IBM Cloud

2 minute read

Follow these instructions to prepare a cluster for Istio using the IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service. To install Istio on IBM Cloud Private, refer to Istio on IBM Cloud Private instead.

To prepare a cluster before manually installing Istio, proceed as follows:

Install the IBM Cloud CLI, the IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service plug-in, and the Kubernetes CLI.
Create a standard Kubernetes cluster using the following command. Replace <cluster-name> with the name you want to use for your cluster and <zone-name> with the name of an available zone.
You can display your available zones by running ibmcloud ks zones. The IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service Locations Reference Guide describes the available zones and how to specify them.
```
$ ibmcloud ks cluster-create --zone <zone-name> --machine-type b3c.4x16 \
  --workers 3 --name <cluster-name>
```
If you already have a private and a public VLAN, you can specify them in the above command using the --private-vlan and --public-vlan options. Otherwise, they will be automatically created for you. You can view your available VLANs by running ibmcloud ks vlans --zone <zone-name>.
Run the following command to download your cluster configuration for kubectl and then set the KUBECONFIG environment variable as specified in the command output.
```
$ ibmcloud ks cluster-config <cluster-name>
```
Make sure to use the kubectl CLI version that matches the Kubernetes version of your cluster.