Kiali

Introduction

Kiali provides answers to the questions: What microservices are part of my Istio service mesh and how are they connected?

Table of contents

• Introduction
• Table of contents
  • Description
  • Getting Started
  • Container Image
  • License and Copyright
• Building
• Running
  • Running on OpenShift
  • Running on Kubernetes
  • Running Standalone
• Configuration
• Configure External Services
  • Jaeger
  • Grafana
• Services API Documentation
  • Configure your services
  • Customize API docs annotations
  • LDAP Configuration
• Additional Notes
  • Customize the UI web context root
  • Running the UI Outside the Core
  • Running A Locally Built UI Inside the Core
  • Disabling SSL
• Contributing
  • Talk to us
  • Issue tracking
  • Code Style Guide

Description

A Microservice Architecture breaks up the monolith into many smaller pieces that are composed together. Patterns to secure the communication between services like fault tolerance (via timeout, retry, circuit breaking, etc.) have come up as well as distributed tracing to be able to see where calls are going.

A service mesh can now provide these services on a platform level and frees the application writers from those tasks. Routing decisions are done at the mesh level.

Kiali works with Istio to visualise the service mesh topology, features like circuit breakers or request rates.

Kiali also includes Jaeger Tracing to provide distributed tracing out of the box.

Getting Started

This README is targeted mainly toward Kiali developers. If you are not a developer but want to learn more about Kiali, you will find https://www.kiali.io more helpful. For some instructions on running Kiali without having to git clone this repository or build anything, please see the Getting Started page.

If you have git cloned this repository, you can try to use our hack script to quickly install OpenShift, Maistra (Istio), and Kiali like this:

hack/cluster-openshift.sh --kiali-enabled true up

If you do not already have an Istio-enabled application to test with, you can install one using the Bookinfo Demo install script provided here as a convenience.

There are other demo applications to choose from as well: see some examples.

Container Image

Kiali is published as a container image on Docker hub at kiali/kiali

License and Copyright

See the LICENSE file.

Building

Note

These build instructions assume you have the following installed on your system: (1) Go Programming Language which must be at least version 1.8.3, (2) git, (3) Docker, and (4) make. To run Kiali on OpenShift after you build it, it is assumed you have a running OpenShift environment available to you. If you do not, you can find a set of instructions on how to set up OpenShift below. To run Kiali on Kubernetes after you built it, it is assumed you have a running Kubernetes environment available to you.

To build Kiali:

• Clone this repository inside a GOPATH. These instructions will use the example GOPATH of "/source/kiali/kiali" but you can use whatever you want. Just change the first line of the below instructions to use your GOPATH.

export GOPATH=/source/kiali/kiali
mkdir -p $GOPATH
cd $GOPATH
mkdir -p src/github.com/kiali
cd src/github.com/kiali
git clone git@github.com:kiali/kiali
export PATH=${PATH}:${GOPATH}/bin

• Install Glide - the Go dependency management tool that Kiali uses to build itself

cd ${GOPATH}/src/github.com/kiali/kiali
make dep-install

• Tell the dependency manager tool to update the Kiali dependencies

  Note	You should only run this command if you add, remove, or modify a dependency. If you are simply git cloning and building from source, you should skip this step.

cd ${GOPATH}/src/github.com/kiali/kiali
make dep-update

• Build Kiali

cd ${GOPATH}/src/github.com/kiali/kiali
make build

• At this point you can run the Kiali tests

cd ${GOPATH}/src/github.com/kiali/kiali
make test

Running

Note	If you want to quickly get up and running to play with Kiali and do not wish to git clone the repository or build anything, see https://www.kiali.io/gettingstarted for instructions.

Running on OpenShift

Setting up OpenShift

The following section assumes that the user has OpenShift Origin installed.

The OpenShift Origin Documentation will outline all the steps required.

