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Install Anthos Service Mesh on GKE on AWS

Warning: install_asm and istioctl install commands are deprecated with the release of Anthos Service Mesh 1.11 and will be unsupported with the 1.12 release. Please update your scripts and tools to use asmcli. For more information, see Transitioning to asmcli.

This guide explains how to install Anthos Service Mesh version 1.11.8-asm.4 on GKE on AWS.

With Anthos Service Mesh, the Istio Ingress Gateway comes preinstalled. But if you prefer to use an ingress controller, you can use Anthos Service Mesh to set up a Kubernetes Ingress resource. This guide shows you how to install Anthos Service Mesh and optionally set up a Kubernetes Ingress resource.

Before you begin

Before you begin the Anthos Service Mesh installation, make sure you have performed the following tasks:

Install a management service.
Create a user cluster.
Set up AWS networking.
Review the following requirements and restrictions before beginning the setup.

Requirements

Make sure the user cluster that you install Anthos Service Mesh on has at least 4 vCPUs, 15 GB memory, and 4 nodes.
Review Naming service ports before you deploy workloads.
Make sure your cluster version is listed in Supported platforms.

Restrictions

A Google Cloud project can only have one mesh associated with it.

Set up your environment

You need the following tools on the machine you want to install Anthos Service Mesh from. Note that you can install Anthos Service Mesh only on a user cluster, not an admin cluster.

The curl command-line tool.
The Google Cloud CLI.

After installing the Google Cloud CLI:

Authenticate with the Google Cloud CLI:
```
gcloud auth login
```
Update the components:
```
gcloud components update
```
Install kubectl:
```
gcloud components install kubectl
```

Install the required version of kpt:

   curl -L https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/kpt/releases/download/v0.39.2/kpt_linux_amd64 > kpt_0_39_2
   chmod +x kpt_0_39_2
   alias kpt="$(readlink -f kpt_0_39_2)"

