Quick Start on Docker

Quick Start instructions to install and configure Istio in a Docker Compose setup.

Prerequisites

Installation steps

  1. Go to the Istio release page to download the installation file corresponding to your OS. If you are using a MacOS or Linux system, you can also run the following command to download and extract the latest release automatically:

    $ curl -L https://git.io/getLatestIstio | sh -
    
  2. Extract the installation file and change the directory to the file location. The installation directory contains:

    • Sample applications in samples/
    • The istioctl client binary in the bin/ directory. istioctl is used for creating routing rules and policies.
    • The istio.VERSION configuration file
  3. Add the istioctl client to your PATH. For example, run the following command on a MacOS or Linux system:

    $ export PATH=$PWD/bin:$PATH
    
  4. Change directory to the root of the Istio installation directory.

  5. Bring up the Istio control plane containers:

    $ docker-compose -f @install/eureka/istio.yaml@ up -d
    
  6. Confirm that all docker containers are running:

    $ docker ps -a
    

    If the Istio Pilot container terminates, ensure that you run the istioctl context-create command and re-run the command from the previous step.

  7. Configure istioctl to use mapped local port for the Istio API server:

    $ istioctl context-create --context istio-local --api-server http://localhost:8080
    

Deploy your application

You can now deploy your own application or one of the sample applications provided with the installation like Bookinfo.

Since there is no concept of pods in a Docker setup, the Istio sidecar runs in the same container as the application. We will use Registrator to automatically register instances of services in the Eureka service registry.

The application must use HTTP/1.1 or HTTP/2.0 protocol for all its HTTP traffic because HTTP/1.0 is not supported.

$ docker-compose -f <your-app-spec>.yaml up -d

Uninstalling

Uninstall Istio core components by removing the docker containers:

$ docker-compose -f @install/eureka/istio.yaml@ down

What's next