Quick Start
Run Kiali locally
Kiali can be run directly on your machine without being installed into a Kubernetes cluster. It uses your kubeconfig to connect to your cluster(s). If needed, it can port-forward into the cluster to connect to your external services (prometheus, tracing, istio, grafana).
Download the Kiali binary from the Kiali GitHub releases page for your OS and Arch.
Start Kiali which runs the backend server on localhost and opens your default browser to the Kiali UI.
kiali run
To see the full list of options
kiali run --help
--cluster-name-overrides kubeconfig-name=istio-cluster-name
. The flag is a comma separated list so you can override as many names as you need.
Install Kiali
You can quickly install Kiali into your cluster via one of the following two methods.
Install via Istio Addons
If you downloaded Istio, the easiest way to install and try Kiali is by running:
kubectl apply -f ${ISTIO_HOME}/samples/addons/kiali.yaml
To uninstall:
kubectl delete -f ${ISTIO_HOME}/samples/addons/kiali.yaml --ignore-not-found
Install via Helm
To install the latest version of Kiali Server using Helm, run the following command:
helm install \
--namespace istio-system \
--set auth.strategy="anonymous" \
--repo https://kiali.org/helm-charts \
kiali-server \
kiali-server
--disable-openapi-validation
(this is needed on some versions of OpenShift, for example).
To uninstall:
helm uninstall --namespace istio-system kiali-server
Access to the UI
Run the following command:
kubectl port-forward svc/kiali 20001:20001 -n istio-system
Then, access Kiali by visiting https://localhost:20001/ in your preferred web browser.