istio.io/content/docs/setup/kubernetes/sidecar-injection/index.md

title	description	weight	keywords	aliases
Installing the sidecar	Instructions for installing the Istio sidecar in application pods automatically using the sidecar injector webhook or manually using istioctl CLI.	45	kubernetes sidecar sidecar-injection	/docs/setup/kubernetes/automatic-sidecar-inject.html

Injection

Each pod in the mesh must be running an Istio compatible sidecar.

The following sections describe two ways of injecting the Istio sidecar into a pod: manually using the istioctl CLI tool or automatically using the Istio sidecar injector.

Manual injection modifies the controller configuration, e.g. deployment. It does this by modifying the pod template spec such that all pods for that deployment are created with the injected sidecar. Adding/Updating/Removing the sidecar requires modifying the entire deployment.

Automatic injection injects at pod creation time. The controller resource is unmodified. Sidecars can be updated selectively by manually deleting a pods or systematically with a deployment rolling update.

Manual and automatic injection both use the configuration from the istio-sidecar-injector and istio ConfigMaps in the istio-system namespace. Manual injection can also optionally load configuration from local files.

Manual sidecar injection

Inject the sidecar into the deployment using the in-cluster configuration.

{{< text bash >}} $ istioctl kube-inject -f @samples/sleep/sleep.yaml@ | kubectl apply -f - {{< /text >}}

Alternatively, inject using local copies of the configuration.

The istioctl kube-inject operation may not be repeated on the output from a previous kube-inject. The kube-inject operation is not idempotent. For upgrade purposes, if using manual injection, it is recommended to keep the original non-injected yaml file so that the data plane sidecars may be updated.

{{< text bash >}} $ kubectl -n istio-system get configmap istio-sidecar-injector -o=jsonpath='{.data.config}' > inject-config.yaml $ kubectl -n istio-system get configmap istio -o=jsonpath='{.data.mesh}' > mesh-config.yaml {{< /text >}}

Run kube-inject over the input file and deploy.

{{< text bash >}} $ istioctl kube-inject
--injectConfigFile inject-config.yaml
--meshConfigFile mesh-config.yaml
--filename @samples/sleep/sleep.yaml@
--output sleep-injected.yaml $ kubectl apply -f sleep-injected.yaml {{< /text >}}

Verify that the sidecar has been injected into the deployment.

{{< text bash >}} $ kubectl get deployment sleep -o wide NAME DESIRED CURRENT UP-TO-DATE AVAILABLE AGE CONTAINERS IMAGES SELECTOR sleep 1 1 1 1 2h sleep,istio-proxy tutum/curl,unknown/proxy:unknown app=sleep {{< /text >}}

Automatic sidecar injection

Sidecars can be automatically added to applicable Kubernetes pods using a mutating webhook admission controller. This feature requires Kubernetes 1.9 or later. Verify that the kube-apiserver process has the admission-control flag set with the MutatingAdmissionWebhook and ValidatingAdmissionWebhook admission controllers added and listed in the correct order and the admissionregistration API is enabled.

{{< text bash >}} $ kubectl api-versions | grep admissionregistration admissionregistration.k8s.io/v1alpha1 admissionregistration.k8s.io/v1beta1 {{< /text >}}

See Kubernetes quick start for instructions on installing Kubernetes version >= 1.9.

Note that unlike manual injection, automatic injection occurs at the pod-level. You won't see any change to the deployment itself. Instead you'll want to check individual pods (via kubectl describe) to see the injected proxy.

Disabling or updating the webhook

The sidecar injecting webhook is enabled by default. If you wish to disable the webhook, you can use Helm to generate an updated istio.yaml with the option sidecarInjectorWebhook.enabled set to false. E.g.

{{< text bash >}} $ helm template --namespace=istio-system --set sidecarInjectorWebhook.enabled=false install/kubernetes/helm/istio > istio.yaml $ kubectl create ns istio-system $ kubectl apply -f istio.yaml {{< /text >}}

In addition, there are some other configuration parameters defined for the sidecar injector webhook service in values.yaml. You can override the default values to customize the installation.

Deploying an app

Deploy sleep app. Verify both deployment and pod have a single container.

