Installation

This section describes how to install/uninstall Open Service Mesh (OSM) on a Kubernetes cluster using the osm CLI.

Prerequisites

  • Kubernetes cluster running Kubernetes v1.18.0 or greater
  • The osm CLI or the helm 3 CLI

Set up the OSM CLI

From the Binary Releases

Download platform specific compressed package from the Releases page. Unpack the osm binary and add it to $PATH to get started.

From Source (Linux, MacOS)

Building OSM from source requires more steps but is the best way to test the latest changes and useful in a development environment.

You must have a working Go environment.

$ git clone git@github.com:openservicemesh/osm.git
$ cd osm
$ make build-osm

make build-osm will fetch any required dependencies, compile osm and place it in bin/osm. Add bin/osm to $PATH so you can easily use osm.

Install OSM

OSM Configuration

By default, the control plane components are installed into a Kubernetes Namespace called osm-system and the control plane is given a unique identifier attribute mesh-name defaulted to osm. Both the Namespace and mesh-name can be configured through flags when using the osm CLI flags or by editing the values file when using the helm CLI.

The mesh-name is a unique identifier assigned to an osm-controller instance during install to identify and manage a mesh instance.

The mesh-name should follow RFC 1123 DNS Label constraints. The mesh-name must:

  • contain at most 63 characters
  • contain only lowercase alphanumeric characters or ‘-’
  • start with an alphanumeric character
  • end with an alphanumeric character

Using the OSM CLI

Use the osm CLI to install the OSM control plane on to a Kubernetes cluster.

Run osm install.

# Install osm control plane components
$ osm install
OSM installed successfully in namespace [osm-system] with mesh name [osm]

Run osm install --help for more options.

Using the Helm CLI

The OSM chart can be installed directly via the Helm CLI.

Editing the Values File

You can configure the OSM installation by overriding the values file.

  1. Create a copy of the values file (make sure to use the version for the chart you wish to install).
  2. Change any values you wish to customize. You can omit all other values.

    • To see which values correspond to the MeshConfig settings, see the OSM MeshConfig documentation

    • For example, to set the logLevel field in the MeshConfig to info, save the following as override.yaml:

      OpenServiceMesh:
  envoyLogLevel: info

Helm install

Then run the following helm install command. The chart version can be found in the Helm chart you wish to install here.

$ helm install <mesh name> osm --repo https://openservicemesh.github.io/osm --version <chart version> --namespace <osm namespace> --values override.yaml

Omit the --values flag if you prefer to use the default settings.

Run helm install --help for more options.

OpenShift

To install OSM on OpenShift:

  1. Enable privileged init containers so that they can properly program iptables. The NET_ADMIN capability is not sufficient on OpenShift. 
    osm install --set="OpenServiceMesh.enablePrivilegedInitContainer=true"
    • If you have already installed OSM without enabling privileged init containers, set enablePrivilegedInitContainer to true in the OSM MeshConfig and restart any pods in the mesh.
  2. Add the privileged security context constraint to each service account in the mesh.
    • Install the oc CLI.
    • Add the security context constraint to the service account 
       oc adm policy add-scc-to-user privileged -z <service account name> -n <service account namespace>

Pod Security Policy

If you are running OSM in a cluster with PSPs enabled, pass in --set OpenServiceMesh.pspEnabled=true to your osm install or helm install CLI command.

Inspect OSM Components

A few components will be installed by default into the osm-system Namespace. Inspect them by using the following kubectl command:

$ kubectl get pods,svc,secrets,meshconfigs,serviceaccount --namespace osm-system

A few cluster wide (non Namespaced components) will also be installed. Inspect them using the following kubectl command:

kubectl get clusterrolebinding,clusterrole,mutatingwebhookconfiguration

Under the hood, osm is using Helm libraries to create a Helm release object in the control plane Namespace. The Helm release name is the mesh-name. The helm CLI can also be used to inspect Kubernetes manifests installed in more detail. Goto https://helm.sh for instructions to install Helm.

$ helm get manifest osm --namespace osm-system

Next Steps

Now that the OSM control plane is up and running, add services to the mesh.

Uninstall

Uninstall

Installation Troubleshooting

OSM Mesh Install Troubleshooting Guide