Istio Lab

My personal lab to experiment with multi-cluster Istio installations (primary-remote).

Requirements

• Linux OS(*)
• Docker
• KinD
• kubectl
• istioctl

(*) On macOS, spin up a Lima VM using the provided lima-istio-dev.yaml template:

$ limactl start --name=default ./lima-istio-dev.yaml
INFO[0001] SSH Local Port: 60022
...
INFO[0173] READY. Run `lima` to open the shell.
INFO[0173] Message from the instance "default":         
To run `docker` on the host, run the following commands:
------
docker context create lima-default --docker "host=unix:///Users/myuser/.lima/default/sock/docker.sock"
docker context use lima-default
------

Set Up

Run the setup-clusters.sh script. It creates three KinD clusters:

• One Istio primary (primary1)
• Two Istio remotes (remote1, remote2)

kubectl contexts are named respectively:

• kind-primary1
• kind-remote1
• kind-remote2

All three clusters are in a single Istio network network1.

The control plane manages the mesh ID mesh1.

Istiod (pilot), in the primary cluster, is exposed to remote clusters over an Istio east-west gateway backed by a Kubernetes Service of type LoadBalancer. The IP address of this Service is assigned and advertised by MetalLB (L2 mode).