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Calico Cloud documentation

Deploy Istio Ambient Mode on your cluster

You can deploy Calico's bundled version of Istio in ambient mode to provide mTLS encryption to your workloads.

note

Istio Ambient Mode is a tech preview feature. Tech preview features are subject to significant changes before they become GA.

Limitations​

  • Application layer network policies are not compatible with the Istio service mesh.
  • Istio Ambient Mode does not work together with workload-based web application firewalls.
  • The service mesh is not supported for use on clusters that are also part of a cluster mesh.
  • Destination ports are preserved only when Istio is deployed without Waypoint. If you deploy Waypoint, all traffic through Waypoint will show port 15008 as its destination port.
  • Connect-time load balancing with the eBPF data plane is not compatible with Waypoint.

Prerequisites​

  • Calico Cloud is installed and managed by the Tigera Operator.

Install Istio in ambient mode on your cluster​

You can create an Istio service mesh in ambient mode by creating the Istio custom resource.

  • To install Istio in ambient mode, apply the Istio custom resource to your cluster:

    cat <<EOF | kubectl apply -f -
    apiVersion: operator.tigera.io/v1
    kind: Istio
    metadata:
      name: default
    EOF
    note

    To customize resource requirements for your Istio deployment, see the options available in the installation API documentation.

    To verify the installation:

    kubectl get tigerastatus
    Example output
    NAME                          AVAILABLE   PROGRESSING   DEGRADED   SINCE
    apiserver                     True        False         False      9m59s
    calico                        True        False         False      9m4s
    intrusion-detection           True        False         False      5m39s
    ippools                       True        False         False      10m
    istio                         True        False         False      19s
    log-collector                 True        False         False      8m34s
    log-storage                   True        False         False      10m
    log-storage-access            True        False         False      4m24s
    log-storage-dashboards        True        False         False      4m58s
    log-storage-elastic           True        False         False      5m4s
    log-storage-esmetrics         True        False         False      4m54s
    log-storage-kubecontrollers   True        False         False      5m9s
    log-storage-secrets           True        False         False      10m
    manager                       True        False         False      8m24s
    monitor                       True        False         False      9m44s
    policy-recommendation         True        False         False      9m24s
    tiers                         True        False         False      9m44s

    Now you can add your workloads to the Istio service mesh.

Add a workload to the Istio service mesh​

You can add workloads to the mesh by labeling them. Communication between labelled namespaces and services goes through the mesh and uses mTLS encryption.

warning

Don't label Calico Cloud resources to add them to the service mesh. Doing this can cause interruptions and failure to your cluster network.

If you want to secure Calico Cloud components, see Secure Calico component communications.

  1. To add workloads to your Istio service mesh, add the istio.io/dataplane-mode=ambient label to a service or namespace resource:

    Adding a namespace to the Istio service mesh
    kubectl label namespace <namespace> istio.io/dataplane-mode=ambient

    Replace <namespace> with the namespace you want to include in the mesh.

    Adding a service to the Istio service mesh
    kubectl label service --namespace=<namespace> <service> istio.io/dataplane-mode=ambient

    Replace the following:

    • <service>: The name of the service you want to include in the mesh.
    • <namespace>: The namespace your service is in.

Removing Istio​

If you want to remove Istio, first remove the labels you applied to services and namespaces. When that's done, you can delete the Istio custom resource.

  1. Remove the label from namespaces and services by running the following commands:

    kubectl label namespaces --all istio.io/dataplane-mode=ambient-
    kubectl label services --all --all-namespaces istio.io/dataplane-mode=ambient-

  2. Remove the Istio custom resource:

    kubectl delete istio.operator.tigera.io default

Troubleshooting commands​

Check whether Istio pods are deployed:

kubectl get pods -n calico-system | grep 'istio\|ztunnel'

Check whether Istio CRDs are deployed:

kubectl get crd | grep istio

Check which services and namespaces are in the mesh:

istioctl ztunnel-config workloads -n calico-system

Check for errors logged by the zTunnel component:

ZTUNNEL_PODS=$(kubectl get pod -n calico-system \
  -l app.kubernetes.io/name=ztunnel \
  -o jsonpath='{.items[*].metadata.name}')

for P in $ZTUNNEL_PODS; do
  echo "--- Checking logs for pod: $P ---"
  kubectl logs $P -n calico-system 2>/dev/null | \
    grep -i error | \
    grep -i app1
done

Additional resources​