of the most important metrics. Click to open the related dashboards in Grafana.

  CAUTION:

  If you have installed Service Mesh Manager in Anonymous mode, you won’t be able to access the Metrics and Traces dashboards from the UI. Clicking the or icon in anonymous mode causes the RBAC: access denied error message.

2.5.6 - Gateways

The MENU > GATEWAYS page of the Service Mesh Manager web interface allows you to:

• View the configuration of every gateway.
• Monitor the upstream traffic.
• Manage the port and host configurations.
• Manage routing and traffic.
• Configure TLS settings on the gateway, including cert-manager and Let’s Encrypt setup.

Note: Service Mesh Manager uses the concept of IstioMeshGateways, a declarative representation of Istio ingress and egress gateway services and deployments. With the help of IstioMeshGateways, you can set up multiple gateways in a cluster, and use them for different purposes.

To create a new ingress gateway, see Create ingress gateway.

List gateways

To list the gateways of your service mesh, navigate to MENU > GATEWAYS.

For each gateway, the following information is shown:

• Name: The name of the gateway.
• Namespace: The namespace the gateway belongs to.
• Cluster: The cluster the gateway belongs to. Mainly useful in multi-cluster scenarios.
• Type: Type of the gateway. Ingress gateways define an entry point into your Istio mesh for incoming traffic, while egress gateways define an exit point from your Istio mesh for outgoing traffic.
• Open ports: The ports the gateway accepts connections on.
• Hosts: Number of hosts accessible using the gateway.
• Routes: Number of routing rules configured for the ingress traffic.
• Error rate: The number of errors during the last polling interval, for 5XX errors. Client-side errors (with 4XX status code) are not included.
• Requests per second: The number of requests per second during the last polling interval.
• Status: Status of the gateway.

Click the name of a gateway to display the details of the gateway (grouped into several tabs: Overview and host configuration, Routes, Deployment and Service).

To display the YAML configuration of MeshGateways, Gateways, or VirtualServices, click the name of the gateway in the list, then click the icon next to their name.

Monitor upstream traffic

Service Mesh Manager collects upstream metrics like latencies, throughput, RPS, or error rate from Prometheus, and provides a summary for each gateway. It also sets up a Grafana dashboard and displays appropriate charts in-place.

To monitor the upstream traffic of your Istio gateways, complete the following steps.

1. Open the Service Mesh Manager web interface, and navigate to MENU > GATEWAYS.

2. From the list of gateways, click the gateway you want to monitor.

   

3. On the OVERVIEW tab, scroll down to the METRICS section. The most important metrics of the gateway are displayed on the Service Mesh Manager web interface (for example, upstream requests per second and error rate).

   Note: You can also view the details of the service or the deployment related to the gateway.

   

   Click to open the related dashboards in Grafana.

   CAUTION:

   If you have installed Service Mesh Manager in Anonymous mode, you won’t be able to access the Metrics and Traces dashboards from the UI. Clicking the or icon in anonymous mode causes the RBAC: access denied error message.

Gateway deployment and service details

To display the details, events, and most important metrics of the deployment and service related to a gateway, navigate to MENU > GATEWAYS > <Gateway-to-inspect>, then click SERVICE or DEPLOYMENT.

2.5.6.1 - Create ingress gateway

Overview

Ingress gateways define an entry point into your Istio mesh for incoming traffic.

You can configure gateways using the Gateway and VirtualService custom resources of Istio, and the IstioMeshGateway CR of Service Mesh Manager.

• The Gateway resource describes the port configuration of the gateway deployment that operates at the edge of the mesh and receives incoming or outgoing HTTP/TCP connections. The specification describes a set of ports that should be exposed, the type of protocol to use, TLS configuration – if any – of the exposed ports, and so on. For more information about the gateway resource, see the Istio documentation.
• The VirtualService resource defines a set of traffic routing rules to apply when a host is addressed. Each routing rule defines matching criteria for the traffic of a specific protocol. If the traffic matches a routing rule, then it is sent to a named destination service defined in the registry. For example, it can route requests to different versions of a service or to a completely different service than was requested. Requests can be routed based on the request source and destination, HTTP paths and header fields, and weights associated with individual service versions. For more information about VirtualServices, see the Istio documentation.
• Service Mesh Manager provides a custom resource called IstioMeshGateway and uses a separate controller to reconcile gateways, allowing you to use multiple gateways in multiple namespaces. That way you can also control who can manage gateways, without having permissions to modify other parts of the Istio mesh configuration.

Using IstioMeshGateway, you can add Istio ingress or egress gateways in the mesh and configure them. When you create a new IstioMeshGateway CR, Service Mesh Manager takes care of configuring and reconciling the necessary resources, including the Envoy deployment and its related Kubernetes service.

Note: Service Mesh Manager automatically creates an ingress gateway called smm-ingressgateway and an istio-meshexpansion-cp-v115x. The smm-ingressgateway serves as the main entry point for the services of Service Mesh Manager, for example, the dashboard and the API, while the meshexpansion gateway is used in multi-cluster setups to ensure communication between clusters for the Istio control plane and the user services.

Do not use this gateway for user workloads, because it is managed by Service Mesh Manager, and any change to its port configuration will be overwritten. Instead, create a new mesh gateway using the IstioMeshGateway custom resource.

Prerequisites

Auto sidecar injection must be enabled for the namespace of the service you want to make accessible.

Create ingress gateway

To create a new ingress gateway and expose a service from the command line, complete the following steps. Alternatively, you can create an ingress gateway using the dashboard.

1. If you haven’t already done so, create and expose the service you want to make accessible through the gateway.

   For testing, you can download and apply the following echo service:

   kubectl apply -f echo.yaml
   

   Expected output:

   deployment.apps/echo created
   service/echo created
   

2. Create a new ingress gateway using the IstioMeshGateway resource.

   1. Download the following resource and adjust it as needed for your environment:

      CAUTION:

      By the default, the IstioMeshGateway pod is running without root privileges, therefore it cannot use ports under 1024. Either use ports above 1024 as targetports (for example, 8080 instead of 80) or run the gateway pod with root privileges by setting spec.runAsRoot: true in the IstioMeshGateway custom resource.

      For details on the IstioMeshGateway resource, see the IstioMeshGateway CR reference.

   2. Apply the IstioMeshGateway resource. Service Mesh Manager creates a new ingress gateway deployment and a corresponding service, and automatically labels them with the gateway-name and gateway-type labels and their corresponding values.

      kubectl apply -f meshgw.yaml
      

      Expected output:

      istiomeshgateway.servicemesh.cisco.com/demo-gw created
      

   3. Get the IP address of the gateway. (Adjust the name and namespace of the IstioMeshGateway as needed for your environment.)

      kubectl -n default get istiomeshgateways demo-gw
      

      The output should be similar to:

      NAME      TYPE      SERVICE TYPE   STATUS      INGRESS IPS       ERROR   AGE    CONTROL PLANE
      demo-gw   ingress   LoadBalancer   Available   ["3.10.16.232"]           107s   {"name":"cp-v115x","namespace":"istio-system"}
      

   4. Create the Gateway and VirtualService resources to configure listening ports on the matching gateway deployment. Make sure to adjust the hosts fields to the external hostname of the service. (You should manually set an external hostname that points to these addresses, but for testing purposes you can use for example nip.io, which is a domain name that provides wildcard DNS for any IP address.)

      kubectl apply -f gwvs.yaml
      

      Expected output:

      gateway.networking.istio.io/echo created
      virtualservice.networking.istio.io/echo created
      

3. Access the service on the external address.

   curl -i echo.3.10.16.232.nip.io
   

   The output should be similar to:

   HTTP/1.1 200 OK
   date: Mon, 07 Mar 2022 19:22:15 GMT
   content-type: text/plain
   server: istio-envoy
   x-envoy-upstream-service-time: 1
   
   Hostname: echo-68578cf9d9-874rz
   ...
   

Create ingress gateway using dashboard

1. To create an ingress gateway from Calisti dashboard, navigate to MENU > GATEWAYS page. Click CREATE NEW. An interface to select the Ingress gateway resource template opens.

   

   

2. Select Ingress in the Template dropdown.

3. Here, you can edit the ingress gateway resource. To validate the correctness of the YAML resource, click Validate . For details on the IstioMeshGateway resource, see the IstioMeshGateway CR reference.

