What is the roadmap for "how to deploy Istio" in future versions?

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Hi,

I would like to understand what is the roadmap of how to deploy Istio and what is the tool you seek to use/maintain in future versions (1.2 - 1.x).

I see three ways to deploy Istio:

  • using the Helm Chart
  • using the Istio Operator from Banzai Cloud
  • And I see some initial work on the Istio Installer and Istio Operator.

So, I would like to understand what you have in mind. Some questions I have:

  • Are you going to deprecate the Helm Chart?
  • Are you going to create/maintain a new Istio Operator?
  • What exactly the Istio Installer has in advantage of the Helm Chart?
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Helm chart should stay for a while.
I do believe we are create and maintain an Istio Operator is WIP in pipeline. see istio.io/operator repo.

Istio installer has benefits of fine granuality of rolling updates of Istio control plane for each components. You should see that in istio/installer.

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Our goal is to support the tools our users use and allow deployment of Istio in the environments the have. As long as tiller is used by enough people - we’ll do our best to support it. If other tools are popular - we’ll try to support them.

It is not a goal to pick only one tool used by a subset of users and force everyone else to change their tools and processes.

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What do I need to read to try the new installer?

I found many documents in https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/0BzW5bSyKst8JQWtfaS1MVk1pOHc but didn’t know which ones to look at.

The istio/installer project documentation confused me. The README suggests helm template --namespace $NAMESPACE --name $COMPONENT $CONFIGDIR -f global.yaml but also suggests TAG=master-latest-daily HUB=gcr.io/istio-release iop istio-master istio-discovery-master $IBASE/istio-control/istio-discovery ...

How do I get iop? I assume this is one of the Istio operators. I tried running make in istio.io/operator and it just linted.

I tried make and it tried to check out another copy of the Istio source over my existing Istio source.

What do I need to do today to upgrade my Istio version using the new installer?

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iop is a small script - in installer/bin that does helm template (plus an extra optional kustomize step, and also kubectl with the right options). Not required, but less typing.

The wiki has a 2-command install for the demo, and we’re adding an equivalent for a small prod install.
Makefiles under test have additional tests, can be used as examples.

Improvements to docs are greatly appreciated, not my strongest skill as you know :slight_smile:

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