{{< text bash >}} $ kubectl apply -f @samples/sleep/sleep.yaml@ $ kubectl get deployment -o wide NAME DESIRED CURRENT UP-TO-DATE AVAILABLE AGE CONTAINERS IMAGES SELECTOR sleep 1 1 1 1 12m sleep tutum/curl app=sleep {{< /text >}}

{{< text bash >}} $ kubectl get pod NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE sleep-776b7bcdcd-7hpnk 1/1 Running 0 4 {{< /text >}}

Label the default namespace with istio-injection=enabled

{{< text bash >}} $ kubectl label namespace default istio-injection=enabled $ kubectl get namespace -L istio-injection NAME STATUS AGE ISTIO-INJECTION default Active 1h enabled istio-system Active 1h kube-public Active 1h kube-system Active 1h {{< /text >}}

Injection occurs at pod creation time. Kill the running pod and verify a new pod is created with the injected sidecar. The original pod has 1/1 READY containers and the pod with injected sidecar has 2/2 READY containers.

{{< text bash >}} $ kubectl delete pod sleep-776b7bcdcd-7hpnk $ kubectl get pod NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE sleep-776b7bcdcd-7hpnk 1/1 Terminating 0 1m sleep-776b7bcdcd-bhn9m 2/2 Running 0 7s {{< /text >}}

View detailed state of the injected pod. You should see the injected istio-proxy container and corresponding volumes. Be sure to substitute the correct name for the Running pod below.

{{< text bash >}} $ kubectl describe pod sleep-776b7bcdcd-bhn9m {{< /text >}}

Disable injection for the default namespace and verify new pods are created without the sidecar.

{{< text bash >}} $ kubectl label namespace default istio-injection- $ kubectl delete pod sleep-776b7bcdcd-bhn9m $ kubectl get pod NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE sleep-776b7bcdcd-bhn9m 2/2 Terminating 0 2m sleep-776b7bcdcd-gmvnr 1/1 Running 0 2s {{< /text >}}

Understanding what happened

admissionregistration.k8s.io/v1beta1#MutatingWebhookConfiguration configures when the webhook is invoked by Kubernetes. The default supplied with Istio selects pods in namespaces with label istio-injection=enabled. The set of namespaces in which injection is applied can be changed by editing the MutatingWebhookConfiguration with kubectl edit mutatingwebhookconfiguration istio-sidecar-injector.

{{< warning_icon >}} The sidecar injector pod(s) should be restarted after modifying the mutatingwebhookconfiguration.

The istio-sidecar-injector ConfigMap in the istio-system namespace has the default injection policy and sidecar injection template.

policy

disabled - The sidecar injector will not inject the sidecar into pods by default. Add the sidecar.istio.io/inject annotation with value true to the pod template spec to override the default and enable injection.

enabled - The sidecar injector will inject the sidecar into pods by default. Add the sidecar.istio.io/inject annotation with value false to the pod template spec to override the default and disable injection.

The following example uses the sidecar.istio.io/inject annotation to disable sidecar injection.

{{< text yaml >}} apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1 kind: Deployment metadata: name: ignored spec: template: metadata: annotations: sidecar.istio.io/inject: "false" spec: containers: - name: ignored image: tutum/curl command: ["/bin/sleep","infinity"] {{< /text >}}

template

The sidecar injection template uses https://golang.org/pkg/text/template which, when parsed and executed, is decoded to the following struct containing the list of containers and volumes to inject into the pod.

{{< text go >}} type SidecarInjectionSpec struct { InitContainers []v1.Container yaml:"initContainers" Containers []v1.Container yaml:"containers" Volumes []v1.Volume yaml:"volumes" ImagePullSecrets []corev1.LocalObjectReference yaml:"imagePullSecrets" } {{< /text >}}

The template is applied to the following data structure at runtime.

{{< text go >}} type SidecarTemplateData struct { ObjectMeta *metav1.ObjectMeta Spec *v1.PodSpec ProxyConfig *meshconfig.ProxyConfig // Defined by https://istio.io/docs/reference/config/service-mesh.html#proxyconfig MeshConfig *meshconfig.MeshConfig // Defined by https://istio.io/docs/reference/config/service-mesh.html#meshconfig } {{< /text >}}

ObjectMeta and Spec are from the pod. ProxyConfig and MeshConfig are from the istio ConfigMap in the istio-system namespace. Templates can conditional define injected containers and volumes with this data.