4. Once the YAML file is validated and there are no errors, to create the ingress gateway, click Create.

Edit ingress gateway using dashboard

1. To edit a particular ingress gateway in your service mesh, click the Edit icon at the end of the row.

2. Edit the selected gateway YAML, and validate the YAML. For details on the IstioMeshGateway resource, see the IstioMeshGateway CR reference.

3. To apply the changes to the YAML, click Apply.

Delete ingress gateway using dashboard

1. To delete a particular ingress gateway in your service mesh, click the Delete icon at the end of the row.

   

2. If you are absolutely sure that you want to delete the selected ingress gateway, click Delete on the pop-up.

   CAUTION:

   Deleting the resource is irreversible and cannot be undone, as Calisti doesn’t store the old resource files.

IstioMeshGateway CR reference

This section describes the fields of the IstioMeshGateway custom resource.

apiVersion (string)

Must be servicemesh.cisco.com/v1alpha1

kind (string)

Must be IstioMeshGateway

spec (object)

The configuration and parameters of the IstioMeshGateway.

spec.type (string, required)

Type of the mesh gateway. Ingress gateways define an entry point into your Istio mesh for incoming traffic, while egress gateways define an exit point from your Istio mesh for outgoing traffic. Possible values:

• ingress
• egress

spec.istioControlPlane (object, required)

Specifies the istiocontrolplane cr the istio-proxy connects to by a namespaced name. When upgrading to a new Istio version (thus to a new control plane), this should be upgraded.

For example:

spec:
  istioControlPlane:
    name: cp-v115x
    namespace: istio-system

spec.deployment (object)

Configuration options for the Kubernetes istio-proxy deployment. Metadata like labels and annotations can be set here for the deployment or pods as well, in spec.deployment.metadata.annotations or spec.deployment.podMetadata.annotations.

spec.service (object, required)

Configuration options for the Kubernetes service. Annotations can be set here as well as in spec.service.metadata.annotations, they are often useful in cloud loadbalancer cases, for example to specify some configuration for AWS.

Example for Google Cloud Engine (GKE):

This example shows how to create an internal load balancer with a static ip address. The first step is to reserve a static ip address that can then be used by the load balancer.

More info about how to reserve a static internal ip address can be found at: Reserving a static internal IP address

More annotations and their description are available here: LoadBalancer Service parameters

IstioMeshGateway modifications:

  service:
    ports:
      - name: tcp-status-port
        port: 15021
        protocol: TCP
        targetPort: 15021
      - name: http
        port: 80
        protocol: TCP
        targetPort: 8080
    type: LoadBalancer
    loadBalancerIP: "10.100.100.100"
    metadata:
      annotations:
        networking.gke.io/load-balancer-type: "Internal"

Gateway modifications:

spec:
  selector:
    gateway-name: demo-gw
    gateway-type: ingress
  servers:
  - port:
      number: 80
      name: http
      protocol: HTTP
    hosts:
    - "*"

VirtualService modifications:

  spec:
  hosts:
  - "*"
  gateways:
  - echo 
  http:
  - route:
    - destination:
        port:
          number: 80
        host: echo.default.svc.cluster.local

Example for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS): This example shows how to modify the TCP idle timeout for a loadbalancer.

By default, it’s set to 4 minutes. If a period of inactivity is longer than the timeout value, there’s no guarantee that the TCP or HTTP session is maintained between the client and your cloud service.

More annotations and their description are available here: Azure LoadBalancer annotations

IstioMeshGateway modifications:

  service:
    ports:
      - name: tcp-status-port
        port: 15021
        protocol: TCP
        targetPort: 15021
      - name: http
        port: 80
        protocol: TCP
        targetPort: 8080
    type: LoadBalancer
    metadata:
      annotations:
        service.beta.kubernetes.io/azure-load-balancer-tcp-idle-timeout: "10"

Example for Amazon Web Services (AWS): This example shows how to create a load balancer to specify which nodes to include in the target group registration for instance target type.

More annotations and their description are available here: AWS Load Balancer Controller Annotations

IstioMeshGateway modifications:

  service:
    ports:
      - name: tcp-status-port
        port: 15021
        protocol: TCP
        targetPort: 15021
      - name: http
        port: 80
        protocol: TCP
        targetPort: 8080
    type: LoadBalancer
    metadata:
      annotations:
        service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-nlb-target-type: instance
        service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-target-node-labels: k8s-app=echo

spec.runAsRoot (true | false)

Whether to run the gateway in a privileged container. If not running as root, only ports higher than 1024 can be opened on the container. Default value: false

2.5.6.2 - Create egress gateway

Egress traffic

Traffic that’s outbound from a pod that has an Istio sidecar also passes through that sidecar’s container, (more precisely, through Envoy). Therefore, the accessibility of external services depends on the configuration of that Envoy proxy.

By default, Istio configures the Envoy proxy to enable requests for unknown services. Although this provides a convenient way of getting started with Istio, it’s generally a good idea to put stricter controls in place.

Allow only registered access

You can configure Service Mesh Manager to permit access only to specific external services. For details, see External Services.

Egress gateway

Egress gateways define an exit point from your Istio mesh for outgoing traffic. Egress gateways also allow you to apply Istio features on the traffic that exits the mesh, for example monitoring, routing rules, or retries.

Why do you need egress gateways? For example:

• Your organization requires some, or all, outbound traffic to go through dedicated nodes. These nodes could be separated from the rest of the nodes for the purposes of monitoring and policy enforcement.
• The application nodes of a cluster don’t have public IPs, so the in-mesh services that run on them cannot access the internet directly. Allocating public IPs to the egress gateway nodes and routing egress traffic through the gateway allows for controlled access to external services.

Create egress gateway

To create an egress gateway from the command line and route egress traffic through it, complete the following steps. Alternatively, you can create an egress gateway using the dashboard.

Note: The YAML samples work with the Service Mesh Manager demo application. Adjust their parameters (for example, namespace, service name, and so on) as needed for your environment.

1. Create an egress gateway using the IstioMeshGateway resource. For details on the IstioMeshGateway resource, see the IstioMeshGateway CR reference.

   CAUTION:

   By the default, the IstioMeshGateway pod is running without root privileges, therefore it cannot use ports under 1024. Either use ports above 1024 as targetports (for example, 8080 instead of 80) or run the gateway pod with root privileges by setting spec.runAsRoot: true in the IstioMeshGateway custom resource.

   For testing, you can download and apply the following resource to create a new egress gateway deployment and a corresponding service in the smm-demo namespace.

   kubectl apply -f egress-meshgateway.yaml
   

   Expected output:

   istiomeshgateway.servicemesh.cisco.com/egress-demo created
   

2. Create a Gateway resource for the egress gateway. The Gateway resource connects the Istio configuration resources and the deployment of a matching gateway. Apply the following Gateway resource to configure the outbound port (80 in the previous example) on the egress gateway that you have defined in the previous step.

   kubectl apply -f egress-gateway.yaml
   

   Expected output:

   gateway.networking.istio.io/egress-demo created
   

3. Define a VirtualService resource to direct traffic from the sidecars to the egress gateway.

   Apply the following VirtualService to direct traffic from the sidecars to the egress gateway, and also from the egress gateway to the external service. Edit the VirtualService to match the external service you want to permit access to.

   kubectl apply -f egress-virtualservice.yaml
   

   Expected output:

   virtualservice.networking.istio.io/httpbin-egress created
   

4. Test access to the external service.

   If you have installed the Service Mesh Manager demo application and used the examples in the previous steps, you can run the following command to start requests from the notifications-v1 workload to the external http-bin service:

   kubectl -n smm-demo set env deployment/notifications-v1 'REQUESTS=http://httpbin.org/get#1'
   

   • If everything is set up correctly, the new egress gateway appears on the MENU > GATEWAYS page.
   • If there is egress traffic, the gateway appears on the MENU > GATEWAYS page (make sure to select the relevant namespace). Note that the traffic from the gateway to the external service is visible only if you create a ServiceEntry resource for the external service.

5. If needed, permit access only to specific external services. For details, see External Services.

Create egress gateway using dashboard

1. To create an egress gateway from Calisti dashboard, navigate to MENU > GATEWAYS. Click CREATE NEW. An interface to select the Egress gateway resource template opens.

   

   

2. Select Egress in the Template dropdown.

3. Here, you can edit the egress gateway resource. To validate the correctness of the YAML resource, click Validate . For details on the IstioMeshGateway resource, see the IstioMeshGateway CR reference.

