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Community Blog Using Istio to support Service Mesh Expansion on Alibaba Cloud Kubernetes Container Service and ECS Virtual Machine

Using Istio to support Service Mesh Expansion on Alibaba Cloud Kubernetes Container Service and ECS Virtual Machine

This article discusses how Alibaba Cloud Container Service mesh expansion capability implements app and service hybrid orchestration on Kubernetes and ECS based on Istio.

Istio V0.2 or later provides a function called mesh expansion.This function integrates some non-Kubernetes services into the Istio service mesh that runs in a Kubernetes cluster. These services often run on some virtual machines (VMs) or bare metal hosts.

Alibaba Cloud Container Service for Kubernetes supports integration with Istio mesh expansion. This article uses an example to describe how to use Istio to enable the application and service hybrid orchestration on the Kubernetes and Alibaba Cloud ECS instances.

Mesh Expansion

In short, mesh expansion is a method provided by the Istio service mesh deployed on Kubernetes for integrating VMs or bare metal hosts into the service mesh.

Mesh expansion plays an important role in migrating users from a legacy system onto the cloud. In the microservice architecture, it is impossible to run all the workloads on Kubernetes. Users may complete O&M of some applications on Kubernetes, and O&M of other applications on VMs or bare metal hosts.

Only an Istio control plane is needed to manage multiple services across Kubernetes, VMs, and bare metal hosts.This not only ensures normal operation of original services, but also implements application and service hybrid orchestration on Kubernetes and VMs.

Prepare a Kubernetes Cluster and Install Istio

Alibaba Cloud Container Service for Kubernetes V1.10.4 has been released. You can use the container service console to conveniently and quickly create a Kubernetes cluster.For more information about the process, see create a Kubernetes cluster.

Install and configure kubectl and ensure that kubectl can connect to the Kubernetes cluster

As described in the previous articles, you can use the application catalog to conveniently deploy Istio.First, use the command line or console to create a namespace istio-system. Then, click App Catalog on the left-side navigation bar, and select ack-istio on the right side. On the displayed page，select the namespace istio-system, and click Parameters to modify parameter settings for custom installation.

Note: This document provides important information for installation and uninstallation, especially frequently-seen custom resource definition (CRD) version problems.

Install the Example in the Kubernetes Cluster

Use the following command line or console to create a namespace bookinfo, and deploy the modified application.In the modified version, the details component is deleted, and ingressgateway is defined.

You can obtain files involved in this example by clicking here.

kubectl create ns bookinfo

kubectl label namespace bookinfo istio-injection=enabled
kubectl apply -n bookinfo -f ./bookinfo/bookinfo-without-details.yaml
kubectl apply -n bookinfo -f ./bookinfo/bookinfo-gateway.yaml

In the deployment modified based on the official example, the details component and database run on the ECS instance beyond Kubernetes.

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After the application runs normally, use the address exposed by ingressgateway to visit the /productpage page. The page should look similar to the following figure, where the details part cannot be displayed normally:

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Configure Kubernetes

  1. If you have not configured any internal load balancers (ILBs) for Kube DNS, Pilot, Mixer and Citadel when installing Istio, run the following command to configure ILBs:
    kubectl apply -f ./mesh-expansion.yaml

    The four services are created as follows:

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  2. Generate the Istio configuration file (cluster.env) and DNS configuration file (kubedns), which are used for configuration on the VM.The cluster.env file contains the cluster IP address ranges to be intercepted. The kubedns file enables applications on the VM to resolve cluster service names, which will be intercepted and forwarded by the sidecar.

    The command is as follows:

    ./setupMeshEx.sh generateClusterEnvAndDnsmasq

    Example of the generated cluster.env configuration file:

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    Example of the generated kubedns configuration file:

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Set Up the ECS Instance

Configure your working environment to enable ECS VM authorization. Generate an SSHkey and distribute it to the ECS instance.You can run ssh root@<ECS_HOST_IP> to confirm that the ECS VM is successfully connected.

Generate a public key:

ssh-keygen -b 4096 -f ~/.ssh/id_rsa -N ""

To ensure that the ECS instance can be connected to the Kubernetes network, add the ECS instance and Kubernetes to the same security group.

