Istiod Introspection

Istiod is build with a flexible introspection framework, called ControlZ, which makes it easy to inspect and manipulate the internal state of an istiod instance. Istiod opens a port which can be used from a web browser to get an interactive view into its state, or via REST for access and control from external tools.

When Istiod starts, a message is logged indicating the IP address and port to connect to in order to interact with ControlZ.

2020-08-04T23:28:48.889370Z     info    ControlZ available at 100.76.122.230:9876

Here’s sample of the ControlZ interface:

To access the ControlZ page of istiod, you can port-forward its ControlZ endpoint locally and connect through your local browser:

$ istioctl dashboard controlz deployment/istiod.istio-system

This will redirect the component’s ControlZ page to http://localhost:9876 for remote access.