IBM Cloud

Follow these instructions to prepare a cluster for Istio using theIBM Cloud Kubernetes Service.To install Istio on IBM Cloud Private, refer toIstio on IBM Cloud Privateinstead.

IBM offers a managed control plane add-on for the IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service,which you can use instead of installing Istio manually.Refer to Istio on IBM Cloud Kubernetes Servicefor details and instructions.

To prepare a cluster before manually installing Istio, proceed as follows:

• Install the IBM Cloud CLI, the IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service plug-in, and the Kubernetes CLI.

• Create a standard Kubernetes cluster using the following command.Replace <cluster-name> with the name you want to use for your cluster and <zone-name> with the name of anavailable zone.

You can display your available zones by running ibmcloud ks zones.The IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service Locations Reference Guidedescribes the available zones and how to specify them.

$ ibmcloud ks cluster-create --zone <zone-name> --machine-type b3c.4x16 \
  --workers 3 --name <cluster-name>

If you already have a private and a public VLAN, you can specify them in the above commandusing the —private-vlan and —public-vlan options. Otherwise, they will be automatically created for you.You can view your available VLANs by running ibmcloud ks vlans —zone <zone-name>.

• Run the following command to download your cluster configuration for kubectl and thenset the KUBECONFIG environment variable as specified in the command output.

$ ibmcloud ks cluster-config <cluster-name>

Make sure to use the kubectl CLI version that matches the Kubernetes version of your cluster.