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kubernetesterraformkubernetes-helmistioamazon-eks

Setting up on ISTIO on EKS cluster using Terraform or Helm

I'm new to Terraform and Helm world! I need to set up Istio on the AWS EKS cluster. I was able to set up the EKS cluster using Terraform. I'm thinking of installing ISTIO on top of the EKS cluster using Terraform by writing terraform modules. However, I found that we can set up Istio on top of eks using the helm chart.

Can someone help me to answer my few queries:

  1. Should I install Istio using Terraform? If yes, Is there any terraform module available or How can I write one?
  2. Should I install Istio using Helm Chart? If yes, what are the pros and cons of it?
  3. I need to write a pipeline to install Istio on EKS cluster. Should I use a combination of both terraform and Helm as provider?

Thank you very much for your time. Appreciate all your help!

Solution

  • As @Matt Schuchard mentioned, this is a bit opinion based question, that's why I will answer that based on my understanding.

    Question number 1.

    1. To answer your question, Should I install Istio using Terraform?, yes, if you follow Devops practices then you should write everything in a code, so I would recommend to do that.

    2. As per the second part of your question, If yes, Is there any Terraform module available, no, from what I see currently there is no Istio module for Terraform, there is only a helm one.

    3. As for the last part of the first question, How can I write Terraform module? I would recommend to start with the Terraform documentation. There is also a tutorial for creating a module.

    Question number 2.

    1. To answer your question, Should I install Istio using Helm Chart?, depends on your use case, you can do it either with helm or istioctl/istio operator.
    2. As for the following question, If yes, what are the pros and cons of it? I'm not sure if the current helm chart is production ready, according to Istio documentation, Providing the full configuration in an IstioOperator CR is considered an Istio best practice for production environments, so from what I understand, you should rather use operator than helm. Also worth to note that the helm chart was not used by several versions, if was broughts back to life in version 1.8.

    Question number 3.

    1. As per the last question, I need to write a pipeline to install Istio on EKS cluster. Should I use a combination of both terraform and Helm as provider?, depends, it could be either Terraform and Helm, but from what I see it's also possible to do that with an Terraform and Istio Operator, there is an example. So it's rather up to you to decide which path will you take.

    I would also recommend to take a look at this reddit thread. You might find few useful comments from the prod environment here, about installing Istio with Terraform.