TZ25 Service Mesh Istio Demo

This project deploys the Istio Bookinfo application in three different modes (no mesh, sidecar mesh, ambient mesh) onto a local Kubernetes kind cluster. It also includes a monitoring stack (Prometheus, Grafana, Kiali) and a K6 performance testing setup.

Overview

The demo showcases:

• Istio service mesh capabilities with sidecars and the newer ambient mode.
• Accessing applications via an Istio-managed Kubernetes Gateway.
• Monitoring the mesh and applications using Kiali.
• Visualizing metrics with Prometheus and Grafana.
• Running automated performance tests with K6 and generating reports.

Prerequisites

1. Docker Desktop: With Kubernetes and kind enabled.
2. helm: The Kubernetes package manager. Installation Guide
3. kubectl: The Kubernetes command-line tool. Installation Guide
4. k6: Modern load testing tool. Installation Guide
5. (Optional but Recommended) istioctl: The Istio command-line tool Installation Guide

Setup Instructions

1. Make the Script Executable:

   chmod +x service-mesh-setup.sh

2. Run the Setup Script: This will deploy MetalLB, the monitoring stack, Istio, Kiali, Bookinfo applications, and configure gateways.

   ./service-mesh-setup.sh

   The script will output access information at the end.

Accessing Services

1. Configure /etc/hosts: The setup script will output the EXTERNAL-IP of the Istio Ingress Gateway. You need to add entries to your /etc/hosts file (or C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts on Windows) to map the hostnames to this IP. For example, if the gateway IP is 172.18.255.3:

   172.18.255.3 no-mesh.bookinfo.local
   172.18.255.3 sidecar.bookinfo.local
   172.18.255.3 ambient.bookinfo.local
   

   (Docker Desktop often forwards LoadBalancer IPs to 127.0.0.1, so you might be able to use 127.0.0.1 instead of the MetalLB IP in your /etc/hosts file.)

2. Bookinfo Applications:

   • No Mesh: http://no-mesh.bookinfo.local/productpage
   • Sidecar: http://sidecar.bookinfo.local/productpage
   • Ambient: http://ambient.bookinfo.local/productpage

3. Monitoring Tools: Run kubectl get svc -A | grep LoadBalancer to find the EXTERNAL-IP and PORT(S) for:

   • Kiali: Usually in istio-system or kiali-operator namespace. Access via http://<KIALI_IP>:<KIALI_PORT> (e.g., http://localhost:20001 if Docker Desktop forwards it).
   • Grafana: In monitoring namespace. Access via http://<GRAFANA_IP>:3000 (e.g., http://localhost:3000). Admin password is prom-operator.
   • Prometheus: In monitoring namespace. Access via http://<PROMETHEUS_IP>:9090 (e.g., http://localhost:9090).

   (In case of Kiali, you might want to port-forward the svc to access the dashboard: kubectl port-forward -n istio-system svc/kiali 20001:20001.)

Running K6 Performance Tests

Run the test Script:

    ./k6-execution.sh

1. Test Execution: The script executes test.js, which contains scenarios for no-mesh, sidecar, and ambient environments. Each scenario runs for 2 minutes with 10 Virtual Users (VUs).

2. HTML Report: A single HTML report named k6-report.html will be generated in the directory where you ran the script. This report contains metrics for all test scenarios.

Viewing Dashboards in Grafana

Access Grafana: Open Grafana using its LoadBalancer IP/port (e.g., http://localhost:3000). Log in with admin / prom-operator.

Cleanup

To remove all resources created by this demo:

./service-mesh-setup.sh cleanup