Upgrading Anthos Service Mesh on GKE

This guide explains how to upgrade Anthos Service Mesh from version 1.4.5+ to version 1.4.10 on Google Kubernetes Engine. If you want to upgrade to Anthos Service Mesh 1.5, see the 1.5 version of Upgrading Anthos Service Mesh on GKE.

Caution: Upgrading is a disruptive action on your cluster, and you must plan accordingly.

Redeploying the Anthos Service Mesh control plane components takes about 5 to 10 minutes to complete. Additionally, you need to inject new sidecar proxies in all of your workloads so they are updated with the current Anthos Service Mesh version. The time it takes to update the sidecar proxies depends on many factors, such as the number of pods, the number of nodes, deployment scaling settings, pod disruption budgets, and other configuration settings. A rough estimate of the time that it takes to update the sidecar proxies is 100 pods per minute.

Preparing for the upgrade

This section outlines the steps that you take to upgrade Anthos Service Mesh.

1. Review the Supported features and this upgrade guide to become familiar with the features and the upgrade process.

2. Review your authorization policies to see if they need to be updated.

3. If you enabled optional features when you installed the previous version of Anthos Service Mesh by adding --set values flags to the istioctl apply command line, you need to use the same flags when you run istioctl apply to upgrade to 1.4.10.

4. If you enabled optional features when you installed the previous version of Anthos Service Mesh by adding the -f flag to the istioctl apply command line to specify a YAML file, you must specify the same file (or a file with the same content) when you run istioctl apply to upgrade to 1.4.10.

   Caution: Omitting --set values flags or the -f flag with the YAML file results in a successful installation. However, it has a different configuration than you intended because the omitted values are reset back to their defaults when Anthos Service Mesh is redeployed.

5. Schedule a downtime. Upgrading can take up to 1 hour, depending on the scale of the cluster. Note that this doesn't include the time that you need to redeploy workloads to update sidecar proxies.

Setting project and cluster defaults

1. Get the project ID of the project that the cluster was created in:

   gcloud

   gcloud projects list

   Console

   1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Dashboard page:

      Go to the Dashboard page

   2. Click the Select from drop-down list at the top of the page. In the Select from window that appears, select your project. The project ID is displayed on the project Dashboard Project info card.

2. Create an environment variable for the project ID:

   export PROJECT_ID=YOUR_PROJECT_ID

3. Create an environment variable for the project number:

   export PROJECT_NUMBER=$(gcloud projects describe ${PROJECT_ID} --format="value(projectNumber)")

4. Set the default project ID for the Google Cloud CLI:

   gcloud config set project ${PROJECT_ID}
   

5. Create the following environment variables:

   • Set the cluster name:

     export CLUSTER_NAME=YOUR_CLUSTER_NAME

   • Set the CLUSTER_LOCATION to either your cluster zone or cluster region:

     export CLUSTER_LOCATION=YOUR_ZONE_OR_REGION

   • Set the workload pool.

     export WORKLOAD_POOL=${PROJECT_ID}.svc.id.goog

   • Set the mesh ID.

     export MESH_ID="proj-${PROJECT_NUMBER}"

6. Set the default zone or region for the Google Cloud CLI.

   • If you have a single-zone cluster, set the default zone:

     gcloud config set compute/zone ${CLUSTER_LOCATION}

   • If you have a regional cluster, set the default region:

     gcloud config set compute/region ${CLUSTER_LOCATION}

Setting credentials and permissions

1. Get authentication credentials to interact with the cluster:

   gcloud container clusters get-credentials ${CLUSTER_NAME}

2. Grant cluster admin permissions to the current user. You need these permissions to create the necessary role based access control (RBAC) rules for Anthos Service Mesh:

   kubectl create clusterrolebinding cluster-admin-binding \
     --clusterrole=cluster-admin \
     --user="$(gcloud config get-value core/account)"

   If you see the "cluster-admin-binding" already exists error, you can safely ignore it and continue with the existing cluster-admin-binding.

Downloading the installation file

Linux

Download the Anthos Service Mesh installation file to your current working directory:

curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/gke-release/asm/istio-1.4.10-asm.18-linux.tar.gz

Download the signature file and use openssl to verify the signature:

curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/gke-release/asm/istio-1.4.10-asm.18-linux.tar.gz.1.sig
openssl dgst -verify - -signature istio-1.4.10-asm.18-linux.tar.gz.1.sig istio-1.4.10-asm.18-linux.tar.gz <<'EOF'
-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----
MFkwEwYHKoZIzj0CAQYIKoZIzj0DAQcDQgAEWZrGCUaJJr1H8a36sG4UUoXvlXvZ
wQfk16sxprI2gOJ2vFFggdq3ixF2h4qNBt0kI7ciDhgpwS8t+/960IsIgw==
-----END PUBLIC KEY-----
EOF