4. Once the YAML file is validated and there are no errors, to create the egress gateway, click Create.

Edit egress gateway using dashboard

1. To edit a particular egress gateway in your service mesh, navigate to MENU > GATEWAYS. Click the Edit icon at the end of the row of the gateway you want to edit.

2. Edit the selected gateway YAML, and validate the YAML. For details on the IstioMeshGateway resource, see the IstioMeshGateway CR reference.

3. To apply the changes to the YAML, click Apply.

Delete egress gateway using dashboard

1. To delete a particular egress gateway in your service mesh, navigate to MENU > GATEWAYS. Click the Delete icon at the end of the row of the gateway you want to delete.

   

2. If you are absolutely sure that you want to delete the selected egress gateway, click Delete on the pop-up.

   CAUTION:

   Deleting the resource is irreversible and cannot be undone, as Calisti doesn’t store the old resource files.

IstioMeshGateway CR reference

This section describes the fields of the IstioMeshGateway custom resource.

apiVersion (string)

Must be servicemesh.cisco.com/v1alpha1

kind (string)

Must be IstioMeshGateway

spec (object)

The configuration and parameters of the IstioMeshGateway.

spec.type (string, required)

Type of the mesh gateway. Ingress gateways define an entry point into your Istio mesh for incoming traffic, while egress gateways define an exit point from your Istio mesh for outgoing traffic. Possible values:

• ingress
• egress

spec.istioControlPlane (object, required)

Specifies the istiocontrolplane cr the istio-proxy connects to by a namespaced name. When upgrading to a new Istio version (thus to a new control plane), this should be upgraded.

For example:

spec:
  istioControlPlane:
    name: cp-v115x
    namespace: istio-system

spec.deployment (object)

Configuration options for the Kubernetes istio-proxy deployment. Metadata like labels and annotations can be set here for the deployment or pods as well, in spec.deployment.metadata.annotations or spec.deployment.podMetadata.annotations.

spec.service (object, required)

Configuration options for the Kubernetes service. Annotations can be set here as well as in spec.service.metadata.annotations, they are often useful in cloud loadbalancer cases, for example to specify some configuration for AWS.

Example for Google Cloud Engine (GKE):

This example shows how to create an internal load balancer with a static ip address. The first step is to reserve a static ip address that can then be used by the load balancer.

More info about how to reserve a static internal ip address can be found at: Reserving a static internal IP address

More annotations and their description are available here: LoadBalancer Service parameters

IstioMeshGateway modifications:

  service:
    ports:
      - name: tcp-status-port
        port: 15021
        protocol: TCP
        targetPort: 15021
      - name: http
        port: 80
        protocol: TCP
        targetPort: 8080
    type: LoadBalancer
    loadBalancerIP: "10.100.100.100"
    metadata:
      annotations:
        networking.gke.io/load-balancer-type: "Internal"

Gateway modifications:

spec:
  selector:
    gateway-name: demo-gw
    gateway-type: ingress
  servers:
  - port:
      number: 80
      name: http
      protocol: HTTP
    hosts:
    - "*"

VirtualService modifications:

  spec:
  hosts:
  - "*"
  gateways:
  - echo 
  http:
  - route:
    - destination:
        port:
          number: 80
        host: echo.default.svc.cluster.local

Example for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS): This example shows how to modify the TCP idle timeout for a loadbalancer.

By default, it’s set to 4 minutes. If a period of inactivity is longer than the timeout value, there’s no guarantee that the TCP or HTTP session is maintained between the client and your cloud service.

More annotations and their description are available here: Azure LoadBalancer annotations

IstioMeshGateway modifications:

  service:
    ports:
      - name: tcp-status-port
        port: 15021
        protocol: TCP
        targetPort: 15021
      - name: http
        port: 80
        protocol: TCP
        targetPort: 8080
    type: LoadBalancer
    metadata:
      annotations:
        service.beta.kubernetes.io/azure-load-balancer-tcp-idle-timeout: "10"

Example for Amazon Web Services (AWS): This example shows how to create a load balancer to specify which nodes to include in the target group registration for instance target type.

More annotations and their description are available here: AWS Load Balancer Controller Annotations

IstioMeshGateway modifications:

  service:
    ports:
      - name: tcp-status-port
        port: 15021
        protocol: TCP
        targetPort: 15021
      - name: http
        port: 80
        protocol: TCP
        targetPort: 8080
    type: LoadBalancer
    metadata:
      annotations:
        service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-nlb-target-type: instance
        service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-target-node-labels: k8s-app=echo

spec.runAsRoot (true | false)

Whether to run the gateway in a privileged container. If not running as root, only ports higher than 1024 can be opened on the container. Default value: false

2.5.6.3 - Manage host and port configuration

Service Mesh Manager understands the Gateway CRs of Istio and the gateway’s service configuration in Kubernetes (with the help of the MeshGateway CR), so it can display information about ports, hosts, and protocols that are configured on a specific gateway.

1. Open the Service Mesh Manager web interface, and navigate to MENU > GATEWAYS.

2. From the list of gateways, click the gateway you want to monitor.

3. You can see the host and port configurations on the OVERVIEW tab, in the Ports & Hosts section.

   

   The following information is shown about each entry point.

   • GATEWAY NAME: The name of the gateway.
   • GATEWAY NAMESPACE: The namespace the gateway belongs to.
   • PORT: The list of open ports on the gateway.
   • PROTOCOL: The protocols permitted on the gateway.
   • HOSTS: The host selector that determines which hosts are accessible using the gateway.
   • TLS: The TLS settings applying to the gateway.

• To modify an existing route, click , change the settings as needed, then click APPLY.
• To delete a route, click .
• To create a new entry point, click CREATE NEW.

Create new ingress entry point

You can set up a new entry point for your Istio ingress gateways, and Service Mesh Manager translates your configuration to declarative custom resources.

1. Navigate to MENU > GATEWAYS > <Gateway-to-modify> > OVERVIEW.

2. In the Ports & Hosts section, click CREATE NEW.

   

3. Set the parameters of the entry point. As a minimum, you must set the port number for the entry point, and the protocol (for example, HTTP, HTTPS, or GRPC) that is accepted at the entry point.

   Note: DNS resolution is not managed by Service Mesh Manager. Once you’ve configured ingress for a particular service, Service Mesh Manager will display the IP of the ingress gateway service. Do not forget to create the corresponding DNS records that point to this IP.

4. Click CREATE.

Gateway TLS settings

When setting up a service on a gateway with TLS, you need to configure a certificate for the host(s). You can do that by bringing your own certificate, putting it down in a Kubernetes secret, and configuring it for a gateway server. This works for simple use cases, but involves lots of manual steps when obtaining or renewing a certificate. Automated Certificate Management Environments (ACME) automates these kinds of interactions with the certificate provider.

ACME is most widely used with Let’s Encrypt and - when in a Kubernetes environment - cert-manager. Service Mesh Manager helps you set up cert-manager, and you can quickly obtain a valid Let’s Encrypt certificate through the dashboard with a few clicks.

Note: For details on using your own domain name with Let’s Encrypt, see Using Let’s Encrypt with your own domain name. To set TLS encryption for a gateway, complete the following steps.

1. Navigate to MENU > GATEWAYS > <Gateway-to-modify> > OVERVIEW.

2. In the Ports & Hosts section, click in the row of the gateway you want to modify.

3. Set PORT PROTOCOL to HTTPS.

   

4. Decide how you want to provide the certificate for the gateway.

   • To use Let’s Encrypt, select USE LET’S ENCRYPT FOR TLS, then enter a valid email address into the CONTACT EMAIL field. The provided email address will be used to notify about expirations and to communicate about any issues specific to your account.
   • To use a custom certificate, upload a certificate as a Kubernetes secret, then set the name of the secret in the TLS SECRET NAME field. Note that currently you cannot upload the certificate from the Service Mesh Manager UI, use regular Kubernetes tools instead.

5. Click CREATE.

2.5.6.4 - Routes and traffic management with Virtual Services

Note: This section describes the routing rules of ingress gateways. To configure routing rules for in-mesh services, see Routing.

One of the main reasons to use Istio gateways instead of native Kubernetes ingress is that you can use VirtualService to configure the routing of incoming traffic, just like for in-mesh routes. You can apply Istio concepts to incoming requests, like redirects, rewrites, timeouts, retries, or fault injection.

Calisti displays the VirtualServices and their related configuration on the Gateways page, and gives you the ability to configure routing. Calisti provides various Virtual Service templates for route rules and traffic management.

