Installing the Sidecar
Injection
Each pod in the mesh must be running an Istio compatible sidecar.
The following sections describe two
ways of injecting the Istio sidecar into a pod: manually using the istioctl
CLI tool or automatically using the Istio sidecar injector.
Manual injection modifies the controller configuration, e.g. deployment. It does this by modifying the pod template spec such that all pods for that deployment are created with the injected sidecar. Adding/Updating/Removing the sidecar requires modifying the entire deployment.
Automatic injection injects at pod creation time. The controller resource is unmodified. Sidecars can be updated selectively by manually deleting a pods or systematically with a deployment rolling update.
Manual and automatic injection both use the configuration from the
istio-sidecar-injector and istio ConfigMaps in the istio-system
namespace. Manual injection can also optionally load configuration
from local files.
Manual sidecar injection
Inject the sidecar into the deployment using the in-cluster configuration.
$ istioctl kube-inject -f @samples/sleep/sleep.yaml@ | kubectl apply -f -
Alternatively, inject using local copies of the configuration.
$ kubectl -n istio-system get configmap istio-sidecar-injector -o=jsonpath='{.data.config}' > inject-config.yaml
$ kubectl -n istio-system get configmap istio -o=jsonpath='{.data.mesh}' > mesh-config.yaml
Run kube-inject over the input file and deploy.
$ istioctl kube-inject \
--injectConfigFile inject-config.yaml \
--meshConfigFile mesh-config.yaml \
--filename @samples/sleep/sleep.yaml@ \
--output sleep-injected.yaml
$ kubectl apply -f sleep-injected.yaml
Verify that the sidecar has been injected into the sleep pod with 2/2 under the READY column.
$$ kubectl get pod -l app=sleep
NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE
sleep-64c6f57bc8-f5n4x 2/2 Running 0 24s
Automatic sidecar injection
Sidecars can be automatically added to applicable Kubernetes pods using a
mutating webhook admission controller.
Verify that the kube-apiserver process has the admission-control flag set with the MutatingAdmissionWebhook and ValidatingAdmissionWebhook admission controllers added and listed in the correct order and the admissionregistration API is enabled.
$ kubectl api-versions | grep admissionregistration
admissionregistration.k8s.io/v1alpha1
admissionregistration.k8s.io/v1beta1
Note that unlike manual injection, automatic injection occurs at the pod-level. You won’t see any change to the deployment itself. Instead you’ll want to check individual pods (via kubectl describe) to see the injected proxy.
Disabling or updating the webhook
The sidecar injecting webhook is enabled by default. If you wish to disable the webhook, you can
use Helm to generate an updated istio.yaml
with the option sidecarInjectorWebhook.enabled set to false. E.g.
$ helm template --namespace=istio-system --set sidecarInjectorWebhook.enabled=false install/kubernetes/helm/istio > istio.yaml
$ kubectl create ns istio-system
$ kubectl apply -f istio.yaml
In addition, there are some other configuration parameters defined for the sidecar injector webhook
service in values.yaml. You can override the default values to customize the installation.
Deploying an app
Deploy sleep app. Verify both deployment and pod have a single container.
$ kubectl apply -f @samples/sleep/sleep.yaml@
$ kubectl get deployment -o wide
NAME DESIRED CURRENT UP-TO-DATE AVAILABLE AGE CONTAINERS IMAGES SELECTOR
sleep 1 1 1 1 12m sleep tutum/curl app=sleep
$ kubectl get pod
NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE
sleep-776b7bcdcd-7hpnk 1/1 Running 0 4
Label the default namespace with istio-injection=enabled
$ kubectl label namespace default istio-injection=enabled
$ kubectl get namespace -L istio-injection
NAME STATUS AGE ISTIO-INJECTION
default Active 1h enabled
istio-system Active 1h
kube-public Active 1h
kube-system Active 1h
Injection occurs at pod creation time. Kill the running pod and verify a new pod is created with the injected sidecar. The original pod has 1/1 READY containers and the pod with injected sidecar has 2/2 READY containers.
$ kubectl delete pod sleep-776b7bcdcd-7hpnk
$ kubectl get pod
NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE
sleep-776b7bcdcd-7hpnk 1/1 Terminating 0 1m
sleep-776b7bcdcd-bhn9m 2/2 Running 0 7s
View detailed state of the injected pod. You should see the injected istio-proxy container and corresponding volumes. Be sure to substitute the correct name for the Running pod below.
$ kubectl describe pod sleep-776b7bcdcd-bhn9m
Disable injection for the default namespace and verify new pods are created without the sidecar.
$ kubectl label namespace default istio-injection-
$ kubectl delete pod sleep-776b7bcdcd-bhn9m
$ kubectl get pod
NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE
sleep-776b7bcdcd-bhn9m 2/2 Terminating 0 2m
sleep-776b7bcdcd-gmvnr 1/1 Running 0 2s
Understanding what happened
When Kubernetes invokes the webhook, the admissionregistration.k8s.io/v1beta1#MutatingWebhookConfiguration
configuration is applied. The default configuration injects the sidecar into
pods in any namespace with the istio-injection=enabled label. The
istio-sidecar-injector configuration map specifies the configuration for the
injected sidecar. To change how namespaces are selected for injection, you can
edit the MutatingWebhookConfiguration with the following command:
$ kubectl edit mutatingwebhookconfiguration istio-sidecar-injector
For example, you can modify the MutatingWebhookConfiguration to always inject
the sidecar into every namespace, unless a label is set. Editing this
configuration is an advanced operation. Refer to the Kubernetes documentation
for the MutatingWebhookConfiguration API
for more information.
policy
disabled - The sidecar injector will not inject the sidecar into
pods by default. Add the sidecar.istio.io/inject annotation with
value true to the pod template spec to override the default and enable injection.
enabled - The sidecar injector will inject the sidecar into pods by
default. Add the sidecar.istio.io/inject annotation with
value false to the pod template spec to override the default and disable injection.
