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Migrating from Istio to Anthos Service Mesh

This page is part of a multi-page guide that explains how to migrate from Istio to Anthos Service Mesh version 1.7.8 on a GKE cluster for a mesh containing multiple clusters that are in different Google Cloud projects. For migrations on a single-cluster mesh or for a mesh containing multiple clusters in the same Google Cloud project, refer to Installation, migration, and upgrade for GKE.

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Before you begin

Before you install Anthos Service Mesh, make sure that you have:

Set up your environment to install the tools that you need.
Set up your project to enable the required APIs and set permissions.
Set up your cluster to enable the required cluster options.
Reviewed Preparing to migrate from Istio.

Setting credentials and permissions

Initialize your project to ready it for installation. Among other things, this command creates a service account to let control plane components, such as the sidecar proxy, securely access your project's data and resources.
```
curl --request POST \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer $(gcloud auth print-access-token)" \
  --data '' \
  "https://meshconfig.googleapis.com/v1alpha1/projects/${PROJECT_ID}:initialize"
```
The command responds with empty curly braces: {}
Get authentication credentials to interact with the cluster. This command also sets the current context for kubectl to the cluster.
```
gcloud container clusters get-credentials ${CLUSTER_NAME} \
    --project=${PROJECT_ID}
```
Note: Unless you've set a default zone or region, you need to supply the region (--region=REGION) or zone (--zone=ZONE) in the command.
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-1.7.8-asm.10-linux-amd64.tar.gz

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

curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/gke-release/asm/istio-1.7.8-asm.10-linux-amd64.tar.gz.1.sig
openssl dgst -verify /dev/stdin -signature istio-1.7.8-asm.10-linux-amd64.tar.gz.1.sig istio-1.7.8-asm.10-linux-amd64.tar.gz <<'EOF'
-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----
MFkwEwYHKoZIzj0CAQYIKoZIzj0DAQcDQgAEWZrGCUaJJr1H8a36sG4UUoXvlXvZ
wQfk16sxprI2gOJ2vFFggdq3ixF2h4qNBt0kI7ciDhgpwS8t+/960IsIgw==
-----END PUBLIC KEY-----
EOF

The expected output is: Verified OK

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-1.7.8-asm.10-linux-amd64.tar.gz

The command creates an installation directory in your current working directory named istio-1.7.8-asm.10 that contains:

Sample applications in the samples directory.
The istioctl command-line tool that you use to install Anthos Service Mesh is in the bin directory.
The Anthos Service Mesh configuration profiles are in the manifests/profiles directory.

Mac OS

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

curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/gke-release/asm/istio-1.7.8-asm.10-osx.tar.gz

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

curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/gke-release/asm/istio-1.7.8-asm.10-osx.tar.gz.1.sig
openssl dgst -sha256 -verify /dev/stdin -signature istio-1.7.8-asm.10-osx.tar.gz.1.sig istio-1.7.8-asm.10-osx.tar.gz <<'EOF'
-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----
MFkwEwYHKoZIzj0CAQYIKoZIzj0DAQcDQgAEWZrGCUaJJr1H8a36sG4UUoXvlXvZ
wQfk16sxprI2gOJ2vFFggdq3ixF2h4qNBt0kI7ciDhgpwS8t+/960IsIgw==
-----END PUBLIC KEY-----
EOF

The expected output is: Verified OK

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-1.7.8-asm.10-osx.tar.gz

The command creates an installation directory in your current working directory named istio-1.7.8-asm.10 that contains:

Sample applications in the samples directory.
The istioctl command-line tool that you use to install Anthos Service Mesh is in the bin directory.
The Anthos Service Mesh configuration profiles are in the manifests/profiles directory.

Windows

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

curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/gke-release/asm/istio-1.7.8-asm.10-win.zip

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

curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/gke-release/asm/istio-1.7.8-asm.10-win.zip.1.sig
openssl dgst -verify - -signature istio-1.7.8-asm.10-win.zip.1.sig istio-1.7.8-asm.10-win.zip <<'EOF'
-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----
MFkwEwYHKoZIzj0CAQYIKoZIzj0DAQcDQgAEWZrGCUaJJr1H8a36sG4UUoXvlXvZ
wQfk16sxprI2gOJ2vFFggdq3ixF2h4qNBt0kI7ciDhgpwS8t+/960IsIgw==
-----END PUBLIC KEY-----
EOF

The expected output is: Verified OK

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-1.7.8-asm.10-win.zip

The command creates an installation directory in your current working directory named istio-1.7.8-asm.10 that contains:

Sample applications in the samples directory.
The istioctl command-line tool that you use to install Anthos Service Mesh is in the bin directory.
The Anthos Service Mesh configuration profiles are in the manifests/profiles directory.