The MENU > GATEWAYS > <Gateway-to-inspect> > VIRTUAL SERVICES page displays the following information about the VirtualServices of the gateway.

• VIRTUAL SERVICE: The name of the VirtualService resource for the gateway. To display the YAML configuration of the VirtualService, click the icon next to its name.
• GATEWAYS: The names of gateways and sidecars that apply these routes.
• HOSTS: The host selector that determines which hosts are accessible using the route.
• MATCH: The route applies only to requests matching this expression.
• DESTINATION: The destinations of the routing rule.
• ACTIONS: Any special action related to the route (for example, rewrite).
• PROTOCOL: The protocol permitted in the route.

• To modify an existing route, click Edit icon.
• To delete a route, click Delete icon.
• To create a new VirtualService, click CREATE NEW.

Create a virtual service

To create a new routing rule, create a new VirtualService from the dashboard, complete the following steps. You can also edit or delete VirtualServices, and you can also view the full YAML configuration of the virtual service. The new rule created with the VirtualService resource matches every incoming request.

Note: Rules are evaluated in top-down order. For more details, see Rule precedence.

1. Navigate to MENU > GATEWAYS > <Gateway-to-inspect> > VIRTUAL SERVICES page.

2. Select VIRTUAL SERVICE > CREATE NEW.

3. Select a template based on your need.

   • By default, the new rule matches every incoming request. When you specify multiple match arguments, they have a logical OR relationship: the rule matches any request that fits one of the match rules. Within a match rule, you can specify multiple rules that have an AND relation. That way, you can match requests against a specific URL and an HTTP method, for example.

     For example, using the following template, you can create a rule that matches only requests where the URL path starts with /ratings/v2/ and the request contains a custom end-user header with the value jason. To add custom matches to select only specific traffic for the rule based on scheme, method, URI, host, port, or authority, use HTTP Request Template.

     

   • You can route the requests to a specific service. To route a portion of the traffic to a different destination, select HTTP Route Destination Template and use the weight parameter to split the traffic between multiple destination services.

     

   • Alternatively, you can use the HTTP Redirect template to redirect the traffic to a specific URI. Redirect rules overwrite the Path portion of the URL with this value. Note that the entire path is replaced, irrespective of the request URI being matched as an exact path or prefix.

     

   • Set the timeout and retry options as needed for your environment using HTTP Retry Template.

     

   • Set the rewrite option to rewrite specific parts of the HTTP request before forwarding the request to the destination using HTTP Rewrite Template.

     

4. Click Create. The new rule appears on the VIRTUAL SERVICES tab.

Edit a virtual service

1. To edit a particular virtual service in your service mesh, click the Edit icon at the end of the row.

2. Modify the selected virtual service YAML, and validate the YAML.

3. To apply the modifications to the YAML configuration, click Apply.

Delete a virtual service

1. To delete a particular virtual service in your service mesh, click the Delete icon at the end of the row.

   

2. If you are absolutely sure that you want to delete the selected virtual service, click Delete on the pop-up.

   CAUTION:

   Deleting the resource is irreversible and cannot be undone, as Calisti doesn’t store the old resource files.

Ingress with your own domain

Once you have have completed the steps in Using Let’s Encrypt with your own domain name, create a Tls route virtual service using the templates provided. Complete the following steps.

1. Navigate to MENU > GATEWAYS > <Gateway-to-inspect> > VIRTUAL SERVICES
2. To create a new ingress VirtualService using your own domain, click CREATE NEW.
3. Select the Tls Route Template from the Template dropdown. Now use the gateway, host, and port number you provided during setting up an encrypted HTTPS port under your own domain name for your services.
4. Once you modify and enter the host, port number and other parameters in the template, validate the resource’s correctness.
5. Click CREATE.

2.5.6.5 - Using Let's Encrypt with your own domain name

The following procedure shows you how to set up an encrypted HTTPS port under your own domain name for your services, and obtain a matching certificate from Let’s Encrypt.

This requires solving the ACME HTTP-01 challenge, and this involves routing an HTTP request from the ACME server (the Certificate Authority) to the cert-manager challenge-solver pod.

Complete the following steps.

1. Open the Service Mesh Manager web interface, and navigate to MENU > GATEWAYS > OVERVIEW.

2. Select the gateway you want to secure. Note that the SERVICE TYPE of the gateway must be LoadBalancer. The load balancer determines the IP address(es) to be used for the ACME HTTP-01 challenge. In the following example, it’s istio-meshexpansion-gateway-cp-v115x.

   

3. Point your domain name to the IP address or DNS name found in the ADDRESS field.

4. Configure the ingress gateway.

   1. In the Ports & Hosts section, click CREATE NEW in the upper right corner.

      

   2. Select the HTTPS protocol in the ports and protocol dropdown.

   3. Select the port number (probably 443) and enter the port name you want to accept incoming connections on.

   4. Enter your domain name into the HOSTS field. To enter multiple domain names, use Enter.

   5. Select Use Let’s Encrypt for TLS to get a certificate for your domain from Let’s Encrypt.

   6. Enter your email address. This address is forwarded to Let’s Encrypt and is used for ACME account management.

   7. Click CREATE.

   8. Two more items appear in the Ports & Hosts list for your domain name:

      • One on the HTTPS port (for example, 443) for the incoming connection requests.
      • The other on port 80 for solving the ACME HTTP-01 challenge.

      A warning icon shows if the HTTPS port is not valid yet.

      

5. Wait while the certificate arrives. After a short while, the item with port 80 and protocol HTTP disappears, and a green check mark appears next to HTTPS. This shows that the certificate has been issued and is used to secure your domain:

   

6. Set up routing for your service. Use the gateway, host, and port number you provided in this procedure. For details, see routing and traffic management.

   

7. Test that your service can be accessed and that it shows the proper certificate.

2.5.7 - Traffic tap

The traffic tap feature of Service Mesh Manager enables you to monitor live access logs of the Istio sidecar proxies. Each sidecar proxy outputs access information for the individual HTTP requests or HTTP/gRPC streams.

The access logs contain information about the:

• reporter proxy,
• source and destination workloads,
• request,
• response, as well as the
• timings.

Note: For workloads that are running on virtual machines, the name of the pod is the hostname of the virtual machine.

Traffic tap using the UI

Traffic tap is also available from the dashboard. To use it, complete the following steps.

1. Select MENU > TRAFFIC TAP.

2. Select the reporter (namespace or workload) from the REPORTING SOURCE field.

   

3. Click FILTERS to set additional filters, for example, HTTP method, destination, status code, or HTTP headers.

4. Click START STREAMING.

5. Select an individual log to see its details:

   

6. After you are done, click PAUSE STREAMING.

Traffic tap using the CLI

These examples work out of the box with the demo application packaged with Service Mesh Manager. Change the service name and namespace to match your service.

To watch the access logs for an individual namespace, workload or pod, use the smm tap command. For example, to tap the smm-demo namespace, run:

smm tap ns/smm-demo

The output should be similar to:

✓ start tapping max-rps=0
2022-04-25T10:56:47Z outbound frontpage-v1-776d76965-b7w76 catalog-v1-5864c4b7d7-j5cmf "http GET / HTTP11" 200 121.499879ms "tcp://10.10.48.169:8080"
2022-04-25T10:56:47Z outbound frontpage-v1-776d76965-b7w76 catalog-v1-5864c4b7d7-j5cmf "http GET / HTTP11" 200 123.066985ms "tcp://10.10.48.169:8080"
2022-04-25T10:56:47Z inbound bombardier-66786577f7-sgv8z frontpage-v1-776d76965-b7w76 "http GET / HTTP11" 200 145.422013ms "tcp://10.20.2.98:8080"
2022-04-25T10:56:47Z outbound frontpage-v1-776d76965-b7w76 catalog-v1-5864c4b7d7-j5cmf "http GET / HTTP11" 200 129.024302ms "tcp://10.10.48.169:8080"
2022-04-25T10:56:47Z outbound frontpage-v1-776d76965-b7w76 catalog-v1-5864c4b7d7-j5cmf "http GET / HTTP11" 200 125.462172ms "tcp://10.10.48.169:8080"
2022-04-25T10:56:47Z inbound bombardier-66786577f7-sgv8z frontpage-v1-776d76965-b7w76 "http GET / HTTP11" 200 143.590923ms "tcp://10.20.2.98:8080"
2022-04-25T10:56:47Z outbound frontpage-v1-776d76965-b7w76 catalog-v1-5864c4b7d7-j5cmf "http GET / HTTP11" 200 121.868301ms "tcp://10.10.48.169:8080"
2022-04-25T10:56:47Z inbound bombardier-66786577f7-sgv8z frontpage-v1-776d76965-b7w76 "http GET / HTTP11" 200 145.090036ms "tcp://10.20.2.98:8080"
...