The following example uses the sidecar.istio.io/inject annotation to disable sidecar injection.
apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
name: ignored
spec:
template:
metadata:
annotations:
sidecar.istio.io/inject: "false"
spec:
containers:
- name: ignored
image: tutum/curl
command: ["/bin/sleep","infinity"]
template
The sidecar injection template uses https://golang.org/pkg/text/template which, when parsed and executed, is decoded to the following struct containing the list of containers and volumes to inject into the pod.
type SidecarInjectionSpec struct {
RewriteAppHTTPProbe bool `yaml:"rewriteAppHTTPProbe"`
InitContainers []corev1.Container `yaml:"initContainers"`
Containers []corev1.Container `yaml:"containers"`
Volumes []corev1.Volume `yaml:"volumes"`
DNSConfig *corev1.PodDNSConfig `yaml:"dnsConfig"`
ImagePullSecrets []corev1.LocalObjectReference `yaml:"imagePullSecrets"`
}
The template is applied to the following data structure at runtime.
type SidecarTemplateData struct {
DeploymentMeta *metav1.ObjectMeta
ObjectMeta *metav1.ObjectMeta
Spec *corev1.PodSpec
ProxyConfig *meshconfig.ProxyConfig // Defined by https://istio.io/docs/reference/config/service-mesh.html#proxyconfig
MeshConfig *meshconfig.MeshConfig // Defined by https://istio.io/docs/reference/config/service-mesh.html#meshconfig
}
ObjectMeta and Spec are from the pod. ProxyConfig and MeshConfig
are from the istio ConfigMap in the istio-system namespace. Templates can conditionally
define injected containers and volumes with this data.
For example, the following template
containers:
- name: istio-proxy
image: istio.io/proxy:0.5.0
args:
- proxy
- sidecar
- --configPath
- {{ .ProxyConfig.ConfigPath }}
- --binaryPath
- {{ .ProxyConfig.BinaryPath }}
- --serviceCluster
{{ if ne "" (index .ObjectMeta.Labels "app") -}}
- {{ index .ObjectMeta.Labels "app" }}
{{ else -}}
- "istio-proxy"
{{ end -}}
expands to
containers:
- name: istio-proxy
image: istio.io/proxy:0.5.0
args:
- proxy
- sidecar
- --configPath
- /etc/istio/proxy
- --binaryPath
- /usr/local/bin/envoy
- --serviceCluster
- sleep
when applied over a pod defined by the pod template spec in samples/sleep/sleep.yaml
More control: adding exceptions
There are cases where users do not have control of the pod creation, for instance, when they are created by someone else. Therefore they are unable to add the annotation sidecar.istio.io/inject in the pod, to explicitly instruct Istio whether to install the sidecar or not.
Think of auxiliary pods that might be created as an intermediate step while deploying an application. OpenShift Builds, for example, creates such pods for building the source code of an application. Once the binary artifact is built, the application pod is ready to run and the auxiliary pods are discarded. Those intermediate pods should not get an Istio sidecar, even if the policy is set to enabled and the namespace is properly labeled to get automatic injection.
For such cases you can instruct Istio to not inject the sidecar on those pods, based on labels that are present in those pods. You can do this by editing the istio-sidecar-injector ConfigMap and adding the entry neverInjectSelector. It is an array of Kubernetes label selectors. They are OR'd, stopping at the first match. See an example:
apiVersion: v1
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
name: istio-sidecar-injector
data:
config: |-
policy: enabled
neverInjectSelector:
- matchExpressions:
- {key: openshift.io/build.name, operator: Exists}
- matchExpressions:
- {key: openshift.io/deployer-pod-for.name, operator: Exists}
template: |-
initContainers:
...
The above statement means: Never inject on pods that have the label openshift.io/build.name or openshift.io/deployer-pod-for.name – the values of the labels don’t matter, we are just checking if the keys exist. With this rule added, the OpenShift Builds use case illustrated above is covered, meaning auxiliary pods will not have sidecars injected (because source-to-image auxiliary pods do contain those labels).
For completeness, you can also use a field called alwaysInjectSelector, with similar syntax, which will always inject the sidecar on pods that match that label selector, regardless of the global policy.
The label selector approach gives a lot of flexibility on how to express those exceptions. Take a look at these docs to see what you can do with them!
Uninstalling the automatic sidecar injector
$ kubectl delete mutatingwebhookconfiguration istio-sidecar-injector
$ kubectl -n istio-system delete service istio-sidecar-injector
$ kubectl -n istio-system delete deployment istio-sidecar-injector
$ kubectl -n istio-system delete serviceaccount istio-sidecar-injector-service-account
$ kubectl delete clusterrole istio-sidecar-injector-istio-system
$ kubectl delete clusterrolebinding istio-sidecar-injector-admin-role-binding-istio-system
The above command will not remove the injected sidecars from Pods. A rolling update or simply deleting the pods and forcing the deployment to create them is required.
Optionally, it may also be desirable to clean-up other resources that were modified in this task.
$ kubectl label namespace default istio-injection-