The expected output is: Verified OK

Mac OS

Download the Anthos Service Mesh installation file to your current working directory:

curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/gke-release/asm/istio-1.4.10-asm.18-osx.tar.gz

Download the signature file and use openssl to verify the signature:

curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/gke-release/asm/istio-1.4.10-asm.18-osx.tar.gz.1.sig
openssl dgst -sha256 -verify /dev/stdin -signature istio-1.4.10-asm.18-osx.tar.gz.1.sig istio-1.4.10-asm.18-osx.tar.gz <<'EOF'
-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----
MFkwEwYHKoZIzj0CAQYIKoZIzj0DAQcDQgAEWZrGCUaJJr1H8a36sG4UUoXvlXvZ
wQfk16sxprI2gOJ2vFFggdq3ixF2h4qNBt0kI7ciDhgpwS8t+/960IsIgw==
-----END PUBLIC KEY-----
EOF

The expected output is: Verified OK

Windows

Download the Anthos Service Mesh installation file to your current working directory:

curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/gke-release/asm/istio-1.4.10-asm.18-win.zip

Download the signature file and use openssl to verify the signature:

curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/gke-release/asm/istio-1.4.10-asm.18-win.zip.1.sig
openssl dgst -verify - -signature istio-1.4.10-asm.18-win.zip.1.sig istio-1.4.10-asm.18-win.zip <<'EOF'
-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----
MFkwEwYHKoZIzj0CAQYIKoZIzj0DAQcDQgAEWZrGCUaJJr1H8a36sG4UUoXvlXvZ
wQfk16sxprI2gOJ2vFFggdq3ixF2h4qNBt0kI7ciDhgpwS8t+/960IsIgw==
-----END PUBLIC KEY-----
EOF

The expected output is: Verified OK

1. Extract the contents of the file to any location on your file system. For example, to extract the contents to the current working directory:

   tar xzf istio-1.4.10-asm.18-linux.tar.gz

   The command creates an installation directory in your current working directory named istio-1.4.10-asm.18 that contains:

   • Sample applications in samples
   • The following tools in the bin directory:
     • istioctl: You use istioctl to install Anthos Service Mesh.
     • asmctl: You use asmctl to help validate your security configuration after installing Anthos Service Mesh. (Currently, asmctl isn't supported on GKE on VMware.)

2. Ensure that you're in the Anthos Service Mesh installation's root directory.

   cd istio-1.4.10-asm.18

3. For convenience, add the tools in the /bin directory to your PATH:

   export PATH=$PWD/bin:$PATH

Upgrading Anthos Service Mesh

This section explains how to upgrade Anthos Service Mesh and enable:

• The Supported default features listed on the Supported features page.
• Anthos Service Mesh certificate authority (Mesh CA).
• The telemetry data pipeline that powers the Anthos Service Mesh dashboard in the Google Cloud console.

For information on enabling the Supported optional features, see Enabling optional features.

To upgrade Anthos Service Mesh:

Choose one of the following commands to configure Anthos Service Mesh in PERMISSIVE mutual TLS (mTLS) authentication mode or STRICT mTLS mode.

PERMISSIVE mTLS

istioctl manifest apply --set profile=asm \
  --set values.global.trustDomain=${WORKLOAD_POOL} \
  --set values.global.sds.token.aud=${WORKLOAD_POOL} \
  --set values.nodeagent.env.GKE_CLUSTER_URL=https://container.googleapis.com/v1/projects/${PROJECT_ID}/locations/${CLUSTER_LOCATION}/clusters/${CLUSTER_NAME} \
  --set values.global.meshID=${MESH_ID} \
  --set values.global.proxy.env.GCP_METADATA="${PROJECT_ID}|${PROJECT_NUMBER}|${CLUSTER_NAME}|${CLUSTER_LOCATION}"

Caution: In PERMISSIVE mode, your services can accept both plaintext traffic and mutual TLS traffic at the same time and send plaintext intra-mesh traffic by default. To secure your service mesh after the upgrade, migrate your services to mutual TLS STRICT mode, as described in Mutual TLS Migration.