Filter on workload or pod

You can tap into specific workloads and pods, for example:

• Tap the bookings-v1 workload in the smm-demo namespace:

  smm tap --ns smm-demo workload/bookings-v1
  

• Tap a pod of the bookings app in the smm-demo namespace:

  POD_NAME=$(kubectl get pod -n smm-demo -l app=bookings -o jsonpath="{.items[0]..metadata.name}")
  smm tap --ns smm-demo pod/$POD_NAME
  

At large volume it’s difficult to find the relevant or problematic logs, but you can use filter flags to display only the relevant lines, for example:

# Show only server errors
smm tap ns/smm-demo --method GET --response-code 500,599

The output can be similar to:

2020-02-06T14:00:13Z outbound frontpage-v1-57468c558c-8c9cb bookings:8080 " GET / HTTP11" 503 173.099µs "tcp://10.10.111.111:8080"                               2020-02-06T14:00:18Z outbound frontpage-v1-57468c558c-8c9cb bookings:8080 " GET / HTTP11" 503 157.164µs "tcp://10.10.111.111:8080"                               2020-02-06T14:00:19Z outbound frontpage-v1-57468c558c-4w26k bookings:8080 " GET / HTTP11" 503 172.541µs "tcp://10.10.111.111:8080"                               2020-02-06T14:00:15Z outbound frontpage-v1-57468c558c-8c9cb bookings:8080 " GET / HTTP11" 503 165.05µs "tcp://10.10.111.111:8080"                                2020-02-06T14:00:15Z outbound frontpage-v1-57468c558c-8c9cb bookings:8080 " GET / HTTP11" 503 125.671µs "tcp://10.10.111.111:8080"                               2020-02-06T14:00:19Z outbound frontpage-v1-57468c558c-8c9cb bookings:8080 " GET / HTTP11" 503 101.701µs "tcp://10.10.111.111:8080"

You can also change the output format to JSON, and use the jq command line tool to further filter or map the log entries, for example:

# Show pods with a specific user-agent
smm tap ns/smm-demo -o json | jq 'select(.request.userAgent=="fasthttp") | .source.name'

The output can be similar to:

"payments-v1-7c955bccdd-vt2pg"
"bookings-v1-7d8d76cd6b-f96tm"
"bookings-v1-7d8d76cd6b-f96tm"
"payments-v1-7c955bccdd-vt2pg"
"bookings-v1-7d8d76cd6b-f96tm"

2.5.8 - Managing Kafka clusters

The Streaming Data Manager dashboard is integrated into the Service Mesh Manager dashboard, allowing you to manage and overview your Apache Kafka deployments, including brokers, topics, ACLs, and more. For details on using the dashboard features related to Apache Kafka, see Dashboard.

2.5.9 - Istio resources

Calisti provides a UI in the dashboard where you can view and configure Istio custom resources with ease. Some examples of the usage of the Istio resources are traffic routing configurations, inbound and outbound mesh traffic configurations, Authorization Policy for workloads in the mesh configurations, and adding service entries.

The MENU > ISTIO RESOURCES page of the Service Mesh Manager web interface allows you to:

• View the Istio resources that are already configured
• Create new Istio resources using the templates provided in the dashboard easily
• Edit the existing Istio resources
• Delete the Istio resources
• Filter the list of resources with Namespace and the Type
• Validate your configuration in the YAML editor before applying

List Istio resources

To view the list of the Istio resources of your service mesh, navigate to MENU > ISTIO RESOURCES.

For each resource, the following information is shown:

• Name: The name of the resource.
• Namespace: The namespace the resource belongs to.
• Cluster: The cluster the resource belongs to. Mainly useful in multi-cluster scenarios.
• Type: Type of the Istio custom resources. Here is a list of the resource types:
  • AuthorizationPolicy
  • DestinationRule
  • Gateway
  • IstioMeshGateway
  • PeerAuthentication
  • VirtualServices

To view the details of a particular resource, click the edit icon at the end of the row.

Filter Istio resources

To filter the Istio resources of your service mesh, navigate to MENU > ISTIO RESOURCES.

On this page, you can filter the Istio resources by Namespace in which they exist and the Type of the resource. Once you select the fields by which you need to filter the resources, the matching results are displayed.

Note: You can filter the resources by multiple Namespace and resource Type.

2.5.9.1 - Create Istio resources

To create new Istio resources for your service mesh, navigate to MENU > ISTIO RESOURCES, click CREATE NEW, and select an Istio resource from the listed Type in the resource selector.

Depending on your selection, a YAML editor with a pre-populated resource template is displayed. Here, you can customize the YAML and validate the correctness of the syntax and content before creating the custom resource. For resource-specific details on creating the different resources, see the respective section on this page.

Authorization policy

Using the Authorization policy, you can add access control on workloads in the mesh. This policy supports CUSTOM, DENY, and ALLOW actions for access control. For more information, see the Istio documentation.

1. To create an Authorization policy in your service mesh, select the Authorization policy from the resource selector. An editor with the pre-populated template for the Authorization policy custom resource is displayed.

   

2. To choose a particular resource template in the Authorization policy, click on the Template dropdown.

   

3. Edit the selected template. To validate the resource’s correctness, click Validate icon.

4. To create and apply the Authorization policy, click Create.

Destination rule

Destination rule defines policies to configure:

• load balancing
• connection pool size from sidecar
• outlier detection
• load balancing with subset and sticky sessions

To learn more about how to create the destination rules for in-mesh traffic, see Circuit Breaking.

1. To create a Destination rule in your service mesh, select the Destination rule from the resource selector. An editor with the pre-populated template for the Destination rule custom resource is displayed.

   

2. To choose a particular resource template in the Destination rule, click on the Template dropdown.

   

3. Edit the selected template. To validate the resource correctness, click Validate icon.

4. To create and apply the Destination rule, click Create.

Gateway

The Gateway resource describes the port configuration of the gateway deployment that operates at the edge of the mesh and receives incoming or outgoing HTTP/TCP connections. The specification describes a set of ports that should be exposed, the type of protocol to use, TLS configuration – if any – of the exposed ports, and so on.

1. To create a Gateway resource in your service mesh, select Gateway from the resource selector. An editor with the pre-populated template for the Gateway resource is displayed.

   

2. To choose a particular resource template in Gateway, click on the Template dropdown.

   

3. Edit the selected template. To validate the resource’s correctness, click Validate icon.

4. To create and apply the Gateway resource, click Create.

Mesh gateway

Service Mesh Manager provides a custom resource called IstioMeshGateway. It uses a separate controller to reconcile gateways allowing you to use multiple gateways in multiple namespaces. That way, you can also control who can manage gateways, without having permissions to modify other parts of the Istio mesh configuration. To learn more about mesh gateway in Calisti see Gateways.

1. To create a Mesh gateway in your service mesh, select Mesh gateway from the resource selector. An editor with the pre-populated template for the Mesh gateway is displayed.

   

   Note: For more information refer Create ingress and Create egress gateways documentation

2. To choose a particular resource template in the Mesh gateway, click the Template dropdown.

   

3. Edit the selected template. To validate the resource correctness, click the Validate icon.

4. To create and apply the Mesh gateway, click Create.

Peer authentication

Peer authentication determines if and how the traffic is routed to the sidecar.

1. To create a Peer authentication in your service mesh, select Peer authentication from the resource selector. An editor with the pre-populated template for the Peer authentication is displayed.

   

2. To choose a particular resource template in Peer authentication, click on the Template dropdown.

   

3. Edit the selected template. To validate the resource’s correctness, click the Validate icon.

4. To create and apply the Peer authentication resource, click Create.

Virtual services

The VirtualService resource defines a set of traffic routing rules to apply when a host is addressed. Each routing rule defines matching criteria for the traffic of a specific protocol. If the traffic matches a routing rule, then it is sent to a named destination service defined in the registry.

1. To create a Virtual service in your service mesh, select Virtual services from the resource selector. An editor with the pre-populated template for the Virtual services is displayed.

   

2. To choose a particular resource template in Virtual service, click on the Template dropdown.

   

3. Edit the selected template. To validate the resource’s correctness, click the Validate icon.

4. To apply the Virtual services, click Create.

2.5.9.2 - Manage Istio resources

In this section, you can learn how to manage the Istio resources available in your service mesh.