Ensure that you're in the Anthos Service Mesh installation's root directory.
```
cd istio-1.7.8-asm.10
```
For convenience, add the tools in the /bin directory to your PATH:
```
export PATH=$PWD/bin:$PATH
```

Preparing resource configuration files

When you run the istioctl install command, you specify -f istio-operator.yaml on the command line. This file contains information about your project and cluster that Anthos Service Mesh requires. You need to download a package that contains istio-operator.yaml and other resource configuration files so that you can set the project and cluster information.

To prepare the resource configuration files:

Mesh CA

Create a new directory for the Anthos Service Mesh package resource configuration files. We recommend that you use the cluster name as the directory name.
Change to the directory where you want to download the Anthos Service Mesh package.

Download the package:

kpt pkg get \
https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/anthos-service-mesh-packages.git/asm@release-1.7-asm asm

Set the project ID for the project that the cluster was created in:
```
kpt cfg set asm gcloud.core.project ${PROJECT_ID}
```

Set the project number for the fleet host project:

kpt cfg set asm gcloud.project.environProjectNumber ${FLEET_PROJECT_NUMBER}

Set the cluster name:

kpt cfg set asm gcloud.container.cluster ${CLUSTER_NAME}

Set the default zone or region:

kpt cfg set asm gcloud.compute.location ${CLUSTER_LOCATION}

Set the tag to the version of Anthos Service Mesh that you are installing:
```
kpt cfg set asm anthos.servicemesh.tag 1.7.8-asm.10
```
Set the validating webhook to use a revision label:
```
kpt cfg set asm anthos.servicemesh.rev asm-178-10
```
When you install Anthos Service Mesh, you set a revision label on istiod. You need to set the same revision on the validating webhook.
Because the clusters in your multi-cluster configuration are in different projects, you need to configure the trust domain aliases for the other projects that will form the multi-cluster/multi-project service mesh.
1. Get the project ID of all clusters that will be in the multi-cluster/multi-project mesh.
2. For each cluster's project ID, set the trust domain aliases. For example, if you have clusters in 3 projects, run the following command and replace PROJECT_ID_1, PROJECT_ID_2, and PROJECT_ID_3 with each cluster's project ID.
```
kpt cfg set asm anthos.servicemesh.trustDomainAliases PROJECT_ID_1.svc.id.goog PROJECT_ID_2.svc.id.goog PROJECT_ID_3.svc.id.goog
```
  As you configure the clusters in the other projects, you can use the same command.
  
  The trust domain aliases enables Mesh CA to authenticate workloads on clusters in other projects. In addition to setting the trust domain aliases, after installing Anthos Service Mesh, you have to enable cross-cluster load balancing.

Output the values of the kpt setters:

kpt cfg list-setters asm

The output of the command is similar to the following:

                          NAME                                                       VALUE
anthos.servicemesh.canonicalServiceHub               gcr.io/gke-release/asm/canonical-service-controller:1.7.8-asm.10
anthos.servicemesh.controlplane.monitoring.enabled   true
anthos.servicemesh.hub                               gcr.io/gke-release/asm
anthos.servicemesh.hubMembershipID                   MEMBERSHIP_ID
anthos.servicemesh.tag                               1.7.8-asm.10
anthos.servicemesh.trustDomainAliases                [example-project-12345.svc.id.goog,example-project-23456.svc.id.goog,example-project-98765.svc.id.goog]
base-dir                                             base
gcloud.compute.location                              us-central
gcloud.compute.network                               default
gcloud.compute.subnetwork                            default
gcloud.container.cluster                             example-cluster-1
gcloud.container.cluster.clusterSecondaryRange
gcloud.container.cluster.releaseChannel              REGULAR
gcloud.container.cluster.servicesSecondaryRange
gcloud.container.nodepool.max-nodes                  4
gcloud.core.project                                  example-project-12345
gcloud.project.environProjectID                      FLEET_PROJECT_ID
gcloud.project.environProjectNumber                  1234567890123
gcloud.project.projectNumber                         9876543210987

Verify that the values for the following setters are correct:

anthos.servicemesh.rev
anthos.servicemesh.tag
anthos.servicemesh.trustDomainAliases
gcloud.compute.location
gcloud.container.cluster
gcloud.core.project
gcloud.project.environProjectNumber

You can ignore the values for the other setters.

Citadel

Create a new directory for the Anthos Service Mesh package resource configuration files. We recommend that you use the cluster name as the directory name.
Change to the directory where you want to download the Anthos Service Mesh package.

