Meshery allows you to install any service mesh with a single click:

1. Select Istio from the Management menu

2. In the Istio management page:

• Type istio-system into the namespace field
• Click the (+) icon on the Install card and select Istio 1.7.3 to install the latest version of Istio

Check for successful installation

Istio has been deployed in a separate Kubernetes namespace istio-system. To check if Istio is along with all the pieces that have been deployed, execute the following:

kubectl get all -n istio-system

The details of your configuration will also be reflected on the Meshery dashboard:

To get better acquainted with Istio and Meshery, we can now run a sample application to implement and work with the Istio's features:

The Bookinfo application is installed with the Istio package and can be deployed with a single click using Meshery. The application displays information about a book, similar to a single catalog entry of an online book store. Displayed on the page is a description of the book, book details (ISBN, number of pages, and so on), and a few book reviews. The Bookinfo sample application has no dependency on Istio and can be deployed on any service mesh but for the purpose of this tutorial session, we will be using Istio.

The application uses sidecars proxy, which can be either manually or automatically injected into the pods. Your kubernetes environment should support either, v1,v1beta1 or the v1beta2 APIs.

Note : You can confirm the API version by executing: kubectl api-versions | grep admissionregistration

1. The default Istio installation uses automatic sidecar injection. To host the application, we need to label the namespace that we are using:

• Click on (+) under Apply Service Mesh Configuration
• Choose Automatic Sidecar Injection

1. Ensure that your namespace has been enabled with Istio-Injection:

kubectl get namespace -L istio-injection

The output should look like this:

1. Navigate to the Istio Management page on Meshery and enter default in the Namespace field.

2. Select the Bookinfo application in the Sample Application drop down menu.

When the application has been installed, you will receive a pop-up notification:

Check up on your Sample Application

The virtual service and gateway needed to expose the BookInfo's productpage application in the default namespace have now been deployed. The environment will take about a minute to activate and the terminal will be activated for your use immediately after.

Before continuing to the next step, perform these verification checks to ensure that your sample app is eady to be deployed:

• Verify that the deployments are all in a state of AVAILABLE before continuing. watch kubectl get deployment
• Choose a service, for instance productpage, and view it's container configuration: kubectl get po
• Examine details of the services: kubectl describe svc productpage

The components deployed on the service mesh by default are not exposed outside the cluster. An Ingress Gateway is deployed as a Kubernetes service of type LoadBalancer (or NodePort). To make Bookinfo accessible external to the cluster, we have to create an Istio-Ingress Gateway for the Bookinfo application and also define an Istio VirtualService with the routes we need.

Set up the Ingress pod

1. Expose the Ingress gateway by running: kubectl get svc istio-ingressgateway -n istio-system -o yaml

2. Get the name of the Istio-Ingress gateway: kubectl get pods -n istio-system

Sample Output:

Your environment, including the Ingress gateway, will be configured automatically. This may take upto a minute.

While the set up is being performed :

1. Click on (+), next to the Meshery Server tab
2. Choose Open New Terminal

3. Run:

   minikube tunnel

Ingress ports

Access the external port of the Ingress pod by running: kubectl get service istio-ingressgateway -n istio-system -o wide

You may now:

1. Access the first port by running: kubectl get service istio-ingressgateway -n istio-system --template='{{(index .spec.ports 1).nodePort}}'

This will print out the first port on your terminal.

• Click on icon, next to the Meshery Server tab
• Enter the port number before clicking on Display Port.
• To view the product page, you will have to append /productpage to the url.

You should now be able to see the BookInfo dashboard on the screen

Note: You can also obtain the complete URL by running: echo "http://$(kubectl get nodes --selector=kubernetes.io/role!=master -o jsonpath={.items[0].status.addresses[?\(@.type==\"InternalIP\"\)].address}):$(kubectl get svc istio-ingressgateway -n istio-system -o jsonpath='{.spec.ports[1].nodePort}')/productpage"