Important Project Notice

This project is no longer under active development. It will be preserved here for the foreseeable future for reference. Please note that the last version released works with Istio 0.7.

NGINX Architecture with Istio Service Mesh

This repository provides an implementation of a NGINX based service mesh (nginMesh). nginMesh is compatible with Istio. It leverages NGINX as a sidecar proxy.

What is Service Mesh and Istio?

Please check https://istio.io for a detailed explanation of the service mesh.

Production Status

The current version of nginMesh is designed to work with Istio release 0.7.1. It should not be used in production environments.

Demo

Recorded demo of nginMesh depoyment.

Architecture

The diagram below depicts how an NGINX sidecar proxy is implemented. The sidecar uses the open source version of NGINX compiled with modules for tracing and monitoring.

The diagram below is an alternative architectural view -

To learn more about the sidecar implementation, see this document.

Quick Start

Below are instructions to quickly install and configure nginMesh. Currently, only Kubernetes environment is supported.

Prerequisites

Make sure you have a cluster with Kubernetes 1.9 or newer. Please see Prerequisites for setting up a kubernetes cluster.

Install Istio and nginMesh

nginMesh requires installation of Istio first.

1. Download and install Istio 0.7.1:

   curl -L https://git.io/getLatestIstio | ISTIO_VERSION=0.7.1 sh -
   

2. Download nginMesh release 0.7.1:

   curl -L https://github.com/nginxinc/nginmesh/releases/download/v0.7.1/nginmesh-0.7.1.tar.gz | tar zx
   

3. Deploy Istio:

   kubectl create -f istio-0.7.1/install/kubernetes/istio.yaml
   

4. Ensure the following Kubernetes services are deployed: istio-pilot, istio-mixer, istio-ingress:

   kubectl get svc  -n istio-system  
   

   istio-ingress            LoadBalancer   10.47.252.40    35.237.173.47   80:32171/TCP,443:32198/TCP                   19h
   istio-mixer              ClusterIP      10.47.251.225   <none>          9091/TCP,15004/TCP,9093/TCP,9094/TCP,9102/TCP,9125/UDP,42422/TCP    19h
   istio-pilot              ClusterIP      10.47.254.118   <none>          15003/TCP,15005/TCP,15007/TCP,15010/TCP,8080/TCP,9093/TCP,443/TCP   19h
   istio-sidecar-injector   ClusterIP      10.47.242.139   <none>          443/TCP                                       9h
   

5. Ensure the following Kubernetes pods are up and running: istio-pilot-* , istio-mixer-* , istio-ingress-* and istio-initializer-*:

   kubectl get pods -n istio-system    
   

   istio-ca-86f55cc46f-nprhw                1/1       Running   0          19h
   istio-ingress-5bb556fcbf-c7tgt           1/1       Running   0          19h
   istio-mixer-86f5df6997-fvzjx             3/3       Running   0          19h
   istio-pilot-67d6ddbdf6-xhztz             2/2       Running   0          19h
   istio-sidecar-injector-5b8c78fd6-8dvq6   1/1       Running   0          9h
   

6. Enable automatic sidecar injection:

   nginmesh-0.7.1/install/kubernetes/install-sidecar.sh
   

7. Verify that the istio-injection label is not applied to the default namespace:

   kubectl get namespace -L istio-injection
   

   NAME           STATUS        AGE       ISTIO-INJECTION
   default        Active        1h        
   istio-system   Active        1h        
   kube-public    Active        1h        
   kube-system    Active        1h
   

Deploy a Sample Application

In this section we deploy the Bookinfo application, which is taken from the Istio samples. Please see Bookinfo for more details.

1. Label the default namespace with istio-injection=enabled:

   kubectl label namespace default istio-injection=enabled
   

2. Deploy the application:

   kubectl apply -f  istio-0.7.1/samples/bookinfo/kube/bookinfo.yaml
   

3. Confirm that all application services are deployed: productpage, details, reviews, ratings:

   kubectl get services
   

   NAME                       CLUSTER-IP   EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)              AGE
   details                    10.0.0.31    <none>        9080/TCP             6m
   kubernetes                 10.0.0.1     <none>        443/TCP              7d
   productpage                10.0.0.120   <none>        9080/TCP             6m
   ratings                    10.0.0.15    <none>        9080/TCP             6m
   reviews                    10.0.0.170   <none>        9080/TCP             6m
   

4. Confirm that all application pods are running --details-v1-* , productpage-v1-* , ratings-v1-* , reviews-v1-* , reviews-v2-* and reviews-v3-*:

   kubectl get pods
   

   NAME                                        READY     STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
   details-v1-1520924117-48z17                 2/2       Running   0          6m
   productpage-v1-560495357-jk1lz              2/2       Running   0          6m
   ratings-v1-734492171-rnr5l                  2/2       Running   0          6m
   reviews-v1-874083890-f0qf0                  2/2       Running   0          6m
   reviews-v2-1343845940-b34q5                 2/2       Running   0          6m
   reviews-v3-1813607990-8ch52                 2/2       Running   0          6m
   

5. Get the public IP of the Istio Ingress controller. If the cluster is running in an environment that supports external load balancers:

   kubectl get svc -n istio-system | grep -E 'EXTERNAL-IP|istio-ingress'
   

6. Open the Bookinfo application in a browser using the following link:

   http://<Public-IP-of-the-Ingress-Controller>/productpage
   

Uninstall the Application

1. To uninstall application, run:

   ./istio-0.7.1/samples/bookinfo/kube/cleanup.sh
   

Uninstall Istio

1. To uninstall the Istio core components:

   kubectl delete -f istio-0.7.1/install/kubernetes/istio.yaml
   

2. To uninstall the initializer, run:

   nginmesh-0.7.1/install/kubernetes/delete-sidecar.sh
   

Limitations

nginMesh has the following limitations:

• TCP and gRPC traffic is not supported.
• Quota Check is not supported.
• Only Kubernetes is supported.

All sidecar-related limitations and supported traffic management rules are described here.