Switch context to your user cluster:
```
kubectl config use-context CLUSTER_NAME
```
Grant cluster admin permissions to your user account (your Google Cloud login email address). 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=USER_ACCOUNT
```

Download 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-1.11.8-asm.4-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-1.11.8-asm.4-linux-amd64.tar.gz.1.sig
openssl dgst -verify /dev/stdin -signature istio-1.11.8-asm.4-linux-amd64.tar.gz.1.sig istio-1.11.8-asm.4-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-1.11.8-asm.4-linux-amd64.tar.gz
```
The command creates an installation directory in your current working directory named istio-1.11.8-asm.4 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-1.11.8-asm.4
```

Mac OS

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

curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/gke-release/asm/istio-1.11.8-asm.4-osx.tar.gz

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

curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/gke-release/asm/istio-1.11.8-asm.4-osx.tar.gz.1.sig
openssl dgst -sha256 -verify /dev/stdin -signature istio-1.11.8-asm.4-osx.tar.gz.1.sig istio-1.11.8-asm.4-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-1.11.8-asm.4-osx.tar.gz
```
The command creates an installation directory in your current working directory named istio-1.11.8-asm.4 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-1.11.8-asm.4
```

Windows

Download the Anthos Service Mesh installation file to your current working directory:
```
curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/gke-release/asm/istio-1.11.8-asm.4-win.zip
```

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

curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/gke-release/asm/istio-1.11.8-asm.4-win.zip.1.sig
openssl dgst -verify - -signature istio-1.11.8-asm.4-win.zip.1.sig istio-1.11.8-asm.4-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-1.11.8-asm.4-win.zip
```
The command creates an installation directory in your current working directory named istio-1.11.8-asm.4 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-1.11.8-asm.4
```

Installing Anthos Service Mesh

This section explains how to install Anthos Service Mesh on your user cluster, which enables the Supported default features listed on the Supported features page for the asm-multicloud profile. You can choose to enable Ingress for the public subnet or the private subnet.

Public

If needed, change to the istio-1.11.8-asm.4 directory. The istioctl client is version dependent. Make sure that you use the version in the istio-1.11.8-asm.4/bin directory.
Run the following command to install Anthos Service Mesh. 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.
Install Anthos Service Mesh:
```
bin/istioctl install \
  -f manifests/profiles/asm-multicloud.yaml \
  --set revision=asm-1118-4
```
The --set revision argument adds a revision label in the format istio.io/rev=asm-1118-4 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 that matches the label on istiod.
Configure the validating webhook so that it can locate the istiod service with the revision label:
```
kubectl apply -f istiod-service.yaml
```
This command creates a service entry that lets the validating webhook automatically check configurations before they are applied.

Private

In the following, you add the service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-internal annotation to all services that Anthos Service Mesh creates. When this annotation is present, GKE on AWS creates private Ingress services.

If needed, change to the istio-1.11.8-asm.4 directory. The istioctl client is version dependent. Make sure that you use the version in the istio-1.11.8-asm.4/bin directory.

Save the following YAML to a file called istio-operator-internal-lb.yaml:

apiVersion: install.istio.io/v1alpha1
kind: IstioOperator
spec:
  components:
    ingressGateways:
    - enabled: true
      k8s:
        serviceAnnotations:
          service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-internal: "true"
      name: istio-ingressgateway

Run the following command to install Anthos Service Mesh. 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.
```
bin/istioctl install \
 -f manifests/profiles/asm-multicloud.yaml \
 --set revision=asm-1118-4 \
 -f istio-operator-internal-lb.yaml
```
The --set revision argument adds a revision label in the format istio.io/rev=asm-1118-4 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 that matches the label on istiod.
Configure the validating webhook so that it can locate the istiod service with the revision label:
```
kubectl apply -f istiod-service.yaml
```
This command creates a service entry that lets the validating webhook automatically check configurations before they are applied.

Check the control plane components

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

kubectl get pod -n istio-system

Expected output is similar to the following:

NAME                                      READY   STATUS      RESTARTS   AGE
istio-ingressgateway-74cc894bfd-786rg     1/1     Running     0          7m19s
istiod-78cdbbbdb-d7tps                    1/1     Running     0          7m36s
promsd-576b8db4d6-lqf64                   2/2     Running     1          7m19s

You have now installed the Anthos Service Mesh control plane with the preinstalled Ingress Gateway. If you only need ingress functionality using an Ingress controller, you are ready to install applications on your cluster. See Creating an example Deployment, which shows how to configure an Ingress resource.

If you want to take advantage of all the features that Anthos Service Mesh provides, continue with the next phase of the installation to inject sidecar proxies and restart your workloads.

Injecting sidecar proxies

Anthos Service Mesh uses sidecar proxies to enhance network security, reliability, and observability. With Anthos Service Mesh, these functions are abstracted away from the application's primary container and implemented in a common out-of-process proxy delivered as a separate container in the same Pod.

Your installation isn't complete until you enable automatic sidecar proxy injection (auto-injection) and restart the Pods for any workloads that were running on your cluster before you installed Anthos Service Mesh.

To enable auto-injection, you label your namespaces with the revision label that was set on istiod when you installed Anthos Service Mesh. The revision label is used by the sidecar injector webhook to associate injected sidecars with a particular istiod revision. After adding the label, any existing Pods in the namespace must be restarted for sidecars to be injected.

Before you deploy new workloads in a new namespace, make sure to configure auto-injection so that Anthos Service Mesh can monitor and secure traffic.

To enable auto-injection:

Use the following command to locate the revision label on istiod:

kubectl -n istio-system get pods -l app=istiod --show-labels

The output looks similar to the following:

NAME                                READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE   LABELS
istiod-asm-1118-4-5788d57586-bljj4   1/1     Running   0          23h   app=istiod,istio.io/rev=asm-1118-4,istio=istiod,pod-template-hash=5788d57586
istiod-asm-1118-4-5788d57586-vsklm   1/1     Running   1          23h   app=istiod,istio.io/rev=asm-1118-4,istio=istiod,pod-template-hash=5788d57586

In the output, under the LABELS column, note the value of the istiod revision label, which follows the prefix istio.io/rev=. In this example, the value is asm-1118-4.

Apply the revision label and remove the istio-injection label if it exists. In the following command, NAMESPACE is the name of the namespace where you want to enable auto-injection, and REVISION is the revision label you noted in the previous step.
```
kubectl label namespace NAMESPACE istio-injection- istio.io/rev=REVISION --overwrite
```
You can ignore the message "istio-injection not found" in the output. That means that the namespace didn't previously have the istio-injection label, which you should expect in new installations of Anthos Service Mesh or new deployments. Because auto-injection fails if a namespace has both the istio-injection and the revision label, all kubectl label commands in the Anthos Service Mesh documentation include removing the istio-injection label.
If workloads were running on your cluster before you installed Anthos Service Mesh, restart the Pods to trigger re-injection.

How you restart Pods depends on your application and the environment the cluster is in. For example, in your staging environment, you might simply delete all the Pods, which causes them to restart. But in your production environment, you might have a process that implements a blue-green deployment so that you can safely restart Pods to avoid traffic interruption.

You can use kubectl to perform a rolling restart:
```
kubectl rollout restart deployment -n NAMESPACE
```

Accessing the Ingress Gateway

Anthos Service Mesh provides a preconfigured Ingress Gateway, the istio-ingressgateway, that you can use to manage inbound traffic to applications running on your service mesh. To make applications accessible from outside of your cluster, (such as from a browser):

You need to get the external IP address or host name and port of the external load balancer that the istio-ingressgateway is configured to use.
Your application must define a Gateway and VirtualService resource, similar to the Online Boutique sample application's frontend-gateway.yaml.

To get the external address of the istio-ingressgateway:

Create the INGRESS_HOST environment variable:

export INGRESS_HOST=$(kubectl -n istio-system get service istio-ingressgateway -o jsonpath='{.status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].hostname}')

Create the INGRESS_PORT environment variable:

export INGRESS_PORT=$(kubectl -n istio-system get service istio-ingressgateway -o jsonpath='{.spec.ports[?(@.name=="http2")].port}')

To test, deploy a sample application, such as the Online Boutique.
To access the application on your browser, use the value of $INGRESS_HOST:$INGRESS_PORT in the URL.

What's next

Create an example deployment on GKE on AWS.