STRICT mTLS

istioctl manifest apply --set profile=asm \
  --set values.global.trustDomain=${WORKLOAD_POOL} \
  --set values.global.sds.token.aud=${WORKLOAD_POOL} \
  --set values.nodeagent.env.GKE_CLUSTER_URL=https://container.googleapis.com/v1/projects/${PROJECT_ID}/locations/${CLUSTER_LOCATION}/clusters/${CLUSTER_NAME} \
  --set values.global.meshID=${MESH_ID} \
  --set values.global.proxy.env.GCP_METADATA="${PROJECT_ID}|${PROJECT_NUMBER}|${CLUSTER_NAME}|${CLUSTER_LOCATION}" \
  --set values.global.mtls.enabled=true

Check the control plane components

Upgrading requires reinstalling the control plane components, which takes about 5 to 10 minutes to complete. The old control plane components are terminated and then deleted as the new components are installed. You can check the progress by looking at the value in the AGE column of the workloads.

kubectl get pod -n istio-system

NAME                                     READY   STATUS        RESTARTS   AGE
istio-galley-76d684bf9-jwz65             2/2     Running       0          5m36s
istio-ingressgateway-5bfdf7c586-v6wxx    2/2     Terminating   0          25m
istio-ingressgateway-7b598c5557-b88md    2/2     Running       0          5m44s
istio-nodeagent-bnjg7                    1/1     Running       0          5m16s
istio-nodeagent-cps2j                    1/1     Running       0          5m10s
istio-nodeagent-f4x46                    1/1     Running       0          5m26s
istio-nodeagent-jbl5x                    1/1     Running       0          5m38s
istio-pilot-5dc4bc4dbf-ds5dh             2/2     Running       0          5m30s
istio-pilot-74665549c5-7r6qh             2/2     Terminating   0          25m
istio-sidecar-injector-7ddff4b99-b76l7   1/1     Running       0          5m36s
promsd-6d4d5b7c5c-dgnd7                  2/2     Running       0          5m30s

In this example, there are two instances of istio-ingressgateway and istio-pilot. The instances with 25min the AGE column are being terminated. All the other components are newly installed.

Validating the upgrade

Beta

This product or feature is subject to the "Pre-GA Offerings Terms" in the General Service Terms section of the Service Specific Terms. Pre-GA products and features are available "as is" and might have limited support. For more information, see the launch stage descriptions.

We recommend that you use the asmctl analysis tool to validate the basic configuration of your project, cluster, and workloads. If an asmctl test fails, asmctl recommends solutions, if possible. The asmctl validate command runs basic tests that check:

1. That the APIs required by Anthos Service Mesh are enabled on the project.
2. That the Istio-Ingressgateway is properly configured to call Mesh CA.
3. The general health of Istiod and Istio-Ingressgateway.

If you run the asmctl validate command with the optional --with-testing-workloads flag, in addition to the basic tests, asmctl runs security tests that check:

1. Mutual TLS (mTLS) communication is configured properly.
2. Mesh CA can issue certificates.

To run the security tests, asmctl deploys workloads on your cluster in a test namespace, runs the mTLS communication tests, outputs the results, and deletes the test namespace.

To run asmctl:

1. Ensure that gcloud application-default credentials are set:

    gcloud auth application-default login
   

2. If you haven't already, get authentication credentials to interact with the cluster:

    gcloud container clusters get-credentials ${CLUSTER_NAME}
   

3. To run both the basic and security tests (assuming istio-1.4.10-asm.18/bin) is in yourPATH):

   asmctl validate --with-testing-workloads
   

   On success, the command responds with output similar to the following:

   [asmctl version 0.3.0]
   Using Kubernetes context: example-project_us-central1-example-cluster
   To change the context, use the --context flag
   Validating enabled APIs
   OK
   Validating ingressgateway configuration
   OK
   Validating istio system
   OK
   Validating sample traffic
   Launching example services...
   Sent traffic to example service http code: 200
   verified mTLS configuration
   OK
   Validating issued certs
   OK
   

Updating sidecar proxies

Any workloads that were running on your cluster before you upgraded Anthos Service Mesh need to have the sidecar proxy injected or updated so they have the current Anthos Service Mesh version.

Caution: Unless you have a load balancer or router setup for blue-green deployments, make sure you test restarting pods in a staging environment to verify that your services can handle any potential traffic interruption.

With automatic sidecar injection, you can update the sidecars for existing pods with a pod restart. How you restart pods depends on if they were created as part of a Deployment.

1. If you used a Deployment, restart the Deployment, which restarts all Pods with sidecars:

   kubectl rollout restart YOUR_DEPLOYMENT -n YOUR_NAMESPACE

   If you didn't use a Deployment, delete the Pods, and they are automatically recreated with sidecars:

   kubectl delete pod -n YOUR_NAMESPACE --all

2. Check that all the Pods in the namespace have sidecars injected:

   kubectl get pod -n YOUR_NAMESPACE --all

   In the following example output from the previous command, notice that the READY column indicates there are two containers for each of your workloads: the primary container and the container for the sidecar proxy.

   NAME                    READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
   YOUR_WORKLOAD           2/2     Running   0          20s
   ...
   

Updating your authorization policies

If you are upgrading from open source Istio 1.4.x or from an earlier version of Anthos Service Mesh and have existing authorization policies, you might need to update them. See Updating your authorization policies for more information.