Download the package:

kpt pkg get \
https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/anthos-service-mesh-packages.git/asm@release-1.7-asm asm

Set the project ID for the project that the cluster was created in:
```
kpt cfg set asm gcloud.core.project ${PROJECT_ID}
```

Set the project number for the fleet host project:

kpt cfg set asm gcloud.project.environProjectNumber ${FLEET_PROJECT_NUMBER}

Set the cluster name:

kpt cfg set asm gcloud.container.cluster ${CLUSTER_NAME}

Set the default zone or region:

kpt cfg set asm gcloud.compute.location ${CLUSTER_LOCATION}

Set the tag to the version of Anthos Service Mesh that you are installing:
```
kpt cfg set asm anthos.servicemesh.tag 1.7.8-asm.10
```

Set the validating webhook to use a revision label:

kpt cfg set asm anthos.servicemesh.rev asm-178-10

Output the values of the kpt setters:

kpt cfg list-setters asm

The output of the command is similar to the following:

                          NAME                                                       VALUE
anthos.servicemesh.canonicalServiceHub               gcr.io/gke-release/asm/canonical-service-controller:1.7.8-asm.10
anthos.servicemesh.controlplane.monitoring.enabled   true
anthos.servicemesh.hub                               gcr.io/gke-release/asm
anthos.servicemesh.hubMembershipID                   MEMBERSHIP_ID
anthos.servicemesh.tag                               1.7.8-asm.10
anthos.servicemesh.trustDomainAliases
base-dir                                             base
gcloud.compute.location                              us-central
gcloud.compute.network                               default
gcloud.compute.subnetwork                            default
gcloud.container.cluster                             example-cluster-1
gcloud.container.cluster.clusterSecondaryRange
gcloud.container.cluster.releaseChannel              REGULAR
gcloud.container.cluster.servicesSecondaryRange
gcloud.container.nodepool.max-nodes                  4
gcloud.core.project                                  example-project-12345
gcloud.project.environProjectID                      FLEET_PROJECT_ID
gcloud.project.environProjectNumber                  1234567890123
gcloud.project.projectNumber                         9876543210987

Verify that the values for the following setters are correct:

anthos.servicemesh.rev
anthos.servicemesh.tag
gcloud.compute.location
gcloud.container.cluster
gcloud.core.project
gcloud.project.environProjectNumber

You can ignore the values for the other setters.

Migrating to Anthos Service Mesh

To migrate from Istio, you follow the dual control plane upgrade process (referred to as canary upgrades in the Istio documentation). With a dual control plane upgrade, you install a new version of the control plane alongside the existing control plane. When installing the new version, you include a revision label that identifies the version of the new control plane. Each revision is a full Anthos Service Mesh control plane implementation with its own Deployment and Service.

You then migrate to the new version by setting the same revision label on your workloads to point to the new control plane and performing a rolling restart to re-inject the proxies with the new Anthos Service Mesh version. With this approach, you can monitor the effect of the upgrade on a small percentage of your workloads. After testing your application, you can migrate all traffic to the new version. This approach is much safer than doing an in-place upgrade where a new control plane immediately replaces the previous version of the control plane.

Updating the control plane

Mesh CA

Verify that the current kubeconfig context is pointing to the cluster that you want to install Anthos Service Mesh on:
```
kubectl config current-context
```
The output is in the following format:
```
gke_PROJECT_ID_CLUSTER_LOCATION_CLUSTER_NAME
```
The kubeconfig context and the values of the kpt setters must match. If needed, run the gcloud container clusters get-credentials command to set the current kubeconfig context.
Run the following command to deploy the new control plane with the asm-gcp-multiproject profile. If you want to enable a supported optional feature, include -f and the YAML filename on the following command line. See Enabling optional features for more information.

Important: If you are installing on GKE 1.15, you must add the overlay file -f asm/istio/options/v1beta1-crds.yaml in addition to the overlay files specified in the following command.
```
istioctl install \
  -f asm/istio/istio-operator.yaml \
  -f asm/istio/options/multiproject.yaml \
  -f asm/istio/options/multicluster.yaml\
  --revision=asm-178-10
```
The --revision argument adds a revision label in the format istio.io/rev=asm-178-10 to istiod. The revision label is used by the automatic sidecar injector webhook to associate injected sidecars with a particular istiod revision. To enable sidecar auto-injection for a namespace, you must label it with a revision matching an istiod Deployment.

The following files override the settings in the istio-operator.yaml file:
- The multiproject.yaml file sets the asm-gcp-multiproject profile.
- The multicluster.yaml file configures the settings that Anthos Service Mesh needs for a multi-cluster configuration.

Check that the control plane pods in istio-system are up:

kubectl get pods -n istio-system

Example output:

NAME                                        READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
istio-ingressgateway-c56675fcd-86zdn        1/1     Running   0          2m9s
istio-ingressgateway-c56675fcd-vn4nv        1/1     Running   0          2m21s
istiod-asm-178-10-6d5cfd4b89-xztlr           1/1     Running   0          3m44s
istiod-fb7f746f4-wcntn                      1/1     Running   0          50m

You have two control plane Deployments and Services running side-by-side.

