Installation Guide on Kiali

Prerequisites

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Istio

Before you install Kiali you must have already installed Istio. For full functionality, you should also install a telemetry storage addon (e.g. Prometheus), though Kiali can run without it if you disable Prometheus in the configuration. You might also consider installing Istio’s optional tracing addon (e.g. Tempo) and optional Grafana addon but those are not required by Kiali. Refer to the Istio documentation for details.

Optionally Enable the Debug Interface

Like istioctl, Kiali can make use of Istio’s port 8080 “Debug Interface” API. Despite the naming, this is required for accessing the status of the proxies.

Install via Helm

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Introduction

Helm is a popular tool that lets you manage Kubernetes applications. Applications are defined in a package named Helm chart, which contains all of the resources needed to run an application.

Kiali has a Helm Charts Repository at https://kiali.org/helm-charts. Two Helm Charts are provided:

The kiali-operator Helm Chart installs the Kiali operator which in turn installs Kiali when you create a Kiali CR.
The kiali-server Helm Chart installs a standalone Kiali without the need of the Operator nor a Kiali CR.

The kiali-server Helm Chart does not provide all the functionality that the Kiali Operator provides. Some features you read about in the documentation may only be available if you install the Kiali Server using the Kiali Operator (see this FAQ for details). Therefore, although the kiali-server Helm Chart is actively maintained, it is not recommended and is only provided for convenience. If using Helm, the recommended method is to install the kiali-operator Helm Chart and then create a Kiali CR to let the Operator deploy Kiali.

Install via OperatorHub

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Introduction

The OperatorHub is a website that contains a catalog of Kubernetes Operators. Its aim is to be the central location to find Operators.

The OperatorHub relies in the Operator Lifecycle Manager (OLM) to install, manage and update Operators on any Kubernetes cluster.

The Kiali Operator is being published to the OperatorHub. So, you can use the OLM to install and manage the Kiali Operator installation.

Installing the Kiali Operator using the OLM

Go to the Kiali Operator page in the OperatorHub: https://operatorhub.io/operator/kiali.

The Kiali CR

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The Kiali Operator watches the Kiali Custom Resource (Kiali CR), a custom resource that contains the Kiali Server deployment configuration. Creating, updating, or removing a Kiali CR will trigger the Kiali Operator to install, update, or remove Kiali.

If you want the operator to re-process the Kiali CR (called “reconciliation”) without having to change the Kiali CR’s spec fields, you can modify any annotation on the Kiali CR itself. This will trigger the operator to reconcile the current state of the cluster with the desired state defined in the Kiali CR, modifying cluster resources if necessary to get them into their desired state. Here is an example illustrating how you can modify an annotation on a Kiali CR:

$ kubectl annotate kiali my-kiali -n istio-system --overwrite kiali.io/reconcile="$(date)"

The OSSMConsole CR

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OpenShift ServiceMesh Console (aka OSSMC) provides a Kiali integration with the OpenShift Console; in other words it provides Kiali functionality within the context of the OpenShift Console when a Kiali server is connected to the plugin. OSSMC is applicable only within OpenShift environments.

The main component of OSSMC is a plugin that gets installed inside the OpenShift Console. Prior to installing this plugin, you must install the Kiali Operator. A Kiali Server is optional for the initial plugin install — without it, OSSMC still provides Istios and Kialis pages for navigating multiple mesh instances from the console. See Navigating Multiple Meshes. Please see the Installation Guide for Kiali Operator installation details.

Accessing Kiali

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Introduction

After Kiali is succesfully installed you will need to make Kiali accessible to users. This page describes some popular methods of exposing Kiali for use.

If exposing Kiali in a custom way, you may need to set some configurations to make Kiali aware of how users will access Kiali.

The examples on this page assume that you followed the Installation guide to install Kiali, and that you installed Kiali in the istio-system namespace.

Advanced Install

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Canary upgrades

During a canary upgrade where multiple controlplanes are present, Kiali will automatically detect both controlplanes. You can visit the mesh page to visualize your controlplanes during a canary upgrade.

Installing a Kiali Server of a different version than the Operator

When you install the Kiali Operator, it will be configured to install a Kiali Server that is the same version as the operator itself. For example, if you have Kiali Operator v1.34.0 installed, that operator will install Kiali Server v1.34.0. If you upgrade (or downgrade) the Kiali Operator, the operator will in turn upgrade (or downgrade) the Kiali Server.

Example Install

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This is a quick example of installing Kiali. This example will install the operator and two Kiali Servers - one server will require the user to enter credentials at a login screen in order to obtain read-write access and the second server will allow anonymous read-only access.

For this example, assume there is a Minikube Kubernetes cluster running with an Istio control plane installed in the namespace istio-system and the Istio Bookinfo Demo installed in the namespace bookinfo: