Creating and updating the Kiali CR

The Kiali Operator watches the Kiali Custom Resource (Kiali CR), a YAML file that holds the deployment configuration. Creating, updating, or removing a Kiali CR will trigger the Kiali Operator to install, update, or remove Kiali.

The Operator provides comprehensive defaults for all properties of the Kiali CR. Hence, the minimal Kiali CR does not have a spec:

apiVersion: kiali.io/v1alpha1
kind: Kiali
metadata:
  name: kiali

Assuming you saved the previous YAML to a file named my-kiali-cr.yaml, and that you are installing Kiali in the same default namespace as Istio, create the resource with the following command:

$ kubectl apply -f my-kiali-cr.yaml -n istio-system

Often, but not always, Kiali is installed in the same namespace as Istio, thus the Kiali CR is also created in the Istio namespace.

Once created, the Kiali Operator should shortly be notified and will process the resource, performing the Kiali installation. You can check installation progress by inspecting the status attribute of the created Kiali CR:

$ kubectl describe kiali -n istio-system
Name:         kiali
Namespace:    istio-system
Labels:       <none>
Annotations:  <none>
API Version:  kiali.io/v1alpha1
Kind:         Kiali

  (...some output is removed...)

Status:
  Conditions:
    Last Transition Time:  2021-09-15T17:17:40Z
    Message:               Running reconciliation
    Reason:                Running
    Status:                True
    Type:                  Running
  Deployment:
    Instance Name:  kiali
    Namespace:      istio-system
  Environment:
    Is Kubernetes:       true
    Kubernetes Version:  1.21.2
    Operator Version:    v1.40.0
  Progress:
    Duration:  0:00:16
    Message:   5. Creating core resources
Events:        <none>

Never manually edit resources created by the Kiali Operator, only the Kiali CR.

We recommended to download the example Kiali CR YAML file that is available in the Operator’s GitHub repository. This example file contains and describes all available settings. Then, edit the downloaded file being very careful to maintain proper formatting. Incorrect indentation is a common problem!

The link in the previous paragraph is for the example Kiali CR hosted in GitHub, in the master branch. Use GitHub’s branch selector to see the example file that matches the Kiali Operator version that you are using.

It is important to understand the spec.deployment.accessible_namespaces setting in the CR. See the Namespace Management page for more information.

Once you created a Kiali CR, you can manage your Kiali installation by editing the resource using the usual Kubernetes tools:

$ kubectl edit kiali kiali -n istio-system

Last modified October 5, 2021 : FAQ finished and fix some code-block decls (7c916d83)