Navigate to MENU > ISTIO RESOURCES to see the Istio resources in your service mesh. You can edit, delete, and validate individual Istio resources on this page.

Edit Istio resources

1. To edit a particular Istio resource in your service mesh, click the Edit icon at the end of the row.

2. Edit the selected resource, and validate the YAML.

3. To apply the resource, click Apply.

Delete Istio resources

1. To delete a particular Istio resource of your service mesh, click the Delete icon at the end of the row.

   

2. If you are absolutely sure that you want to delete this resource, click Delete on the pop-up.

   CAUTION:

    Deleting the resource is irreversible and cannot be undone, as Calisti doesn't store the old resource files.
   

Validate Istio resources

Calisti dashboard now provides a UI to edit the Istio resources. Calisti validates the correctness of the syntax and the data types of the YAML syntactically and semantically, so you can be sure that the YAML described is a valid Istio resource.

1. Create or edit an Istio resource.

2. Once done editing or while editing a resource YAML, you may see some validation errors. Click the Validate icon; if there are any errors, then you can see the error and line number at the top of the editor.

   

   While validating the YAML file, you can see the lines with error are underlined. To check the error, hover over the underlined lines, an error message is displayed, as shown in the following illustrations.

   

3. If you try to save the YAMl file with errors, then a pop-up with validation failed warning opens.
   

   To confirm your choice of continuing with errors and saving the YAML, click Confirm. Or click Cancel to fix the errors.

4. Fix the errors and click Apply or Create to save the resource.

2.5.10 - Configure the dashboard

2.5.10.1 - Exposing the Dashboard

By default, Service Mesh Manager relies on Kubernetes' built-in authentication and proxying capabilities to allow our users to access the Dashboard. In some cases, it makes sense to allow developers to access the Dashboard via a public URL, to make distributing Service Mesh Manager client binaries easier.

You can download the Service Mesh Manager client binaries from the login page:

Or alternatively, the deployment can use an OIDC-compliant External Provider for authentication so that there’s no need for downloading and installing the CLI binary.

Expose the dashboard

While planning to expose the dashboard, consider the following:

1. Does the Kubernetes cluster running Service Mesh Manager support LoadBalancer typed services natively? If not, see exposing via NodePort.
2. Where to terminate the TLS connections? (Should it be terminated by Istio inside the cluster, or should it be terminated by an external LoadBalancer?)
3. How to manage the TLS certificate for the dashboard? (Do you want to use Let’s Encrypt for certificates, or does your organization have its own certificate authority?)

For some of the examples, we assume that the externalDNS controller is installed and functional on the cluster. If not, make sure to manually set up the required DNS record based on your deployment.

This document covers a few scenarios to address the setups based on the answers to the previous questions.

Recommended setup

In this scenario, we are assuming that:

1. Your Kubernetes cluster supports LoadBalancer typed services to expose services externally.
2. You use Istio to terminate the TLS connections inside the cluster.
3. You want to use Let’s Encrypt to manage the certificates.
4. The externalDNS controller is operational on the cluster.

The dashboard will be exposed on the domain name smm.example.org. To expose Service Mesh Manager on that URL, add the following to the Service Mesh Manager ControlPlane resource:

cat > enable-dashboard-expose.yaml <<EOF
spec:
  smm:
   exposeDashboard:
      meshGateway:
        enabled: true
        service:
          annotations:
            external-dns.alpha.kubernetes.io/hostname: smm.example.org.
        tls:
          enabled: true
          letsEncrypt:
            dnsNames:
            - smm.example.org
            enabled: true
            # server: https://acme-staging-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory
EOF
kubectl patch controlplane --type=merge --patch "$(cat enable-dashboard-expose.yaml )" smm

• If you are using Service Mesh Manager in Operator Mode, then the Istio deployment is updated automatically.
• If you are using the imperative mode, run the smm operator reconcile command to apply the changes.

The dashboard is now available on the https://smm.example.org/ URL.

Note: When externalDNS is not present on the cluster, make sure that the external name of the MeshGateway service is assigned to the right DNS name. Otherwise, Certificate requests will fail. To check the IP address/name of the service, run the kubectl get service smm-ingressgateway-external --namespace smm-system command. The output should be similar to:

NAME                          TYPE           CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP                                                               PORT(S)                                      AGE
smm-ingressgateway-external   LoadBalancer   10.10.157.144   afd8bac546b1e46faab0e284fa0dc5da-580525876.eu-north-1.elb.amazonaws.com   15021:30566/TCP,80:32436/TCP,443:30434/TCP   20h

Terminate TLS on the LoadBalancer

To terminate TLS on the LoadBalancer, in the Service Mesh Manager ControlPlane resource you must set the .spec.smm.exposeDashboard.meshGateway.tls.enabled value to false.

If the Kubernetes Service requires additional annotations to enable TLS, add these annotations to the ControlPlane resource. For example, for AWS/EKS you can use the following settings to terminate TLS with AWS Certificate Manager:

cat > enable-dashboard-expose.yaml <<EOF
spec:
  smm:
   exposeDashboard:
      meshGateway:
        enabled: true
        service:
          annotations:
            service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-backend-protocol: http
            service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-ssl-cert: arn:aws:acm:{region}:{user id}:certificate/{id}
            service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-ssl-ports: "443"
            external-dns.alpha.kubernetes.io/hostname: smm.example.org.
        tls:
          enabled: true
          externalTermination: true
EOF
kubectl patch controlplane --type=merge --patch "$(cat enable-dashboard-expose.yaml )" smm

• If you are using Service Mesh Manager in Operator Mode, then the Istio deployment is updated automatically.
• If you are using the imperative mode, run the smm operator reconcile command to apply the changes.

Note: In the previous example, the externalTermination: true instructs Service Mesh Manager to expose a plain HTTP endpoint on port 443 so that the external LoadBalancer can terminate TLS for that port too.

Using NodePort

In this setup the LoadBalancer is managed externally. Each worker node will expose the set ports and you can create a LoadBalancer by pointing it to all the worker node’s relevant port.

To enable NodePort-based exposing of the SMM service, run the following command. This example exposes the HTTP on all worker node’s 40080 port, and HTTPS on port 40443.

Note: The HTTPS port is only available if the TLS settings are explicitly enabled, this example omits that part. Either use the TLS settings from the LoadBalancer example, or check the section on user-provided TLS settings.

cat > enable-dashboard-expose.yaml <<EOF
spec:
  smm:
   exposeDashboard:
      meshGateway:
        enabled: true
        service:
          type: NodePort
          nodePorts:
            http: 40080
            https: 40443
EOF
kubectl patch controlplane --type=merge --patch "$(cat enable-dashboard-expose.yaml )" smm

After that, you can access the Calisti dashboard on the https://<IP-address-of-the-Kubernetes-node>:40443 port.

Tip: You can also set up a LoadBalancer and configure to DNS provider to set a domain name that points to the nodeIP:nodePort of the Kubernetes node. How to do that depends on the Kubernetes and/or DNS provider you are using. Consult their documentation for details.

• If you are using Service Mesh Manager in Operator Mode, then the Istio deployment is updated automatically.
• If you are using the imperative mode, run the smm operator reconcile command to apply the changes.

Expose using custom TLS credentials

You can provide a custom TLS secret in the secret called my-own-secret in the smm-system namespace. The following command configures the system to use that for in-cluster TLS termination:

cat > enable-dashboard-expose.yaml <<EOF
spec:
  smm:
   exposeDashboard:
      meshGateway:
        enabled: true
        tls:
          enabled: true
          credentialName: "my-own-secret"
EOF
kubectl patch controlplane --type=merge --patch "$(cat enable-dashboard-expose.yaml )" smm

• If you are using Service Mesh Manager in Operator Mode, then the Istio deployment is updated automatically.
• If you are using the imperative mode, run the smm operator reconcile command to apply the changes.

Known limitations in HTTP access

As a security measure, Service Mesh Manager operates only over HTTPS when exposed via an external URL. Make sure that somewhere in the traffic chain some component (Istio or LoadBalancer) terminates the TLS connections, otherwise every login attempt to the dashboard will fail.

2.5.10.2 - OIDC authentication

Service Mesh Manager allows for authenticating towards an OIDC External Provider instead of relying on the kubeconfig based authentication. This is useful when your organization already has an existing OIDC Provider that is used for user authentication on the Kubernetes clusters.

