---
weight: 3
title: Flagger Install on GKE Istio
---

This guide walks you through setting up Flagger and Istio on Google Kubernetes Engine.

![GKE Cluster Overview](/img/diagrams/flagger-gke-istio.png)

## Prerequisites

You will be creating a cluster on Google’s Kubernetes Engine \(GKE\), if you don’t have an account you can sign up [here](https://cloud.google.com/free/) for free credits.

Login into Google Cloud, create a project and enable billing for it.

Install the [gcloud](https://cloud.google.com/sdk/) command line utility and configure your project with `gcloud init`.

Set the default project \(replace `PROJECT_ID` with your own project\):

```text
gcloud config set project PROJECT_ID
```

Set the default compute region and zone:

```text
gcloud config set compute/region us-central1
gcloud config set compute/zone us-central1-a
```

Enable the Kubernetes and Cloud DNS services for your project:

```text
gcloud services enable container.googleapis.com
gcloud services enable dns.googleapis.com
```

Install the kubectl command-line tool:

```text
gcloud components install kubectl
```

## GKE cluster setup

Create a cluster with the Istio add-on:

```bash
K8S_VERSION=$(gcloud container get-server-config --format=json \
| jq -r '.validMasterVersions[0]')

gcloud beta container clusters create istio \
--cluster-version=${K8S_VERSION} \
--zone=us-central1-a \
--num-nodes=2 \
--machine-type=n1-highcpu-4 \
--preemptible \
--no-enable-cloud-logging \
--no-enable-cloud-monitoring \
--disk-size=30 \
--enable-autorepair \
--addons=HorizontalPodAutoscaling,Istio \
--istio-config=auth=MTLS_PERMISSIVE
```

The above command will create a default node pool consisting of two `n1-highcpu-4` \(vCPU: 4, RAM 3.60GB, DISK: 30GB\) preemptible VMs. Preemptible VMs are up to 80% cheaper than regular instances and are terminated and replaced after a maximum of 24 hours.

Set up credentials for `kubectl`:

```bash
gcloud container clusters get-credentials istio
```

Create a cluster admin role binding:

```bash
kubectl create clusterrolebinding "cluster-admin-$(whoami)" \
--clusterrole=cluster-admin \
--user="$(gcloud config get-value core/account)"
```

Validate your setup with:

```bash
kubectl -n istio-system get svc
```

In a couple of seconds GCP should allocate an external IP to the `istio-ingressgateway` service.

## Cloud DNS setup

You will need an internet domain and access to the registrar to change the name servers to Google Cloud DNS.

Create a managed zone named `istio` in Cloud DNS \(replace `example.com` with your domain\):

```bash
gcloud dns managed-zones create \
--dns-name="example.com." \
--description="Istio zone" "istio"
```

Look up your zone's name servers:

```bash
gcloud dns managed-zones describe istio
```

Update your registrar's name server records with the records returned by the above command.

Wait for the name servers to change \(replace `example.com` with your domain\):

```bash
watch dig +short NS example.com
```

Create a static IP address named `istio-gateway` using the Istio ingress IP:

```bash
export GATEWAY_IP=$(kubectl -n istio-system get svc/istio-ingressgateway -ojson \
| jq -r .status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].ip)

gcloud compute addresses create istio-gateway --addresses ${GATEWAY_IP} --region us-central1
```

Create the following DNS records \(replace `example.com` with your domain\):

```bash
DOMAIN="example.com"

gcloud dns record-sets transaction start --zone=istio

gcloud dns record-sets transaction add --zone=istio \
--name="${DOMAIN}" --ttl=300 --type=A ${GATEWAY_IP}

gcloud dns record-sets transaction add --zone=istio \
--name="www.${DOMAIN}" --ttl=300 --type=A ${GATEWAY_IP}

gcloud dns record-sets transaction add --zone=istio \
--name="*.${DOMAIN}" --ttl=300 --type=A ${GATEWAY_IP}

gcloud dns record-sets transaction execute --zone istio
```

Verify that the wildcard DNS is working \(replace `example.com` with your domain\):

```bash
watch host test.example.com
```

## Install Helm

Install the [Helm](https://docs.helm.sh/using_helm/#installing-helm) command-line tool:

```text
brew install kubernetes-helm
```

Create a service account and a cluster role binding for Tiller:

```bash
kubectl -n kube-system create sa tiller

kubectl create clusterrolebinding tiller-cluster-rule \
--clusterrole=cluster-admin \
--serviceaccount=kube-system:tiller
```

Deploy Tiller in the `kube-system` namespace:

```bash
helm init --service-account tiller
```

You should consider using SSL between Helm and Tiller, for more information on securing your Helm installation see [docs.helm.sh](https://docs.helm.sh/using_helm/#securing-your-helm-installation).

## Install cert-manager

Jetstack's [cert-manager](https://github.com/jetstack/cert-manager) is a Kubernetes operator that automatically creates and manages TLS certs issued by Let’s Encrypt.

You'll be using cert-manager to provision a wildcard certificate for the Istio ingress gateway.

