Kiali: add helm chart to kubernetes/charts

[jdolitsky]

Would be really nice to be able to deploy Kiali off-the-shelf without having to run make k8s-deploy

[jmazzitelli]

Would be really nice to be able to deploy Kiali off-the-shelf without having to run make k8s-deploy

You can do this already. You do not need to run make, you do not need the Makefile, and you don't even need to git clone the kiali repo to install and run kiali.

For instructions on how to do this, please see https://kiali.github.io/

We publish images on docker hub here: https://hub.docker.com/r/kiali/kiali/tags/

Specifically, if running on OpenShift, you can run these two commands:

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kiali/kiali/master/deploy/openshift/kiali-configmap.yaml | \
   VERSION_LABEL=master envsubst | oc create -n istio-system -f -

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kiali/kiali/master/deploy/openshift/kiali.yaml | \
   IMAGE_NAME=kiali/kiali \
   IMAGE_VERSION=latest \
   NAMESPACE=istio-system \
   VERSION_LABEL=master \
   VERBOSE_MODE=4 envsubst | oc create -n istio-system -f -

I haven't recently installed on k8s specifically, but we do have k8s config files so something like this "should" work - if it does not, please write a github issue (or, if you can fix it yourself, please submit a PR and we will gratefully merge it :):

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kiali/kiali/master/deploy/kubernetes/kiali-configmap.yaml | \
   VERSION_LABEL=master envsubst | kubectl create -n istio-system -f -

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kiali/kiali/master/deploy/kubernetes/kiali.yaml | \
   IMAGE_NAME=kiali/kiali \
   IMAGE_VERSION=latest \
   NAMESPACE=istio-system \
   VERSION_LABEL=master \
   VERBOSE_MODE=4 envsubst | kubectl create -n istio-system -f -

Hope that helps

[jdolitsky]

@jmazzitelli thanks for quick reply!

Tried your commands on GKE cluster I am admin on and received

Error from server (Forbidden): error when creating "STDIN": clusterroles.rbac.authorization.k8s.io "kiali" is forbidden: attempt to grant extra privileges:

Pointers?

[jdolitsky]

I think the reason for a Helm chart goes beyond this though.. The things going on with envsubst above are something that Helm gives you with templating

One of the criteria for being accepted as an official kubernetes chart is that the app must deploy on a cluster with the default settings given a helm install

I would not mind maintaining the Helm chart for Kiali unless the team is opposed, please let me know

[jmazzitelli]

I do not have any experience with Helm, but I know there has been talk about needing it for Kiali and people wanting to get it done. So, please go for it! :) Feel free to email the team at the kiali-dev googlegroups with details of what you plan to do/are doing. Thanks.

[jdolitsky]

Sure will do, thanks for info

[pilhuhn]

@jdolitsky Also have a look at https://github.com/kiali/kiali.github.io/issues/13 , where @jxadro supplied a k8s deployment file that works for him on the IBM Kube flavour.

[jdolitsky]

Thanks!
FYI - I've chatted with @mattjmcnaughton in k8s slack, and he has offered to help get this effort started

[mattjmcnaughton]

Thanks @jdolitsky - I'll get started on this tomorrow and be sure to keep y'all posted :)

[gyliu513]

FYI, I was creating a kiali chart for istio at here https://github.com/istio/istio/pull/5869

[pilhuhn]

You folks are awesome!!!!

[mattjmcnaughton]

Oh, thats awesome @gyliu513 - great work ! @jdolitsky, sounds like @gyliu513 is already on it!

@gyliu513 thoughts on whether this should live in kubernetes/charts at some point? Happy to help with the process of getting it there :)

[gyliu513]

@mattjmcnaughton One question is does kiali can still work without istio? If it can work without istio, we can put it to kubernetes/charts as well, but if it depends on istio, then I prefer we maintain it in istio repo. Comments?

[abonas]

@gyliu513 at the moment kiali is working only with Istio

[gyliu513]

Thanks @abonas

istio/istio#5869 is merged to upstream of istio, not sure if we still need this in kuberntes/charts as we actually do not have a istio chart in kubernetes/charts, so may not able to install kiali without istio.

[pilhuhn]

Where do we stand with this? Istio delivers a helm chart to deploy Kiali and dockerhub now has the istio-release-1.0 tagged image that the chart requires.