For example, the following template snippet from install/kubernetes/istio-sidecar-injector-configmap-release.yaml

{{< text plain >}} containers:

• name: istio-proxy image: istio.io/proxy:0.5.0 args:
  • proxy
  • sidecar
  • --configPath
  • {{ .ProxyConfig.ConfigPath }}
  • --binaryPath
  • {{ .ProxyConfig.BinaryPath }}
  • --serviceCluster {{ if ne "" (index .ObjectMeta.Labels "app") -}}
  • {{ index .ObjectMeta.Labels "app" }} {{ else -}}
  • "istio-proxy" {{ end -}} {{< /text >}}

expands to

{{< text yaml >}} containers:

• name: istio-proxy image: istio.io/proxy:0.5.0 args:
  • proxy
  • sidecar
  • --configPath
  • /etc/istio/proxy
  • --binaryPath
  • /usr/local/bin/envoy
  • --serviceCluster
  • sleep {{< /text >}}

when applied over a pod defined by the pod template spec in [samples/sleep/sleep.yaml]({{< github_tree >}}/samples/sleep/sleep.yaml)

More control: adding exceptions

There are cases where users do not have control of the pod creation, for instance, when they are created by someone else. Therefore they are unable to add the annotation sidecar.istio.io/inject in the pod, to explicitly instruct Istio whether to install the sidecar or not.

Think of auxiliary pods that might be created as an intermediate step while deploying an application. OpenShift Builds, for example, creates such pods for building the source code of an application. Once the binary artifact is built, the application pod is ready to run and the auxiliary pods are discarded. Those intermediate pods should not get an Istio sidecar, even if the policy is set to enabled and the namespace is properly labeled to get automatic injection.

For such cases you can instruct Istio to not inject the sidecar on those pods, based on labels that are present in those pods. You can do this by editing the istio-sidecar-injector ConfigMap and adding the entry neverInjectSelector. It is an array of Kubernetes label selectors. They are OR'd, stopping at the first match. See an example:

{{< text yaml >}} apiVersion: v1 kind: ConfigMap metadata: name: istio-sidecar-injector data: config: |- policy: enabled neverInjectSelector: - matchExpressions: - {key: openshift.io/build.name, operator: Exists} - matchExpressions: - {key: openshift.io/deployer-pod-for.name, operator: Exists} template: |- initContainers: ... {{< /text >}}

The above statement means: Never inject on pods that have the label openshift.io/build.name or openshift.io/deployer-pod-for.name – the values of the labels don't matter, we are just checking if the keys exist. With this rule added, the OpenShift Builds use case illustrated above is covered, meaning auxiliary pods will not have sidecars injected (because source-to-image auxiliary pods do contain those labels).

For completeness, you can also use a field called alwaysInjectSelector, with similar syntax, which will always inject the sidecar on pods that match that label selector, regardless of the global policy.

The label selector approach gives a lot of flexibility on how to express those exceptions. Take a look at these docs to see what you can do with them!

It's worth noting that annotations in the pods have higher precedence than the label selectors. If a pod is annotated with sidecar.istio.io/inject: "true/false" then it will be honored. So, the order of evaluation is:

Pod Annotations → NeverInjectSelector → AlwaysInjectSelector → Default Policy

Uninstalling the automatic sidecar injector

{{< text bash >}} $ kubectl delete mutatingwebhookconfiguration istio-sidecar-injector $ kubectl -n istio-system delete service istio-sidecar-injector $ kubectl -n istio-system delete deployment istio-sidecar-injector $ kubectl -n istio-system delete serviceaccount istio-sidecar-injector-service-account $ kubectl delete clusterrole istio-sidecar-injector-istio-system $ kubectl delete clusterrolebinding istio-sidecar-injector-admin-role-binding-istio-system {{< /text >}}

The above command will not remove the injected sidecars from Pods. A rolling update or simply deleting the pods and forcing the deployment to create them is required.

Optionally, it may also be desirable to clean-up other resources that were modified in this task.

{{< text bash >}} $ kubectl label namespace default istio-injection- {{< /text >}}