Building the Container Image

Create the Kiali container image through the "docker-build" make target:

cd ${GOPATH}/src/github.com/kiali/kiali
make docker-build

This builds the Kiali operator image, too.

Deploying Kiali operator and Kiali to OpenShift

Note

Before deploying and running Kiali, you must first install and deploy Istio. Required Istio Version: 1.1. There are a few places that you can reference in order to learn how to do this. We recommend using Maistra but you can use the upstream Istio instructions making sure to follow the OpenShift preparation steps.

Note	The following make targets assume that either the oc command or the Maistra istiooc command is available in the user’s PATH and that the user is logged in.

Note	The Makefile used in these commands is the Operator Makefile in the operator directory. The legacy make targets in the main Makefile are still there for those developers that are used to using them - those legacy targets simply delegate to the Operator Makefile now.

Deploying Kiali Operator to OpenShift

You need to first install the Kiali operator. This needs to be done only one time. After the operator is deployed, you can deploy and remove Kiali any number of times using the steps described below.

cd ${GOPATH}/src/github.com/kiali/kiali/operator
make operator-create

The main Makefile has the same target which delegates to the above.

Deploying Kiali to OpenShift

Now you can deploy Kiali. This creates a Kiali custom resource (CR) which instructs the Kiali operator to install Kiali. A secret will be created also.

cd ${GOPATH}/src/github.com/kiali/kiali/operator
make kiali-create

The main Makefile legacy target openshift-deploy delegates to the above.

Removing Kiali from OpenShift

If you want to remove Kiali, you can do so via the operator by executing the kiali-delete target. This target will also remove the secret.

cd ${GOPATH}/src/github.com/kiali/kiali/operator
make kiali-delete

The main Makefile legacy target openshift-undeploy delegates to the above.

If you want to quickly purge your OpenShift environment of all Kiali resources, you can run the purge-kiali target instead. This does not use the operator, instead it purges all Kiali resources using the oc/kubectl command.

cd ${GOPATH}/src/github.com/kiali/kiali/operator
make purge-kiali

Reloading Kiali image in OpenShift

Note	To easily facilitate development, this target is in the main, top-level Makefile. This allows you to do make clean build docker-build openshift-reload-image to quickly get your new Kiali build into your running OpenShift.

If you already have Kiali installed but you want to recreate the pod with a new container image, you can run the following command:

cd ${GOPATH}/src/github.com/kiali/kiali
make openshift-reload-image

Removing Kiali operator from OpenShift

You can remove the Kiali operator by running this make command. Note: after this completes, the kiali-create and kiali-delete targets will be ineffective until you run the operator-create target to re-deploy the Kiali operator.

cd ${GOPATH}/src/github.com/kiali/kiali/operator
make operator-delete

There is no analogous target in the main Makefile.

Running on Kubernetes

Setting up Kubernetes

The following section assumes that the user has Kubernetes installed.

Building the Container Image

Create the Kiali container image through the "docker-build" make target:

cd ${GOPATH}/src/github.com/kiali/kiali
make docker-build

This builds the Kiali operator image, too.

Note that if you are using minikube, you can build the container images and push them directly into the minikube docker daemon using the alternative make target minikube-docker:

cd ${GOPATH}/src/github.com/kiali/kiali
make minikube-docker

Deploying and Removing Kiali to/from Kubernetes

Note	Before deploying and running Kiali, you must first install and deploy Istio. Required Istio Version: 1.1. There are a few places that you can reference in order to learn how to do this. We recommend using Maistra but you can use the upstream Istio instructions.

Note	The following make targets assume that the kubectl command is available in the user’s PATH.