Alibaba Cloud Container Service provides good user experience for ECS instance configuration. You can run the following script to complete the ECS instance configuration:

export SERVICE_NAMESPACE=default
./setupMeshEx.sh machineSetup root@<ECS_HOST_IP>

Check that the processes are running:

ps aux |grep istio

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The Istio auth node agent is healthy:

sudo systemctl status istio-auth-node-agent

Run Services on the ECS Instance

As shown in the example deployment chart, two services need to run on the ECS instance. One is the Details service, and the other is the database service.

Run the Details Service on the ECS Instance

Run the following command to simulate (using Docker only for simulation) a Details service. The service runs on the ECS instance and port 9080 is exposed.

docker pull istio/examples-bookinfo-details-v1:1.8.0
docker run -d -p 9080:9080 --name details-on-vm istio/examples-bookinfo-details-v1:1.8.0

Configure a sidecar to intercept the port. This configuration is available in /var/lib/istio/envoy/sidecar.env, and the environment variable ISTIO_INBOUND_PORTS is used for configuration.

Example (on the VM where the service is running):

echo "ISTIO_INBOUND_PORTS=9080,8080" > /var/lib/istio/envoy/sidecar.env
systemctl restart istio

Register the Details Service with Istio

Find the IP address of the VM, which is used to add the VM to the service mesh:

hostname -I

Manually configure a selector-less service and endpoints. The selector-less service is used for services that are not backed by Kubernetes pods.For example, on a server with permissions to use the istioctl command, register the Details service:

istioctl -n bookinfo register details 192.168.3.202 http:9080

Visit the /productpage page again. The page should look similar to the following figure, where the details part should be displayed normally:

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Switch the Ratings Service to the Database Version

By default, the ratings service does not access the database. You can run the following command to change the version so that the ratings service is switched to the database version:

kubectl apply -f ./bookinfo/bookinfo-ratings-v2-mysql-vm.yaml
kubectl apply -f ./bookinfo/virtual-service-ratings-mysql-vm.yaml

Then, visit the /productpage page. The page should look similar to the following figure, where the ratings part cannot be displayed normally. The next step is to build the database service on the ECS instance and add it to Istio.

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Run the Database Service on the ECS Instance

Run MariaDB on the VM, and use it as the backend of the ratings service. Configure MariaDB so that MariaDB can be remotely accessed.

apt-get update && apt-get install -y mariadb-server
sed -i 's/127\.0\.0\.1/0\.0\.0\.0/g' /etc/mysql/mariadb.conf.d/50-server.cnf
sudo mysql
# Grant the root permissions
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password' WITH GRANT OPTION;
quit;
sudo systemctl restart mysql

Initialize the ratings database on the VM.

curl -q https://raw.githubusercontent.com/istio/istio/master/samples/bookinfo/src/mysql/mysqldb-init.sql | mysql -u root -ppassword

To better observe the differences in outputs of the Bookinfo application, run the following command to modify the rating records so that different rating information is displayed:

mysql -u root -ppassword test -e "select * from ratings;"
mysql -u root -ppassword test -e  "update ratings set rating=2;select * from ratings;"

Register the Database Service with Istio

Configure a sidecar to intercept the port. This configuration is available in /var/lib/istio/envoy/sidecar.env, and the environment variable ISTIO_INBOUND_PORTS is used for configuration.

Example (on the VM where the service is running):

echo "ISTIO_INBOUND_PORTS=3306,9080,8080" > /var/lib/istio/envoy/sidecar.env
systemctl restart istio

Similarly, on a server with permissions to use the istioctl command, register the data service:

istioctl -n bookinfo register mysqldb 192.168.3.202 3306

After the setup, Kubernetes pods and other servers contained in the mesh expansion should be able to access the database service running on the server.

Then, visit the /productpage page. The page should look similar to the following figure, where the details and ratings parts should be displayed normally, and both services come from the ECS instance:

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Summary

Alibaba Cloud Container Service for Kubernetes supports integration with Istio mesh expansion. This article uses an official example to describe how to use Istio to enable the application and service hybrid orchestration on the Kubernetes and Alibaba Cloud ECS instances.

You are welcome to use Alibaba Cloud Container Service for Kubernetes to quickly build an Istio open platform and integrate Istio to microservice development in your project.

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