DEV Community

Cover image for Try Istio, Kiali, Grafana, and Jaeger using Amazon EKS!
AWS Community Builders profile image Minoru Onda
Minoru Onda for AWS Community Builders

Posted on • Updated on

Try Istio, Kiali, Grafana, and Jaeger using Amazon EKS!

#eks #istio #beginners #aws

Recently we don't have a day that we never hear about "service mesh" at all.
The best way to understand misterious technology is trying it out by youeself.

We are so lucky to be born in this rich age that we have Amazon EKS, yes we can try cloud native tools whenever we like!

In this article I show you how to get started with Istio, one of the most popular OSS in the service mesh world.
Don't forget to try related tools for observability in the later part here, such as Kiali, Grafana, and Jaeger.

(For Japanese I have the same post here)
https://qiita.com/minorun365/items/f02eaa0786536741223a

What to prepare

  • a PC for hands-on
  • a CLI terminal app
  • an AWS account

Istio & Kiali hands-on

Install tools

Install AWS CLI.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ja_jp/cli/latest/userguide/getting-started-install.html

Initial setup for AWS CLI and register your AWS account.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ja_jp/cli/latest/userguide/getting-started-quickstart.html

Execute below in your terminal app.



$ aws configure
AWS Access Key ID [None]: ********
AWS Secret Access Key [None]: ********
Default region name [None]: ap-northeast-1
Default output format [None]: json
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

You can check your access key ID and a secret via AWS Management Console.

スクリーンショット 2022-06-11 22.10.10.png

Install eksctl and kubectl. It's easy to use Homebrew.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ja_jp/eks/latest/userguide/eksctl.html

https://kubernetes.io/ja/docs/tasks/tools/install-kubectl/

Create EKS Cluster

Execute command for creating EKS cluster via terminal.



$ eksctl create cluster --name "CLUSTER NAME AS YOU LIKE"
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Enjoy coffee for 20 minutes so you can get a list of your woker nodes.



$ kubectl get node
NAME                                                STATUS   ROLES    AGE   VERSION
ip-192-168-26-107.ap-northeast-1.compute.internal   Ready    <none>   13m   v1.22.6-eks-7d68063
ip-192-168-73-174.ap-northeast-1.compute.internal   Ready    <none>   13m   v1.22.6-eks-7d68063
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Install Istio

The official website of Istio provides us fabulous "Getting Started" guide so we use it here.

https://istio.io/latest/docs/setup/getting-started/

Download the latest Istio. 1.14.1 in this example.



$ curl -L https://istio.io/downloadIstio | sh -
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Move Istio directory you downloaded.



$ cd istio-1.14.1
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Add an environment variable into your PC.



$ export PATH=$PWD/bin:$PATH
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Install istiocel.



$ istioctl install --set profile=demo -y
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Don't forget to check your Istio version.



$ istioctl version
client version: 1.14.1
control plane version: 1.14.1
data plane version: 1.14.1 (2 proxies)
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Enable namespace setting for Istio on your EKS cluster.



$ kubectl label namespace default istio-injection=enabled
namespace/default labeled
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Deploy sample app on EKS

Deploy sample app named "bookinfo" on your EKS cluster.



$ kubectl apply -f samples/bookinfo/platform/kube/bookinfo.yaml
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Check the service you deployed.



$ kubectl get services

NAME          TYPE        CLUSTER-IP       EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)    AGE
details       ClusterIP   10.100.124.27    <none>        9080/TCP   4m14s
kubernetes    ClusterIP   10.100.0.1       <none>        443/TCP    49m
productpage   ClusterIP   10.100.251.75    <none>        9080/TCP   4m13s
ratings       ClusterIP   10.100.54.25     <none>        9080/TCP   4m14s
reviews       ClusterIP   10.100.249.201   <none>        9080/TCP   4m13s
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Wait a minute and find your pods waking.



$ kubectl get pods

NAME                              READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
details-v1-7d88846999-j97r2       2/2     Running   0          98s
productpage-v1-7795568889-vzg9j   2/2     Running   0          98s
ratings-v1-754f9c4975-btfk9       2/2     Running   0          98s
reviews-v1-55b668fc65-rg2ft       2/2     Running   0          98s
reviews-v2-858f99c99-dkmmk        2/2     Running   0          98s
reviews-v3-7886dd86b9-m9xqh       2/2     Running   0          98s
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Execute an command below on your pod for "ratings" app and you may get title section of an HTML page.



$ kubectl exec "$(kubectl get pod -l app=ratings -o jsonpath='{.items[0].metadata.name}')" -c ratings -- curl -sS productpage:9080/productpage | grep -o "<title>.*</title>"
<title>Simple Bookstore App</title>
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Enable external access to sample app

Deploy Ingress Gateway on you EKS Cluster.