Note

In order to deploy on Kubernetes and to be able to access the deployed service, you must ensure you have Ingress support. If you are using minikube, you need to run minikube addons enable ingress and add kiali as a hostname in your /etc/hosts via something like this command: echo "$(minikube ip) kiali" | sudo tee -a /etc/hosts

The same commands documented above that explain how to deploy and remove Kiali operator and Kiali from OpenShift also apply to any Kubernetes environment. So these will work - see above for details about these commands.

cd ${GOPATH}/src/github.com/kiali/kiali/operator
make operator-create
make kiali-create
make kiali-delete
make purge-kiali
make operator-delete

Reloading Kiali image in Kubernetes

Note	To easily facilitate development, this target is in the main, top-level Makefile. This allows you to do make clean build docker-build k8s-reload-image to quickly get your new Kiali build into your running Kubernetes.

If you already have Kiali installed but you want to recreate the pod with a new container image, you can run the following command:

cd ${GOPATH}/src/github.com/kiali/kiali
make k8s-reload-image

Running Standalone

Rarely, you may want to run Kiali outside of any cluster environment, perhaps for debugging purposes. To do this, run:

cd ${GOPATH}/src/github.com/kiali/kiali
make install
make run

The "install" target installs the Kiali executable in your GOPATH /bin directory so you can run it outside of the Makefile:

cd ${GOPATH}/src/github.com/kiali/kiali
make install
${GOPATH}/bin/kiali -config <your-config-file>

Configuration

Many configuration settings can optionally be set within the Kiali Operator custom resource (CR) file. See this example Kiali CR file that has all the configuration settings documented.

Configure External Services

Jaeger

If you have Jaeger installed in a custom way that is not easily auto-detectable by Kiali, you need to change in the Kiali CR the value of the jaeger > url

apiVersion: kiali.io/v1alpha1
kind: Kiali
metadata:
  name: kiali
spec:
...
    external_services:
      jaeger:
        url: http://jaeger-query-istio-system.127.0.0.1.nip.io
...

Grafana

If you have Grafana installed in a custom way that is not easily auto-detectable by Kiali, you need to change in the Kiali CR the value of the grafana > url

apiVersion: kiali.io/v1alpha1
kind: Kiali
metadata:
  name: kiali
spec:
...
    external_services:
      grafana:
        url: http://grafana-istio-system.127.0.0.1.nip.io
...

Services API Documentation

Kiali can display API Documentation of your services. See API documentation screen capture and API type list screen capture.

Configure your services

Your services must be annotated with the type of API ('rest', 'grpc', 'graphql') and a URL to the spec of the API. If the API spec is served from the service itself, Kiali will infer the hostname and port :

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: myservice
  annotations:
    kiali.io/api-type: rest
    kiali.io/api-spec: /v1/api-spec
spec:
...

The API spec can also be served from any http/s URL, internal or external to the cluster :

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: petstore
  annotations:
    kiali.io/api-type: rest
    kiali.io/api-spec: https://petstore.swagger.io/v2/swagger.json
spec:
...

For now, only REST APIs have their spec displayed but we are working to support gRpc and GraphQL soon. A live console to test your APIs directly with Kiali is also being worked on.

Customize API docs annotations

You can configure Kiali to use your own annotation names with the Kiali CR

...
apidocs:
  annotations:
    api_spec_annotation_name: "my-annotation-for-api-spec"
    api_type_annotation_name: "my-annotation-for-api-type"
...

LDAP Configuration

The auth.ldap section is used to configure Kiali when the authentication strategy is LDAP. The following configuration is an example. Kiali will not start without the required LDAP settings of ldap_host, ldap_port, ldap_base and ldap_bind_dn.

auth:
  strategy: "ldap"
  ldap:
    ldap_base: "DC=example,DC=com"
    ldap_bind_dn: "CN={USERID},OU=xyz,OU=Users,OU=Accounts,DC=example,DC=com"
    ldap_group_filter: "(cn=%s)"
    ldap_host: "example.com"
    ldap_insecure_skip_verify: true
    ldap_mail_id_key: "mail"
    ldap_member_of_key: "memberOf"
    ldap_port: 123
    ldap_role_filter: ".*xyz.*"
    ldap_search_filter: "(&(name={USERID}))"
    ldap_use_ssl: false
    ldap_user_filter: "(cn=%s)"
    ldap_user_id_key: "cn"

Additional Notes

Customize the UI web context root

By default Kiali UI is deployed to the top level of https://kiali-istio-system.<your_cluster_domain_or_ip>/. In some situations such as when you want to serve Kiali UI along with other apps under the same host name, e.g., example.com/kiali, example.com/app1, you can edit Kiali Config Map and provide a different value for web_root. Note: the path must begin with a / and not end with / (e.g. /kiali).

