Install with Helm

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Follow this guide to install and configure an Istio mesh using Helm.

The Helm charts used in this guide are the same underlying charts used when installing Istio via Istioctl or the Operator.

This feature is currently considered alpha.

Prerequisites

Perform any necessary platform-specific setup.
Check the Requirements for Pods and Services.
Install the Helm client, version 3.6 or above.
Configure the Helm repository:

$ helm repo add istio https://istio-release.storage.googleapis.com/charts
$ helm repo update

Installation steps

Create a namespace istio-system for Istio components:
```
$ kubectl create namespace istio-system
```
Install the Istio base chart which contains cluster-wide resources used by the Istio control plane:
When performing a revisioned installation, the base chart requires the --defaultRevision value to be set for resource validation to function. More information on the --defaultRevision option can be found in the Helm upgrade documentation.
```
$ helm install istio-base istio/base -n istio-system
```
Install the Istio discovery chart which deploys the istiod service:
```
$ helm install istiod istio/istiod -n istio-system --wait
```
(Optional) Install an ingress gateway:
```
$ kubectl create namespace istio-ingress
$ kubectl label namespace istio-ingress istio-injection=enabled
$ helm install istio-ingress istio/gateway -n istio-ingress --wait
```
See Installing Gateways for in-depth documentation on gateway installation.
The namespace the gateway is deployed in must not have a istio-injection=disabled label. See Controlling the injection policy for more info.

Verifying the installation

Status of the installation can be verified using Helm:

$ helm status istiod -n istio-system

Updating your Istio configuration

You can provide override settings specific to any Istio Helm chart used above and follow the Helm upgrade workflow to customize your Istio mesh installation. The available configurable options can be found by using helm show values istio/<chart>; for example helm show values istio/gateway.

Migrating from non-Helm installations

If you’re migrating from a version of Istio installed using istioctl or Operator to Helm (Istio 1.5 or earlier), you need to delete your current Istio control plane resources and re-install Istio using Helm as described above. When deleting your current Istio installation, you must not remove the Istio Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs) as that can lead to loss of your custom Istio resources.

You can follow steps mentioned in the Istioctl uninstall guide or Operator uninstall guide depending upon your installation method.

Uninstall

You can uninstall Istio and its components by uninstalling the charts installed above.

List all the Istio charts installed in istio-system namespace:

$ helm ls -n istio-system
NAME       NAMESPACE    REVISION UPDATED         STATUS   CHART        APP VERSION
istio-base istio-system 1        ... ... ... ... deployed base-1.0.0   1.0.0
istiod     istio-system 1        ... ... ... ... deployed istiod-1.0.0 1.0.0

(Optional) Delete any Istio gateway chart installations:

$ helm delete istio-ingress -n istio-ingress
$ kubectl delete namespace istio-ingress

Delete Istio discovery chart:
```
$ helm delete istiod -n istio-system
```
Delete Istio base chart:
By design, deleting a chart via Helm doesn’t delete the installed Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs) installed via the chart.
```
$ helm delete istio-base -n istio-system
```

Delete the istio-system namespace:

$ kubectl delete namespace istio-system

Uninstall stable revision label resources

If you decide to continue using the old control plane, instead of completing the update, you can uninstall the newer revision and its tag by first issuing helm template istiod istio/istiod -s templates/revision-tags.yaml --set revisionTags={prod-canary} --set revision=canary -n istio-system | kubectl delete -f -. You must them uninstall the revision of Istio that it pointed to by following the uninstall procedure above.

If you installed the gateway(s) for this revision using in-place upgrades, you must also reinstall the gateway(s) for the previous revision manually, Removing the previous revision and its tags will not automatically revert the previously in-place upgraded gateway(s).

(Optional) Deleting CRDs installed by Istio

Deleting CRDs permanently removes any Istio resources you have created in your cluster. To permanently delete Istio CRDs installed in your cluster:

$ kubectl get crd -oname | grep --color=never 'istio.io' | xargs kubectl delete