istio.io/content/docs/setup/kubernetes/ansible-install/index.md

title	description	weight	keywords
Installation with Ansible	Install Istio with the included Ansible playbook.	40	kubernetes ansible

Instructions for the installation and configuration of Istio using Ansible.

Prerequisites

The following instructions require Ansible 2.4. Additionally Kubernetes 1.9.0 or newer is required.

The following prerequisites must be met if using OpenShift.

• Minimum Version: 3.9.0
• oc configured to be able to access the cluster
• User has logged in to the cluster
• User has cluster-admin role on OpenShift

Deploy with Ansible

Important: All execution of the Ansible playbooks must take place in the install/ansible path of Istio.

This playbook will download and install Istio locally on your machine. To deploy the default settings of Istio on OpenShift, the following command may be used:

{{< text bash >}} $ ansible-playbook main.yml {{< /text >}}

Customization with Ansible

The Ansible playbook ships with reasonable defaults.

The currently exposed options are:

Parameter	Description	Values	Default
cluster_flavour	Define the target cluster type	k8s or ocp	ocp
github_api_token	A valid GitHub API authentication token used for authenticating with GitHub	A valid GitHub API token	empty
cmd_path	Override the path to kubectl or oc	A valid path to a kubectl or oc binary	$PATH/oc
istio.dest	The directory of the target machine where Istio will be installed	Any directory with read+write permissions	~/.istio
istio.auth	Install with mutual TLS	true or false	false
istio.namespace	Kubernetes namespace where Istio will be installed	any namespace may be specified	istio-system
istio.addon	Istio addons to install	array containing any of kiali	Istio already installs grafana, prometheus, jaeger bye default
istio.delete_resources	Delete resources created under Istio namespace	true or false	false
istio.samples	Array containing the names of the samples that should be installed	bookinfo, helloworld, httpbin, sleep	none

Default installation

Operator installs Istio using all defaults on OpenShift:

{{< text bash >}} $ ansible-playbook main.yml {{< /text >}}

Operational overrides

There may be circumstances in which defaults require overrides.

The following commands describe how an operator could use overrides with this Ansible playbook:

Operator installs Istio on Kubernetes:

{{< text bash >}} $ ansible-playbook main.yml -e '{"cluster_flavour": "k8s"}' {{< /text >}}

Operator installs Istio on Kubernetes and the path to kubectl is explicitly set:

{{< text bash >}} $ ansible-playbook main.yml -e '{"cluster_flavour": "k8s", "cmd_path": "~/kubectl"}' {{< /text >}}

Operator installs Istio on OpenShift with settings other than the default:

{{< text bash >}} $ ansible-playbook main.yml -e '{"istio": {"auth": true, "delete_resources": true}}' {{< /text >}}

Operator installs Istio on OpenShift with customized addons:

{{< text bash >}} $ ansible-playbook main.yml -e '{"istio": {"delete_resources": true, "addon": ["kiali"]}}' {{< /text >}}

Operator installs Istio on OpenShift and additionally wants to deploy some of the samples:

{{< text bash >}} $ ansible-playbook main.yml -e '{"istio": {"samples": ["helloworld", "bookinfo"]}}' {{< /text >}}

Uninstalling

If a different version of Istio is desired, delete the istio-system namespace before executing the playbook. In this case, the istio.delete_resources flag does not need to be set.

Setting istio.delete_resources to true will delete the Istio control plane from the cluster.

In order to avoid any inconsistencies, this flag should only be used to reinstall the same version of Istio on a cluster.