MultiCluster on OpenShift on Kiali

MultiCluster on OpenShift

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

This guide sets up a two-cluster OpenShift environment from scratch where:

The hub cluster runs Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management (ACM) for fleet management and centralized metrics collection (ACM Observability / Thanos)
The spoke cluster is imported into ACM and runs OpenShift Service Mesh 3 (OSSM 3) with Kiali
The spoke mesh has two demo application namespaces: one using Istio ambient mode (via the ZTunnel CR), one using Istio sidecar injection
Kiali queries metrics via the ACM Observatorium API on the hub cluster (mTLS), giving it access to Istio metrics collected and forwarded by ACM from the spoke’s User Workload Monitoring Prometheus

The result is a working Kiali installation that shows traffic graphs, metrics, and mesh topology across both the ambient-mode and sidecar-mode workloads running on the spoke.

Multi-Primary Mesh

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Multi-Primary Mesh on OpenShift with ACM

This guide extends the result of the MultiCluster on OpenShift guide into a two-primary Istio mesh spanning two spoke clusters. The ACM hub cluster is not changed — it remains dedicated to fleet management and centralized metrics collection.

What this guide adds:

A second spoke cluster (ossm-kiali-spoke-two) is imported into ACM and gets OSSM 3 installed
Both spoke clusters are updated to share a single Istio mesh via East-West gateways and cross-cluster endpoint discovery
ACM Observability is extended to collect metrics from the second spoke
Kiali on the first spoke gains API access to the second spoke’s workloads via a remote cluster secret
A cross-cluster demo app demonstrates traffic flowing between the two spokes

Cluster roles after this guide:

Dashboards and Tracing

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

This guide extends the result of the Multi-Primary Mesh guide by adding two observability tools that operate across both spoke clusters. Both tools are delivered through the Red Hat Cluster Observability Operator (COO), which manages their deployment and integrates them into the OpenShift console:

Phase 1 — Perses: Deploys a Perses metrics dashboard server and OpenShift console plugin via COO. The datasource is pointed at hub Thanos so it queries aggregated metrics from both spokes, giving a true multi-cluster view.
Phase 2 — Tempo: Deploys a distributed tracing server and OpenShift console plugin via COO. A central Tempo instance on spoke collects traces from both clusters via OpenTelemetry collectors. Kiali links to the console tracing UI and can filter traces by cluster. Neither ACM Observability nor any other component already in place aggregates traces — that requires an explicit OTEL pipeline, which this guide sets up.

The diagram below shows the environment after this guide completes. Components from Guides 1–2 are marked prior; badges such as G3:P2.4-2.5 mark which guide section(s) add each piece (Guide 3, §§2.4–2.5). Click the diagram to open a full-size SVG in a new tab.

Health Status Alerts

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

This guide is the fourth in the series but also works standalone. The earlier guides focus on setting up a multi-cluster OpenShift environment; this guide applies to any OpenShift cluster running Kiali — single-cluster or multi-cluster. Follow Phases 1–5 on any cluster to set up health-status alerting. Phase 6 adds optional multi-cluster integration with ACM for readers who completed the earlier guides. Phase 7 is also optional: it installs the Network Observability Operator on the Kiali cluster and surfaces the same health rules on Observe > Network Health.