Since Service Mesh Manager does not require the Kubernetes cluster to be relying on OIDC authentication, you (or the operator of the cluster) might need to set up additional Groups in the cluster (for details, see the Setting up user permissions).

If your organization uses a central authentication database which is not OIDC compliant, check out Dex. Dex can act as an OIDC provider and supports LDAP, GitHub, or any OAuth2 identity provider as a backend. For an example on setting up Service Mesh Manager to use GitHub authentication using Dex, see Using Dex for authentication.

Note: Even if OIDC is enabled in Service Mesh Manager, you can access Service Mesh Manager from the command line by running smm dashboard. This is a fallback authentication/access method in case the OIDC provider is down.

Prerequisites

Before starting to set up OIDC authentication, make sure that you have already:

• Exposed the Service Mesh Manager dashboard on an external domain name
• The dashboard is registered as an application in the OIDC provider (meaning that the callback URL is set there, the application id and application secret key are available).

Enable OIDC authentication

To enable the OIDC authentication, patch the ControlPlane resource with the following settings:

cat > oidc-enable.yaml <<EOF
spec:
  smm:
    auth:
      oidc:
        enabled: true
        client:
          id: ${OIDC_CLIENT_ID}
          issuerURL: https://${IDENTITY_PROVIDER_EXTERNAL_URL}
          secret: ${OIDC_CLIENT_SECRET}
EOF

Where:

• ${OIDC_CLIENT_ID} is the client id obtained from the External OIDC Provider of your organization.
• ${OIDC_CLIENT_SECRET} is the client secret obtained from the External OIDC Provider of your organization.
• ${IDENTITY_PROVIDER_EXTERNAL_URL} is the URL of the External OIDC Provider of your organization.

• If you are using Service Mesh Manager in Operator Mode, then the Istio deployment is updated automatically.
• If you are using the imperative mode, run the smm operator reconcile command to apply the changes.

After this change, the dashboard will allow logging in using an External OIDC Provider:

Set up user and group mappings

After completing the previous step, the users will be able to authenticate via OIDC. However, Service Mesh Manager needs to map them to Kubernetes users. As Service Mesh Manager uses Kubernetes RBAC for access control, it relies on the same mapping as the Kubernetes API Server’s OIDC authentication backend.

You can use the following settings in the ControlPlane resource :

spec:
  smm:
    auth:
      oidc:
        username:
            claim:  # Claim to take the username from
            prefix: # Append this prefix to all usernames
        groups:
            claim:  # Claim to take the user's groups from
            prefix: # Append this prefix to all group names the user has
        requiredClaims:
            <CLAIM>: "<VALUE>"  # Only allow authentication if the given claim has the specified value

If the target cluster has OIDC enabled, the following table helps mapping the OIDC options of the API server to the settings of Service Mesh Manager:

• If you are using Service Mesh Manager in Operator Mode, then the Istio deployment is updated automatically.
• If you are using the imperative mode, run the smm operator reconcile command to apply the changes.

Set up user permissions

Note: This step is only required if the target cluster does not already have OIDC authentication set up. If the Kubernetes cluster’s OIDC authentication settings are matching the ones set in the ControlPlane resource, no further action is needed.

By default, when using OIDC authentication, users and groups cannot modify the resources in the target cluster, so you need to create the ClusterRoleBinding right for these Groups or Users.

The groups a given user belongs to is shown in the right hand menu on the user interface:

In this example, the username is oidc:test@example.org and the user belongs to only one group, called oidc:example-org:test.

If the Kubernetes Cluster is not using OIDC for authentication, create the relevant ClusterRoleBindings against these Groups and Users.

2.5.10.2.1 - Using Dex for authentication

Dex is an identity service that uses OpenID Connect to drive authentication for other apps.

Dex acts as a portal to other identity providers through “connectors.” This lets Dex defer authentication to LDAP servers, SAML providers, or established identity providers like GitHub, Google, and Active Directory. Clients write their authentication logic once to talk to Dex, then Dex handles the protocols for a given backend.

This section shows you how to set up GitHub authentication using Service Mesh Manager. To set up other authentication backends such as Active Directory or LDAP, see the DEX Connectors documentation.

Enable GitHub authentication

As GitHub is an OAuth 2 provider, Service Mesh Manager requires a bridge between OAuth 2 (or any other authentication backend) and OIDC.

Prerequisites

Before starting to set up GitHub authentication to Service Mesh Manager, make sure that you have already:

• Exposed the Service Mesh Manager dashboard to a public, ssl-protected URL.
• Installed external-dns on the cluster for registering public DNS records.
• Registered an OAuth 2 App in your GitHub account via this URL: https://github.com/settings/applications/new
• Installed a recent version of helm on your computer.

You need the following information to follow this guide:

• GITHUB_CLIENT_ID: The Client ID from the GitHub OAuth 2 registration.
• GITHUB_CLIENT_SECRET: The Client Secret from the GitHub OAuth 2 registration.
• GITHUB_ORG_NAME: The name of the GitHub organization to authenticate against. If you want to support multiple organizations, consult the Dex manual.
• GITHUB_ADMIN_TEAM_NAME: The name of the GitHub team that contains the users who receive administrative privileges.
• DEX_EXTERNAL_URL: The URL where Dex will be exposed. This must be separate from the dashboard URL.
• SMM_DASHBOARD_URL: The URL where the Service Mesh Manager dashboard is exposed.
• OIDC_CLIENT_SECRET: The secret to be used between Dex and the Service Mesh Manager authentication backend (can be any random string).

To follow the examples, export these values as environment variables from your terminal, as these will be needed in multiple steps:

export GITHUB_CLIENT_ID=<***>
export GITHUB_CLIENT_SECRET=<***>
export GITHUB_ORG_NAME=my-github-org
export GITHUB_ADMIN_TEAM_NAME=admin
export DEX_EXTERNAL_URL=dex.example.org
export SMM_DASHBOARD_URL=smm.example.org
export OIDC_CLIENT_SECRET=$(openssl rand -base64 32) # or any random string

Create namespace for Dex

Dex will be installed into its own namespace for isolation. Create the namespace for it:

kubectl create ns dex

Dex will be exposed externally using Istio, so enable Istio sidecar injection on the namespace:

kubectl label ns dex istio.io/rev=cp-v115x.istio-system

Create MeshGateway for Dex

GitHub needs to access Dex to invoke the OAuth 2 callback, so that Dex can understand what was the result of the authentication on the GitHub side.

Create an externally available MeshGateway:

cat > dex-meshgateway.yaml <<EOF
apiVersion: servicemesh.cisco.com/v1alpha1
kind: IstioMeshGateway
metadata:
    labels:
        app.kubernetes.io/instance: dex
        app.kubernetes.io/name: dex-ingress
    name: dex-ingress
    namespace: dex
spec:
    istioControlPlane:
        name: cp-v115x
        namespace: istio-system
    deployment:
      metadata:
        labels:
          app.kubernetes.io/instance: dex
          app.kubernetes.io/name: dex-ingress
          gateway-name: dex-ingress
          gateway-type: ingress
      replicas:
        max: 1
        min: 1
        count: 1
    service:
      metadata:
        annotations:
          external-dns.alpha.kubernetes.io/hostname: ${DEX_EXTERNAL_URL}.
      ports:
      - name: http2
        port: 80
        protocol: TCP
        targetPort: 8080
      - name: https
        port: 443
        protocol: TCP
        targetPort: 8443
      type: LoadBalancer
    type: ingress
---
apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1beta1
kind: Gateway
metadata:
  labels:
    app.kubernetes.io/instance: dex
    app.kubernetes.io/name: dex-ingress
  name: dex-ingress
  namespace: dex
spec:
  selector:
    app.kubernetes.io/instance: dex
    app.kubernetes.io/name: dex-ingress
  servers:
  - hosts:
    - '*'
    port:
      name: http
      number: 80
      protocol: HTTP
  - hosts:
    - '*'
    port:
      name: https
      number: 443
      protocol: HTTPS
    tls:
      credentialName: dex-ingress-tls
      mode: SIMPLE
---
apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1beta1
kind: VirtualService
metadata:
  labels:
    app.kubernetes.io/instance: dex
    app.kubernetes.io/name: dex-ingress
  name: dex-ingress
  namespace: dex
spec:
  gateways:
    - dex-ingress
  hosts:
    - '*'
  http:
  - match:
    - uri:
        prefix: /
    route:
    - destination:
        host: dex
        port:
          number: 80
EOF
kubectl apply -f dex-meshgateway.yaml

