Setup for installing Anthos Service Mesh on GKE

This page explains the Anthos Service Mesh setup for your Cloud project and Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) clusters for a mesh consisting of clusters that are in the same project. When you use the Google-provided script, install_asm, the script can configure your project and cluster for you if you include the --enable_all flag or the more granular enablement flags. If you prefer to do the setup yourself rather than having install_asm make the changes, follow the steps on this page. If you already have a previous version of Anthos Service Mesh installed, you don't need to make any changes to your project or cluster before using install_asm to upgrade to the latest Anthos Service Mesh version.

Before you begin

Setting up your project

  1. Get the project ID and project number for the project that the cluster was created in.

    gcloud

    Run the following command:

    gcloud projects list

    Console

    1. Go to the Dashboard page in the Google Cloud console.

      Go to the Dashboard page

    2. Click the drop-down list at the top of the page. In the Select from window that appears, select your project.

      The project ID and project number are displayed on the project Dashboard Project info card.

  2. Create the following environment variables:

    • Set the workload pool using the project ID:

      export WORKLOAD_POOL=PROJECT_ID.svc.id.goog

    • Set the mesh ID using the project number:

      export MESH_ID="proj-PROJECT_NUMBER"

  3. Set the required Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles. If you are a Project Owner, you have all the necessary permissions to complete the installation. If you aren't a Project Owner, you need someone who is to grant you the following specific IAM roles. In the following command, replace PROJECT_ID with the project ID from the previous step and GCP_EMAIL_ADDRESS with the account that you use to log in to Google Cloud.

    ROLES=(
'roles/servicemanagement.admin' \
'roles/serviceusage.serviceUsageAdmin' \
'roles/meshconfig.admin' \
'roles/compute.admin' \
'roles/container.admin' \
'roles/resourcemanager.projectIamAdmin' \
'roles/iam.serviceAccountAdmin' \
'roles/iam.serviceAccountKeyAdmin' \
'roles/gkehub.admin')
for role in "${ROLES[@]}"
do
  gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding PROJECT_ID \
    --member "user:GCP_EMAIL_ADDRESS" \
    --role="$role"
done

    If you include the --enable_all or --enable_gcp_iam_roles flag when you run install_asm, it sets the required IAM roles for you.

  4. Enable the following Google APIs:

    gcloud services enable \
    --project=PROJECT_ID \
    container.googleapis.com \
    compute.googleapis.com \
    monitoring.googleapis.com \
    logging.googleapis.com \
    cloudtrace.googleapis.com \
    meshca.googleapis.com \
    meshtelemetry.googleapis.com \
    meshconfig.googleapis.com \
    iamcredentials.googleapis.com \
    gkeconnect.googleapis.com \
    gkehub.googleapis.com \
    cloudresourcemanager.googleapis.com \
    stackdriver.googleapis.com

    Enabling the APIs can take a minute or more to complete. When the APIs are enabled, you see output similar to the following:

    Operation "operations/acf.601db672-88e6-4f98-8ceb-aa3b5725533c" finished
successfully.

    If you include the --enable_all or --enable_apis flag when you run install_asm, it enables the required APIs for you.

Setting up your cluster

If you include the --enable_all flag, or one of the more granular enablement flags, the install_asm script sets up your cluster for you.

  1. Set the default zone or region for the Google Cloud CLI. If you don't set the default here, be sure to specify either the --zone or --region option in the gcloud container clusters commands on this page.

    • 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

  2. Set the mesh_id label on the cluster. If your cluster has existing labels that you want to keep, you must include those labels when adding the mesh_id label.

    1. To see if your cluster has existing labels:

      gcloud container clusters describe CLUSTER_NAME \
    --project PROJECT_ID

      Look for the resourceLabels field in the output. Each label is stored on a separate line under the resourceLabels field, for example:

      resourceLabels:
  csm: ''
  env: dev
  release: stable

      For convenience, you can add the labels to an environment variable. In the following, replace YOUR_EXISTING_LABELS with a comma-separated list of the existing labels on your cluster in the format KEY=VALUE, for example: env=dev,release=stable

      export EXISTING_LABELS="YOUR_EXISTING_LABELS"

    2. Set the mesh_id label:

      • If your cluster has existing labels that you want to keep, update the cluster with the mesh_id and the existing labels:

        gcloud container clusters update CLUSTER_NAME \
    --project PROJECT_ID \
    --update-labels=mesh_id=${MESH_ID},${EXISTING_LABELS}

      • If you cluster doesn't have any existing labels, update the cluster with only the mesh_id label:

        gcloud container clusters update CLUSTER_NAME \
    --project=PROJECT_ID \
    --update-labels=mesh_id=${MESH_ID}

  3. Enable Workload Identity:

    gcloud container clusters update CLUSTER_NAME \
    --project=PROJECT_ID \
    --workload-pool=${WORKLOAD_POOL}

    Enabling Workload Identity can take up to 10 to 15 minutes.

  4. Initialize your project to ready it for installation. Among other things, this command creates a service account to let data 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: {}

  5. Enable Cloud Monitoring and Cloud Logging on GKE:

    gcloud container clusters update CLUSTER_NAME \
    --project=PROJECT_ID \
    --logging=SYSTEM,WORKLOAD \
    --monitoring=SYSTEM

Your project and GKE cluster are now ready for a new installation or migration from Istio using install_asm. When you install Anthos Service Mesh using install_asm, the script:

  1. Validates your project and cluster.
  2. Creates a service account in your project to let control plane components access your project's data and resources.
  3. Configures required IstioOperator custom resource (CR) files with your project and cluster information to enable default features.
  4. Calls istioctl install. You can specify additional IstioOperator CR files when you call install_asm to enable optional features

What's next