$ kubectl apply -f samples/bookinfo/networking/bookinfo-gateway.yaml
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Check if there is no poblems on your service mesh.



$ istioctl analyze
✔ No validation issues found when analyzing namespace: default.
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Confirm an External IP of the Ingress Gateway service.



$ kubectl get svc istio-ingressgateway -n istio-system
NAME                   TYPE           CLUSTER-IP     EXTERNAL-IP                                                                    PORT(S)                                                                      AGE
istio-ingressgateway   LoadBalancer   10.100.8.158   ********.ap-northeast-1.elb.amazonaws.com   15021:32244/TCP,80:31172/TCP,443:32028/TCP,31400:32681/TCP,15443:30730/TCP   29m
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Set environment variables for Ingress.



$ export INGRESS_HOST=$(kubectl -n istio-system get service istio-ingressgateway -o jsonpath='{.status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].hostname}')
$ export INGRESS_PORT=$(kubectl -n istio-system get service istio-ingressgateway -o jsonpath='{.spec.ports[?(@.name=="http2")].port}')
$ export SECURE_INGRESS_PORT=$(kubectl -n istio-system get service istio-ingressgateway -o jsonpath='{.spec.ports[?(@.name=="https")].port}')
$ export GATEWAY_URL=$INGRESS_HOST:$INGRESS_PORT
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Check a combination of external host name and port number.



$ echo "$GATEWAY_URL"
********.ap-northeast-1.elb.amazonaws.com:80
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Try external access.



$ open http://$GATEWAY_URL/productpage
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Got it! You can access bookinfo app via your web browser.

スクリーンショット 2022-06-12 0.04.34.png

Get o11y with dashboards

Deploy monitoring add-ons like Kiali and Grafana.



$ kubectl apply -f samples/addons
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Execute below and wait for deploying Kiali.



$ kubectl rollout status deployment/kiali -n istio-systemWaiting for deployment "kiali" rollout to finish: 0 of 1 updated replicas are available...
deployment "kiali" successfully rolled out
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Then launch Kiali.



$ istioctl dashboard kiali
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

You may successfully access to Kiali via web browser.

スクリーンショット 2022-06-12 0.05.00.png

Open "Graph" in left columun and change namespace to "Select all" then you can see your service mesh graphically.

スクリーンショット 2022-06-12 0.12.40.png

Grafana & Jaeger hands-on

You may be wise to find that you already have famous monitoring tools in samples/addons you installed for Kiali.

  • Prometheus
  • Grafana
  • Jaeger
  • Zipkin

Now you've deployed above so try to launch them.

Try Grafana

First launch Grafana, OSS for monitoring dashboard.



$ istioctl dashboard grafana
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

You can access preset dashboard for Istio, clicking Dashboard > Browse in left pane.
Try to open "Istio Control Plane Dashboard.”

スクリーンショット 2022-06-12 14.27.50.png

Try Jaeger

Next try Jeager, OSS for distributed tracing.
Enable tracing.



istioctl install --set meshConfig.enableTracing=true
This will install the Istio 1.14.1 default profile with ["Istio core" "Istiod" "Ingress gateways"] components into the cluster. Proceed? (y/N) y
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Launch Jaegar.



$ istioctl dashboard jaeger
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Set any service in left pane and search traces.

スクリーンショット 2022-06-12 14.37.14.png

You can find details of a trace if you click a marker of the trace in a graph in right pane.

スクリーンショット 2022-06-12 14.38.18.png

For next steps

Next I'm excited to try "Next steps" contents in Istio official page.
https://istio.io/latest/docs/setup/getting-started/#next-steps

Of cource, I'm really interested in trying AWS App Mesh as well!

When you quit this hands-on, clean up your environment as below.

  • Delete your EKS cluster


$ eksctl delete cluster --name "YOUR CLUSTER NAME"
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode
  • Clear your environment variables


$ unset INGRESS_HOST
$ unset INGRESS_PORT
$ unset SECURE_INGRESS_PORT
$ unset GATEWAY_URL
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Top comments (0)

Read next

litlyx profile image

We launched SupaCharts! Visualize Beautiful Charts from your Supabase Data.

Antonio | CEO at Litlyx.com -

judith677 profile image

#87 — Merge Data of The Same Group

Judith-Excel-Sharing -

luqmanbello profile image

Building Production-Grade ECS Anywhere Infrastructure with Custom Capacity Providers

Luqman Bello -

mikeyoung44 profile image

Unlocking Search Relevance: Large Language Models Power Pinterest Discovery

Mike Young -