Get certificates for Dex

The secret referenced in the MeshGateway resource is not yet available. To secure the communication between the end-user’s browser and your Dex installation, enable the Let’s Encrypt support for gateways in Service Mesh Manager:

cat > certs.yaml <<EOF
---
apiVersion: cert-manager.io/v1
kind: Issuer
metadata:
  name: dex-issuer
  namespace: dex
spec:
  acme:
    email: noreply@cisco.com
    preferredChain: ""
    privateKeySecretRef:
      name: smm-letsencrypt-issuer
    server: https://acme-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory
    solvers:
    - http01:
        ingress:
          class: nginx
---
apiVersion: cert-manager.io/v1
kind: Certificate
metadata:
  name: dex-tls
  namespace: dex
  annotations:
    acme.smm.cisco.com/gateway-selector: |
      {
        "app.kubernetes.io/instance": "dex",
        "app.kubernetes.io/name": "dex-ingress"
      }
spec:
  dnsNames:
  - ${DEX_EXTERNAL_URL}
  duration: 2160h0m0s
  issuerRef:
    group: cert-manager.io
    kind: Issuer
    name: dex-issuer
  privateKey:
    algorithm: RSA
    encoding: PKCS1
    size: 2048
  renewBefore: 360h0m0s
  secretName: dex-ingress-tls
  usages:
  - server auth
  - client auth
EOF
kubectl apply -f certs.yaml

After executing the previous commands, check that the Certificate has been successfully issued by running the kubectl get certificate command. The output should be similar to:

NAME      READY   SECRET            AGE
dex-tls   True    dex-ingress-tls   24h

If the READY column shows True, then the Certificate has been issued. If not, refer to the Cert Manager documentation for troubleshooting the issue.

Provision Dex

Now you can install Dex onto the namespace using helm. First create a file called dex-values.yaml for the Dex installation:

cat > dex-values.yaml <<EOF
---
config:
  issuer: https://${DEX_EXTERNAL_URL}
  storage:
    type: kubernetes
    config:
      inCluster: true

  connectors:
    - type: github
      id: github
      name: GitHub
      config:
        clientID: $GITHUB_CLIENT_ID
        clientSecret: "$GITHUB_CLIENT_SECRET"
        redirectURI: https://${DEX_EXTERNAL_URL}/callback
        orgs:
        - name: $GITHUB_ORG_NAME
        loadAllGroups: true

  oauth2:
    skipApprovalScreen: true

  staticClients:
    - id: smm-app
      redirectURIs:
        - "https://${SMM_DASHBOARD_URL}/auth/callback"
      name: 'Cisco Service Mesh Manager'
      secret: ${OIDC_CLIENT_SECRET}

service:
  enabled: true
  ports:
    http:
      port: 80

    https:
      port: 443
EOF

Run the following commands to install Dex using these values:

helm repo add dex https://charts.dexidp.io
helm install -n dex dex -f dex-values.yaml dex/dex

Verify that Dex has started successfully by running the kubectl get pods -n dex command. The output should be similar to:

NAME                           READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
dex-6d879bb86d-pxtvm           2/2     Running   1          20m
dex-ingress-6885b4f747-c5l96   1/1     Running   0          24m

Configure SMM to use OIDC provider

Enable Dex as an OIDC provider to Service Mesh Manager by patching the ControlPlane resource:

cat > smm-oidc-enable.yaml <<EOF
spec:
  smm:
    auth:
      oidc:
        enabled: true
        client:
          id: smm-app
          issuerURL: https://${DEX_EXTERNAL_URL}
          secret: ${OIDC_CLIENT_SECRET}
        groups:
          claim: groups
          prefix: 'oidc:'
        username:
          claim: email
          prefix: 'oidc:'
EOF
kubectl patch --type=merge --patch "$(cat smm-oidc-enable.yaml )" controlplane smm

• If you are using Service Mesh Manager in Operator Mode, then the Istio deployment is updated automatically.
• If you are using the imperative mode, run the smm operator reconcile command to apply the changes.

Create user mapping

After logging in, the users will be mapped to have the:

• Username of oidc:<email-of-the-github-user>, and the
• groups of oidc:$$GITHUB_ORG_NAME:<team-name> for each of the GitHub Teams the user is a member of.

By default, these users and groups cannot modify the resources in the target cluster, so you need to create the ClusterRoleBinding right for these Groups or Users. For example, to grant administrative access to the users in the $GITHUB_ADMIN_TEAM_NAME GitHub Team, run the following command:

cat > allow-admin-access.yaml <<EOF
---
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: ClusterRoleBinding
metadata:
  name: oidc-admin-access
subjects:
- kind: Group
  name: 'oidc:$GITHUB_ORG_NAME:$GITHUB_ADMIN_TEAM_NAME'
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
roleRef:
  kind: ClusterRole
  name: cluster-admin
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
EOF
kubectl apply -f allow-admin-access.yaml

The groups a given user belongs to is shown in the right hand menu on the user interface:

In this example, the username is oidc:test@example.org and the user belongs to only one group, called oidc:example-org:test.

Verify login

To test that the login works, navigate to the URL where the Service Mesh Manager dashboard is exposed ($SMM_DASHBOARD_URL), and select Sign in with OIDC.

2.6 - Deploy custom application into the mesh

After you have one or more clusters attached to the mesh, here are some best practices to deploy applications on multiple clusters.

Deploy demo application

If you just want to get started with any demo application in a multi-cluster mesh, the easiest is to install the built-in Service Mesh Manager demo application.

1. You can deploy the demo application from a command line.

   • The following command deploys every service of the demo application to the primary Calisti cluster.

     smm demoapp install
     

   • To deploy the demo application in a distributed way to multiple clusters, run:

     smm demoapp install -s frontpage,catalog,bookings
     smm -c <PEER_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG_FILE> demoapp install -s movies,payments,notifications,analytics,database --peer
     

   After installation, the demo application automatically starts generating traffic, and the dashboard shows you the data flow. (If it doesn’t, run the smm demoapp load start command, or Generate load on the UI. If you want to stop generating traffic, run smm demoapp load stop.)

2. Open the dashboard and look around.

   smm dashboard
   

Deploy custom application

Here is how you can deploy your own application into the service mesh with Service Mesh Manager. The procedure covers both single-cluster and multi-cluster meshes.

1. Create the namespace where you would like to run your applications on every cluster. The examples use the test namespace:

   kubectl create ns test
   

2. In the cluster where Service Mesh Manager is installed, enable sidecar injection in that namespace. This places an istio.io/rev label and sets it to the appropriate Istio control plane. Use one of the following methods to enable sidecar injection:

   • Use the Service Mesh Manager CLI tool:

     smm sidecar-proxy auto-inject on test
     

     If there are multiple control planes, use the --controlplane <name-of-the-controlplane> flag to specify which one to use. Typically that’s the one your other applications use, or the newer one if you are testing application deployment after a Calisti update that included a new Istio control plane.

   • Use kubectl:

     kubectl label ns test istio.io/rev=cp-v115x.istio-system
     

   • Use the Service Mesh Manager dashboard.

   • Using GitOps methods: See Restart Demo applications for an example.

   In a multi-cluster mesh, Service Mesh Manager adds the same label to this namespace on all other clusters. (If not, check the istio-operator pod logs on the particular cluster for any potential issues.)

3. Deploy your application on the clusters as you would usually do.

   In a multi-cluster mesh make sure to deploy all Kubernetes service resources on all clusters attached to the mesh, even if pods are only present on a subset of the clusters. This is needed for Istio to do proper routing across clusters.

   For an example on how to deploy the Calisti demo application using GitOps methods, see the Service Mesh Manager GitOps installation guides. - Single-cluster scenario - Multi-cluster mesh scenario

4. Make sure that sidecar pods are indeed injected to your application pods.

   If not, check the official Istio documentation for potential issues.

5. Send traffic to your applications, then open the dashboard and look around.

   smm dashboard
   

2.7 - Mesh Management

2.7.1 - Multi-cluster - single mesh

Multi-cluster overview

Service Mesh Manager is able to construct an Istio service mesh that spans multiple clusters. In this scenario you combine multiple clusters into a single service mesh that you can manage from either a single or from multiple Istio control planes.

Single mesh scenarios are best suited to use cases where clusters are configured together, sharing resources, and are generally treated as one infrastructural component within an organization.

Istio clusters and SMM clusters