I'll close this one. Feel free to re-open if needed.

[ivanmp91]

What about GKE clusters where istio is installed using the new addon support [1]? It might make sense to have a separate helm chart maintained on this repo?

[1] https://cloud.google.com/istio/docs/istio-on-gke/installing#adding_istio_on_gke_to_an_existing_cluster

[villesau]

Istio is dropping Kiali and other addons from their installation: https://istio.io/blog/2020/addon-rework/

And on top of that, Istio does not have Helm 3 chart, and helm installation will also be deprecated in future: https://istio.io/pt-br/docs/setup/install/helm/ . These makes it pretty difficult to install Kiali for GKE managed istio/kubernetes. Helm chart would be also nice since it could then be managed by terraform.

[jmazzitelli]

We currently have 2 ways to install Kiali, both involving the Kiali Operator (you can use OLM to install Kiali Operator or, if you do not have or want OLM, download the deploy script, pipe it in from curl from https://kiali.io/getLatestKialiOperator, or use the fixed all-in-one yaml -- then create a Kiali CR to tell the operator to install it (at which point you use the Kiali CR to manage/uninstall Kiali by simply editing or removing it). Adding helm would be a third way but we are trying not to add more burden to our maintenance tasks by adding another distinct way of installation (the Kiali Operator is the main installation/management tool). Note that helm is merely an installer whereas the Kiali Operator performs installation and runtime management of running Kiali instances.

But if someone wants to contribute and maintain helm3 charts in the Kiali project it would be welcomed.

[villesau]

Thanks for the answer @jmazzitelli! I totally understand that helm chart could add more maintenance burden. I'm fairly new to Kubernetes (at this level) so my knowledge is rather limited so I wouldn't trust me to come up with helm chart at least. Could maintaining the operator via helm charts be possible or feasible?

My setup for maintaining the kubernetes relies a lot on Terraform. Helm charts plays pretty nicely together with Terraform and they have an official provider for it: https://www.terraform.io/docs/providers/helm/index.html

Do you happen to know if any of these other installation methods could be easily integrated with Terraform? My goal is that everything I do is defined in "infrastructure as code" (via terraform mostly) manner so I'd like to avoid adhoc commands.

[jmazzitelli]

Could maintaining the operator via helm charts be possible or feasible?

Actually, IIRC someone in the community already built this. It wasn't contributed back to the kiali project but it is somewhere out in github land in some other git project. I don't remember where, but I do recall someone building a helm chart for the kiali operator.

I had actually started building that for the upstream Istio project - but since upstream Istio is removing all addons, I abandoned that effort. See: https://github.com/istio/istio/pull/20131

[villesau]

@jmazzitelli could this perhaps be reopened for reassessment?

[jmazzitelli]

could this perhaps be reopened for reassessment?

As I mentioned in an earlier comment, if someone wants to contribute and maintain helm3 charts in the Kiali project, it would be welcomed.

[naphta]

I've "de-istio'd" the chart which was written for the istio project by @jmazzitelli. I'm happy to submit a pull request with it in as-is, and make any idiomatic changes, and add any features to make that pull request satisfactory. I've been using the resources generated by the installation script as a base generally speaking.

I can't however commit to full maintenance of the chart.

[jmazzitelli]

There is a proposed PR https://github.com/kiali/kiali-operator/pull/77 that addresses this issue. Will re-open this issue. That PR needs to be reviewed. (UPDATE: new PR : https://github.com/kiali/kiali-operator/pull/93)

[jmazzitelli]

PoC PRs:

• operator: https://github.com/kiali/kiali-operator/pull/93
• backend: https://github.com/kiali/kiali/pull/3034
• docs: https://github.com/kiali/kiali.io/pull/268

These are ready for review now.

Initial SNAPSHOT helm chart is published in the kiali operator helm chart repo here: https://kiali.org/kiali-operator/charts/index.yaml

Istio PR to use the helm chart is here: https://github.com/istio/istio/pull/25886

[jmazzitelli]

all code merged. Doing a release build now - once done, a helm chart should be published and we'll close this issue.

[jmazzitelli]

first official helm chart (v1.22.0) is released. https://kiali.org/kiali-operator/charts/index.yaml

[jshaughn]

Epic: https://github.com/kiali/kiali/issues/3052