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Istio observability addons

Istio observability addons are third-party integrations essential for visualizing and monitoring the behavior of the Service mesh.^[400-devops-07-monitoring-and-observability-k8s-istio-samples-addons-readme.md]

These sample deployments are optimized for quick setup and demonstration, and may not be suitable for production environments without modification.^[400-devops-07-monitoring-and-observability-k8s-istio-samples-addons-readme.md]

Deployment

To deploy all available addons simultaneously, the following command can be used:^[400-devops-07-monitoring-and-observability-k8s-istio-samples-addons-readme.md]

[kubectl](<./kubectl.md>) apply -f samples/addons

Alternatively, individual components can be deployed selectively by applying specific YAML files, such as samples/addons/[Prometheus](<./prometheus.md>).yaml.^[400-devops-07-monitoring-and-observability-k8s-istio-samples-addons-readme.md]

Core Addons

Prometheus

serves as the open-source monitoring system and time series database for the mesh.^[400-devops-07-monitoring-and-observability-k8s-istio-samples-addons-readme.md] It records Metrics tracking the health of both Istio and the applications running within it.^[400-devops-07-monitoring-and-observability-k8s-istio-samples-addons-readme.md]

Grafana

[[grafana|Grafana]] provides the visualization layer for the Metrics collected by Prometheus.^[400-devops-07-monitoring-and-observability-k8s-istio-samples-addons-readme.md] It includes pre-configured dashboards for various mesh components:

  • Mesh Dashboard: An overview of all services.^[400-devops-07-monitoring-and-observability-k8s-istio-samples-addons-readme.md]
  • Service Dashboard: Detailed Metrics for a specific service.^[400-devops-07-monitoring-and-observability-k8s-istio-samples-addons-readme.md]
  • Workload Dashboard: Detailed Metrics for a specific workload.^[400-devops-07-monitoring-and-observability-k8s-istio-samples-addons-readme.md]
  • Performance Dashboard: Monitors mesh resource usage.^[400-devops-07-monitoring-and-observability-k8s-istio-samples-addons-readme.md]
  • Control Plane Dashboard: Monitors control plane health and performance.^[400-devops-07-monitoring-and-observability-k8s-istio-samples-addons-readme.md]
  • WASM Extension Dashboard: Overview of WebAssembly extensions.^[400-devops-07-monitoring-and-observability-k8s-istio-samples-addons-readme.md]

Kiali

Kiali is an observability console that provides insights into the mesh structure and topology.^[400-devops-07-monitoring-and-observability-k8s-istio-samples-addons-readme.md] It offers detailed Metrics and integrates with Grafana for advanced queries, as well as Jaeger for distributed Tracing.^[400-devops-07-monitoring-and-observability-k8s-istio-samples-addons-readme.md]

Distributed Tracing

Distributed Tracing allows for monitoring and troubleshooting transactions across complex, distributed systems.

Jaeger

Jaeger is an open-source end-to-end distributed Tracing system.^[400-devops-07-monitoring-and-observability-k8s-istio-samples-addons-readme.md] It facilitates root cause analysis, service dependency analysis, and latency optimization.^[400-devops-07-monitoring-and-observability-k8s-istio-samples-addons-readme.md]

Zipkin

Zipkin is an alternative distributed Tracing system used to gather timing data for troubleshooting latency problems.^[400-devops-07-monitoring-and-observability-k8s-istio-samples-addons-readme.md] It is not deployed by default; to use it instead of Jaeger, users must apply the specific manifest and remove the Jaeger deployment.^[400-devops-07-monitoring-and-observability-k8s-istio-samples-addons-readme.md]

Advanced Configuration

Prometheus Operator

The [[prometheus|Prometheus]] Operator manages Prometheus instances via Kubernetes custom resources.^[400-devops-07-monitoring-and-observability-k8s-istio-samples-addons-readme.md] Istio provides samples that utilize ServiceMonitor for the control plane and PodMonitor for Envoy proxies.^[400-devops-07-monitoring-and-observability-k8s-istio-samples-addons-readme.md]

Sources

^[400-devops-07-monitoring-and-observability-k8s-istio-samples-addons-readme.md]