An example of custom web root:

...
server:
  web_root: /kiali
...

Running the UI Outside the Core

When developing the Kiali UI you will find it useful to run it outside of the core to make it easier to update the UI code and see the changes without having to recompile. The prefered approach for this is to use a proxy on the UI to mount the core. The process is described here.

To connect with the backend and avoid the javascript prompt requesting authentication you need to send the requests with a specific header.

X-Auth-Type-Kiali-UI: 1

The response will contain the header

WWW-Authenticate: xBasic realm="Kiali"

Otherwise the header will be

WWW-Authenticate: Basic realm="Kiali"

Running A Locally Built UI Inside the Core

If you are developing the UI on your local machine but you want to see it deployed and running inside of the core server, you can do so by setting the environment variable CONSOLE_VERSION to the value "local" when building the container image via the docker-build target. By default, your UI’s build/ directory is assumed to be in a directory called kiali-ui that is a peer directory of the GOPATH root directory for the core server. If it is not, you can set the environment variable CONSOLE_LOCAL_DIR to the value of the path of the root directory for the UI such that $CONSOLE_LOCAL_DIR/build contains the generated build files for the UI.

For example, if your GOPATH directory for the Kiali project is /source/kiali/kiali and you have git cloned the Kiali UI repository in /source/kiali/kiali-ui then you do not need to set CONSOLE_LOCAL_DIR. You can embed your locally built console into the core container image via:

CONSOLE_VERSION=local make docker-build

If you git cloned the Kiali UI repository in directory /my/git/repo and have built the UI there (such that the build files are located at /my/git/repo/build) then you can embed that locally built console into the core container image via:

CONSOLE_VERSION=local CONSOLE_LOCAL_DIR=/my/git/repo make docker-build

Disabling SSL

In the provided OpenShift templates, SSL is turned on by default. If you want to turn it off, you should:

• Remove the "tls: termination: reencrypt" option from the Kiali route

• Remove the "identity" block, with certificate paths, from the Kiali Config Map.

• Optionally you can also remove the annotation "service.alpha.openshift.io/serving-cert-secret-name", and the related volume that is declared and mounted in Kiali Deployment (but if you don’t, they will just be ignored).

In the provided Kubernetes templates, SSL is turned on by default. If you want to turn it off, you should:

• Remove the "identity" block, with certificate paths, from the Kiali Config Map.

• Optionally you can also remove the volume that is declared and mounted in Kiali Deployment (the name of the volume and mount are both "kiali-cert". If you don’t remove these, they will just be ignored.

Contributing

All contributions are welcome - Kiali uses the Apache 2 license and does not require any contributor agreement to submit patches. To setup your environment, check instructions in the Building and Running sections.

Get involved by submitting pull requests on GitHub. Before you do, please talk to us.

Talk to us

Ask questions on the Kiali IRC channel (#kiali on freenode) or the Google Groups: kiali-users or kiali-dev.

Issue tracking

The Kiali team is using JIRA for issue tracking. If you do not have a JIRA account, you can also open issues here on GitHub (we are monitoring this as well) for any bugs or problems you encounter or to suggest new features.

When you are looking for issues to get started, you can use this JIRA query for good first issues. If you pick one from the list, please let us know by the above mentioned means.

Code Style Guide

See the Backend Style Guide and the Frontend Style Guide.