Deploy the Canonical Service controller to your cluster:
```
kubectl apply -f asm/canonical-service/controller.yaml
```
The Canonical Service controller groups workloads belonging to the same logical service. For more information about Canonical Services, see the Canonical Service overview.

Citadel

Verify that the current kubeconfig context is pointing to the cluster that you want to install Anthos Service Mesh on:
```
kubectl config current-context
```
The output is in the following format:
```
gke_PROJECT_ID_CLUSTER_LOCATION_CLUSTER_NAME
```
The kubeconfig context and the values of the kpt setters must match. If needed, run the gcloud container clusters get-credentials command to set the current kubeconfig context.
Run the following command to deploy the new control plane with the asm-gcp-multiproject profile. If you want to enable a supported optional feature, include -f and the YAML filename on the following command line. See Enabling optional features for more information.

Important: If you are installing on GKE 1.15, you must add the overlay file -f asm/istio/options/v1beta1-crds.yaml in addition to the overlay files specified in the following command.
```
istioctl install \
  -f asm/istio/istio-operator.yaml \
  -f asm/istio/options/citadel-ca.yaml \
  -f asm/istio/options/multiproject.yaml \
  -f asm/istio/options/multicluster.yaml\
  --revision=asm-178-10
```
The --revision argument adds a revision label in the format istio.io/rev=asm-178-10 to istiod. The revision label is used by the automatic sidecar injector webhook to associate injected sidecars with a particular istiod revision. To enable sidecar auto-injection for a namespace, you must label it with a revision matching an istiod Deployment.

The following files override the settings in the istio-operator.yaml file:
- The citadel-ca.yaml configures Citadel as the CA.
- The multiproject.yaml file sets the asm-gcp-multiproject profile.
- The multicluster.yaml file configures the settings that Anthos Service Mesh needs for a multi-cluster configuration.

Check that the control plane pods in istio-system are up:

kubectl get pods -n istio-system

Example output:

NAME                                        READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
istio-ingressgateway-c56675fcd-86zdn        1/1     Running   0          2m9s
istio-ingressgateway-c56675fcd-vn4nv        1/1     Running   0          2m21s
istiod-asm-178-10-6d5cfd4b89-xztlr           1/1     Running   0          3m44s
istiod-fb7f746f4-wcntn                      1/1     Running   0          50m

You have two control plane Deployments and Services running side-by-side.

Deploy the Canonical Service controller to your cluster:
```
kubectl apply -f asm/canonical-service/controller.yaml
```
The Canonical Service controller groups workloads belonging to the same logical service. For more information about Canonical Services, see the Canonical Service overview.

Redeploying workloads

Installing the new revision has no impact on the existing sidecar proxies. To upgrade these, you must configure them to point to the new control plane. This is controlled during sidecar injection based on the namespace label istio.io/rev.

Update workloads to be injected with the new Anthos Service Mesh version:
```
kubectl label namespace NAMESPACE istio-injection- istio.io/rev=asm-178-10 --overwrite
```
The istio-injection label must be removed because it takes precedence over the istio.io/rev label.

Restart the Pods to trigger re-injection:

kubectl rollout restart deployment -n NAMESPACE

Verify that the Pods are configured to point to the istiod-asm-178-10 control plane:
```
kubectl get pods -n NAMESPACE -l istio.io/rev=asm-178-10
```
Test your application to verify that the workloads are working correctly.
If you have workloads in other namespaces, repeat the previous steps for each namespace.
If you are satisfied that your application is working as expected, skip to Complete the migration. Otherwise do the following steps to rollback to the previous version:

To rollback:
1. Update workloads to be injected with the previous version of the control plane:
```
kubectl label namespace NAMESPACE istio.io/rev- istio-injection=enabled --overwrite
```
2. Restart the Pods to trigger re-injection so the proxies have the previous version:
```
kubectl rollout restart deployment -n NAMESPACE
```
3. Redeploy the previous version of the istio-ingressgateway:
```
kubectl -n istio-system rollout undo deploy istio-ingressgateway
```
4. Remove the new control plane:
```
kubectl delete Service,Deployment,HorizontalPodAutoscaler,PodDisruptionBudget istiod-asm-178-10 -n istio-system --ignore-not-found=true
```

Complete the migration

If you are satisfied that your application is working as expected, do the following steps to complete the migration to Anthos Service Mesh:

Remove the old control plane:

kubectl delete Service,Deployment,HorizontalPodAutoscaler,PodDisruptionBudget istiod -n istio-system --ignore-not-found=true

Registering your cluster

You must register your cluster with the project's fleet to gain access to the unified user interface in the Google Cloud console. A fleet provides a unified way to view and manage the clusters and their workloads, including clusters outside Google Cloud.

See Registering clusters to the fleet for information on registering your cluster.

What's next

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