# Overview

## Overview

[Istio](https://istio.io/) is a popular service mesh with below functionalities:

- Automatic load balancing for HTTP, gRPC, WebSocket, and TCP traffic.
- Fine-grained control of traffic behavior with rich routing rules, retries, failovers, and fault injection.
- A pluggable policy layer and configuration API supporting access controls, rate limits and quotas.
- Automatic metrics, logs, and traces for all traffic within a cluster, including cluster ingress and egress.
- Secure service-to-service communication in a cluster with strong identity-based authentication and authorization.

## What Will You Do

In this exercise,

- You will create a cluster blueprint with "Istio" addon
- You will then apply this cluster blueprint to a managed cluster

Important

This tutorial describes the steps to create and use a Istio based blueprint using the Web Console. The entire workflow can also be fully automated and embedded into an automation pipeline.

## Assumptions

- You have already provisioned or imported a Kubernetes cluster using the controller

## Step 1: Create Istio addons

In this example we will be using Rafay's Catalog feature to install Istio addons.

- Login into the Web Console and navigate to your Project as an Org Admin or Infrastructure Admin  
- Under Infrastructure, select "Namespaces" and create a new namespace called "istio-system"  
- Navigate to Catalog and select "default-istio" from Filter by catalog. You should see istio components as below

- Click on "base", select a stable version from top right and click "Create-Add-on"
- Give "istio-base" name and select the "istio-system" namespace that we created earlier. Click "Create"  
- Give a suitable version number and click "Save Changes"  
- Repeat the process for istiod and gateway addons with the same version selected with names "istiod" and "istio-gateway"

## Step 2: Create Blueprint

Now, we are ready to assemble a custom cluster blueprint using this addon.

- Under Infrastructure, select "Blueprints"  
- Create a new blueprint and give it a name such as "istio"  
- Select "New Version" and give it a version name. Ex: istio-1.6.8  
- Under Add-Ons, select "ADD MORE" and chose the "istio-base" addon created from Step 1.  
- Add "istiod" and "istio-gateway" in the same way.  
- You need to add a dependency for istiod and istio-gateway as they both are dependent on istio-base to be installed first. Click "Add Dependency" below istiod and istio-gateway and select istio-base as dependency.

- Click "Save Changes" to save the blueprint.

## Step 3: Apply Blueprint

Now, we are ready to apply this blueprint to a cluster.

- Click on Options for the target Cluster in the Web Console  
- Select "Update Blueprint" and select the "istio" blueprint from the dropdown and for the version select "istio-1.14.3" from the dropdown.  
- Click on "Save and Publish".

This will start the deployment of the addons configured in the "istio" blueprint to the targeted cluster. The blueprint sync process can take a few minutes. Once complete, the cluster will display the current cluster blueprint details and whether the sync was successful or not.

## Step 4: Verify Deployment

Users can optionally verify whether the correct resources have been created on the cluster.

- Click on the Kubectl button on the cluster to open a virtual terminal

First, we will verify if the istio-system namespace has been created

```
kubectl get ns istio-system
```

Next, we will verify if the pods are healthy in the "istio-system" namespace

```
kubectl get po -n istio-system
NAME                             READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
istio-gateway-d8f94d7c6-q5c2n    1/1     Running   0          3m
istiod-75f5dd9b8-x2zp9           1/1     Running   0          15m
```

Optionally you can check from Rafay console by navigating to the cluster > Resources > Istio-system namespace > Pods

## Recap

Congratulations! You have successfully created a custom cluster blueprint with the "istio" addon and applied to a cluster.