Istio Vet

The istio-vet tool is a utility to validate the configuration of Istio and user applications installed in a Kubernetes cluster.

This tool works with Istio version 0.7.1 and above.

Introduction

The istio-vet utility helps discover incompatible configuration of user applications and Istio components in a kubernetes cluster. Misconfigurations might cause unexpected or incorrect service mesh behavior which can be easily detected and fixed using this tool.

The istio-vet tool invokes a list of independent vetters. Each vetter performs validation on a subset of configurations and generates notes on any misconfiguration.

Note that istio-vet and vetters only read configuration objects from the kubernetes API server.

Example

Vetter meshversion inspects the version of running Istio components and the sidecar version deployed in pods in the mesh. It generates the following note on any version mismatch:

Summary: "Mismatched sidecar version - myapp-xyz-1234"

Message: "WARNING: The pod myapp-xyz-1234 in namespace default is running with
sidecar proxy version 0.2.10 but your environment is running Istio
version 0.2.12. Consider upgrading the sidecar proxy in the pod."

Running Istio-Vet

You can build and run Istio-Vet from this repo, or use the docker image (locally or from within in a kubernetes cluster).

If you want to build Istio-Vet from this repo, please see the instructions for Contributors.

Using Istio-Vet via Docker

Instructions to run Istio-Vet from our official Docker Image: quay.io/aspenmesh/istio-vet:main

Local

When run locally, kube config for the kubernetes cluster needs to be mounted inside the container.

docker run --rm -v $HOME/.kube/config:/root/.kube/config quay.io/aspenmesh/istio-vet:main

In-Cluster

The istio-vet container can be deployed as a Job in a kubernetes cluster using the manifest file in the install directory.

kubectl apply -f install/kubernetes/istio-vet.yaml

To inspect the output of the istio-vet, use the following command:

kubectl -n istio-system logs -l "app=istio-vet" --tail=0

Note that the Job would have to be manually run every time to get the latest output from the istio-vet utility.

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Repository Layout

This repository contains code for the vet tool and supported vetters packages. It includes:

• pkg/vet - This directory contains code for the vet utility which is the main binary produced by the repository.

• pkg/vetters - This directory contains packages for individual vetters, helper utility package and the interface definitions for vetters to implement. It includes the following vetters:

  • meshversion - This vetter inspects the version of various installed Istio components and generates notes on mismatching versions. It also inspects the version of sidecar proxy running in pods in the mesh and compares it with the installed Istio version and reports back any version mismatch.

  • serviceportprefix - This vetter inspects services in the Istio mesh and reports back if any service port name definition doesn't include Istio recognized port protocol prefixes.

  • podsinmesh - This vetter reports back the number of user pods in/out of the mesh. It also reports number of system pods running which are exempted from the mesh.

  • applabel - This vetter inspects the labels defined for the pods in the mesh and generates notes if the label app is missing in any pod specification.

  • serviceassociation - This vetter generates warning if a pod in the mesh is associated with multiple services.

  • danglingroutedestinationhost - This vetter generates warnings if the route destination host in virtual service resource points to services which don't exists in the cluster.

  • conflictingvirtualservicehost - This vetter generates warnings if the same host is defined in multiple virtual service resources.

More details about vetters can be found in the individual vetters package documentation.

Contributing

Individuals or business entities who contribute to this project must have completed and submitted the F5® Contributor License Agreement to cla@aspenmesh.io prior to their code submission being included in this project. Please include your github username in the CLA email.

Build Prerequisites

To build Istio-Vet locally, you will need to install the following:

• A Go environment.
• Install Protobuf.

  • The Google protobuf compiler (a standalone binary named protoc) needs to be installed first. You can get it by downloading the corresponding file for your system from https://github.com/google/protobuf/releases.

    Mac users

    brew install protobuf

    Linux users

    Linux users can get the release with this command. Make sure to change the protoc version and filename:

    curl -L -O \
    https://github.com/google/protobuf/releases/download/<desired-version>/protoc-<desired-version>-linux-x86_64.zip \
    && mkdir -p /usr/local \
    && unzip protoc-<desired-version>-linux-x86_64.zip -d /usr/local

    You should now be able to type protoc at the command line and see its options.

  • Next, get protoc-gen-go:

    go get -u github.com/golang/protobuf/protoc-gen-go

Clone Istio-Vet

Make this directory. (Dependencies rely on this file structure)

mkdir -p $GOPATH/src/github.com/aspenmesh
cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/aspenmesh

Fork and clone this repo into your aspenmesh folder, then cd into istio-vet

git clone git@github.com:<your-repo>/istio-vet.git
cd istio-vet

Build Istio-Vet

• Install protobuf to the project's vendor directory

  go get github.com/golang/protobuf/protoc-gen-go

• Run make clean and then make to compile.

Run Istio-Vet

You should now be able to run vet at the command line and see its options.

To use the vetters, point Istio-Vet to a kubeconfig file which is associated with a running cluster:

KUBECONFIG=<full-path-to-kubeconfig>kube.config vet