Install cert-manager's CRDs:

```bash
CERT_REPO=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jetstack/cert-manager

kubectl apply -f ${CERT_REPO}/release-0.10/deploy/manifests/00-crds.yaml
```

Create the cert-manager namespace and disable resource validation:

```bash
kubectl create namespace cert-manager

kubectl label namespace cert-manager certmanager.k8s.io/disable-validation=true
```

Install cert-manager with Helm:

```bash
helm repo add jetstack https://charts.jetstack.io && \
helm repo update && \
helm upgrade -i cert-manager \
--namespace cert-manager \
--version v0.10.0 \
jetstack/cert-manager
```

## Istio Gateway TLS setup

![Istio Let&apos;s Encrypt](/img/diagrams/istio-cert-manager-gke.png)

Create a generic Istio Gateway to expose services outside the mesh on HTTPS:

```bash
REPO=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/fluxcd/flagger/main

kubectl apply -f ${REPO}/artifacts/gke/istio-gateway.yaml
```

Create a service account with Cloud DNS admin role \(replace `my-gcp-project` with your project ID\):

```bash
GCP_PROJECT=my-gcp-project

gcloud iam service-accounts create dns-admin \
--display-name=dns-admin \
--project=${GCP_PROJECT}

gcloud iam service-accounts keys create ./gcp-dns-admin.json \
--iam-account=dns-admin@${GCP_PROJECT}.iam.gserviceaccount.com \
--project=${GCP_PROJECT}

gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding ${GCP_PROJECT} \
--member=serviceAccount:dns-admin@${GCP_PROJECT}.iam.gserviceaccount.com \
--role=roles/dns.admin
```

Create a Kubernetes secret with the GCP Cloud DNS admin key:

```bash
kubectl create secret generic cert-manager-credentials \
--from-file=./gcp-dns-admin.json \
--namespace=istio-system
```

Create a letsencrypt issuer for CloudDNS \(replace `email@example.com` with a valid email address and `my-gcp-project`with your project ID\):

```yaml
apiVersion: certmanager.k8s.io/v1alpha1
kind: Issuer
metadata:
  name: letsencrypt-prod
  namespace: istio-system
spec:
  acme:
    server: https://acme-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory
    email: email@example.com
    privateKeySecretRef:
      name: letsencrypt-prod
    dns01:
      providers:
      - name: cloud-dns
        clouddns:
          serviceAccountSecretRef:
            name: cert-manager-credentials
            key: gcp-dns-admin.json
          project: my-gcp-project
```

Save the above resource as letsencrypt-issuer.yaml and then apply it:

```text
kubectl apply -f ./letsencrypt-issuer.yaml
```

Create a wildcard certificate \(replace `example.com` with your domain\):

```yaml
apiVersion: certmanager.k8s.io/v1alpha1
kind: Certificate
metadata:
  name: istio-gateway
  namespace: istio-system
spec:
  secretName: istio-ingressgateway-certs
  issuerRef:
    name: letsencrypt-prod
  commonName: "*.example.com"
  acme:
    config:
    - dns01:
        provider: cloud-dns
      domains:
      - "*.example.com"
      - "example.com"
```

Save the above resource as istio-gateway-cert.yaml and then apply it:

```text
kubectl apply -f ./istio-gateway-cert.yaml
```

In a couple of seconds cert-manager should fetch a wildcard certificate from letsencrypt.org:

```text
kubectl -n istio-system describe certificate istio-gateway

Events:
  Type    Reason         Age    From          Message
  ----    ------         ----   ----          -------
  Normal  CertIssued     1m52s  cert-manager  Certificate issued successfully
```

Recreate Istio ingress gateway pods:

```bash
kubectl -n istio-system get pods -l istio=ingressgateway
```

Note that Istio gateway doesn't reload the certificates from the TLS secret on cert-manager renewal. Since the GKE cluster is made out of preemptible VMs the gateway pods will be replaced once every 24h, if your not using preemptible nodes then you need to manually delete the gateway pods every two months before the certificate expires.

## Install Prometheus

The GKE Istio add-on does not include a Prometheus instance that scrapes the Istio telemetry service. Because Flagger uses the Istio HTTP metrics to run the canary analysis you have to deploy the following Prometheus configuration that's similar to the one that comes with the official Istio Helm chart.

Find the GKE Istio version with:

```bash
kubectl -n istio-system get deploy istio-pilot -oyaml | grep image:
```

Install Prometheus in istio-system namespace:

```bash
kubectl -n istio-system apply -f \
https://storage.googleapis.com/gke-release/istio/release/1.0.6-gke.3/patches/install-prometheus.yaml
```

## Install Flagger and Grafana

Add Flagger Helm repository:

```bash
helm repo add flagger https://flagger.app
```

Install Flagger's Canary CRD:

```yaml
kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/fluxcd/flagger/main/artifacts/flagger/crd.yaml
```

Deploy Flagger in the `istio-system` namespace with Slack notifications enabled:

```bash
helm upgrade -i flagger flagger/flagger \
--namespace=istio-system \
--set crd.create=false \
--set metricsServer=http://prometheus.istio-system:9090 \
--set slack.url=https://hooks.slack.com/services/YOUR/SLACK/WEBHOOK \
--set slack.channel=some-channel-name \
--set slack.user=flagger
```

Deploy Grafana in the `istio-system` namespace:

```bash
helm upgrade -i flagger-grafana flagger/grafana \
--namespace=istio-system \
--set url=http://prometheus.istio-system:9090 \
--set user=admin \
--set password=replace-me
```

Expose Grafana through the public gateway by creating a virtual service \(replace `example.com` with your domain\):

```yaml
apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3
kind: VirtualService
metadata:
  name: grafana
  namespace: istio-system
spec:
  hosts:
  - "grafana.example.com"
  gateways:
  - public-gateway.istio-system.svc.cluster.local
  http:
  - route:
    - destination:
        host: flagger-grafana
```

Save the above resource as grafana-virtual-service.yaml and then apply it:

```bash
kubectl apply -f ./grafana-virtual-service.yaml
```

Navigate to `http://grafana.example.com` in your browser and you should be redirected to the HTTPS version.

