Getting Started with Kiali¶

This tutorial demonstrates how to deploy and configure Kiali to observe your Charmed Istio service mesh. You’ll learn how to visualize your mesh topology, monitor traffic flow, and gain insights into your distributed applications.

Introduction¶

Kiali is a management console for an Istio service mesh that provides visualization through a modern web interface. The kiali-k8s charm simplifies the deployment and integration of Kiali with Charmed Istio, offering:

Service mesh topology visualization
Traffic flow monitoring
Health status indicators
Configuration validation

In this tutorial, you’ll deploy Charmed Kiali to observe the Charmed Istio and the Charmed Bookinfo application from the previous tutorials, enabling you to visualize and monitor your service mesh in real-time.

Note

To keep this tutorial simple and provide an easy way to get started with Kiali, the focus here is majorly about using Kiali to collect and visualize metrics only from a single component of Istio (the istio-k8s charm). There are other types of Istio metrics that can also be visualized in Kiali which will be covered in the following tutorial.

Prerequisites¶

Before starting this tutorial, ensure you have:

Completed Tutorials:
- Getting Started with Charmed Istio Service Mesh
Working Deployment: Charmed Istio deployed in the istio-system model
Juju Knowledge: Basic familiarity with Juju cross-model relations

Prepare the Istio System¶

Step 1: Collect Metrics from Istio¶

Kiali works by observing the metrics generated by Istio. Switch to the istio-system model and deploy a metrics store to collect metrics from Istio:

juju switch istio-system
juju deploy prometheus-k8s --trust --channel=2/edge

juju integrate istio-k8s prometheus-k8s

Note

This metrics store doesn’t need to be dedicated to Istio - it could also be the general metrics store used for the full Canonical Observability Stack.

Step 2: Offer Istio Metadata and Metrics¶

Make the Istio metadata and Prometheus metrics available for cross-model consumption. Both the istio-metadata and the prometheus-api relations will be later used by the kiali-k8s charms for visualizing the service mesh.

juju offer istio-k8s:istio-metadata
juju offer prometheus-k8s:prometheus-api

Deploy Charmed Kiali¶

Step 3: Create a Model for Kiali¶

Create a dedicated model and deploy the kiali-k8s charm:

juju add-model kiali
juju deploy kiali-k8s --trust --channel=2/edge

Step 4: Connect Kiali to Istio¶

To provide Kiali with knowledge about our Charmed Istio and provide it with access to Istio metrics, we integrate with the istio-k8s and the prometheus-k8s charms in the istio-system model:

juju consume istio-system.istio-k8s
juju integrate kiali-k8s:istio-metadata istio-k8s

juju consume istio-system.prometheus-k8s
juju integrate kiali-k8s:prometheus prometheus-k8s

Step 5: Expose Kiali via Ingress¶

To make Kiali accessible from outside the Kubernetes cluster, for example, from your browser, connect Kiali to the Istio ingress:

juju consume istio-system.istio-ingress-k8s
juju integrate kiali-k8s istio-ingress-k8s

Now you can sit back and watch the deployment take place:

juju status --integrations --watch=5s

Access the Kiali Dashboard¶

Once the deployment is complete, Kiali will be available at:

http://INGRESS_IP/kiali-kiali-k8s

Where:

INGRESS_IP is the IP address from the istio-ingress-k8s status message
The path follows the pattern: /NAMESPACE-APPNAME

To get the ingress IP:

juju status -m istio-system istio-ingress-k8s

Open the URL in your browser to access the Kiali dashboard:

Kiali dashboard showing service mesh topology

Troubleshooting¶

If Kiali is not accessible or showing data:

Verify all integrations are active:
```
juju status -m kiali --integrations
```
Ensure Istio is generating telemetry:
```
kubectl get telemetry -A
```

Review Kiali logs for errors:

juju debug-log -m kiali --include kiali-k8s

Summary¶

Congratulations! You’ve successfully:

Deployed Prometheus to collect Istio metrics
Deployed Charmed Kiali for service mesh visualization
Configured cross-model integrations between Kiali, Istio, and Prometheus
Accessed the Kiali dashboard to visualize your service mesh

With Kiali, you now have powerful visualization capabilities for your Istio service mesh, enabling you to monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize your distributed applications.

Teardown¶

To clean up the resources created in this tutorial, run:

juju destroy-model kiali

To clean up all resources from the entire tutorial series, you can also run:

juju destroy-model bookinfo
juju destroy-model bookinfo-2
juju destroy-model istio-system