Install the Open Service Mesh (OSM) add-on using Azure CLI

Article
12/01/2023

This article shows you how to install the Open Service Mesh (OSM) add-on on an Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster. The OSM add-on installs the OSM mesh on your cluster. The OSM mesh is a service mesh that provides traffic management, policy enforcement, and telemetry collection for your applications. For more information about the OSM mesh, see Open Service Mesh.

Note

With the retirement of Open Service Mesh (OSM) by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), we recommend identifying your OSM configurations and migrating them to an equivalent Istio configuration. For information about migrating from OSM to Istio, see Migration guidance for Open Service Mesh (OSM) configurations to Istio.

Important

Based on the version of Kubernetes your cluster is running, the OSM add-on installs a different version of OSM.

Kubernetes version	OSM version installed
1.24.0 or greater	1.2.5
Between 1.23.5 and 1.24.0	1.1.3
Below 1.23.5	1.0.0

Older versions of OSM may not be available for install or be actively supported if the corresponding AKS version has reached end of life. You can check the AKS Kubernetes release calendar for information on AKS version support windows.

Prerequisites

An Azure subscription. If you don't have an Azure subscription, you can create a free account.
Azure CLI installed.

Install the OSM add-on on your cluster

If you don't have one already, create an Azure resource group using the az group create command.
```
az group create --name myResourceGroup --location eastus
```
Create a new AKS cluster with the OSM add-on installed using the az aks create command and specify open-service-mesh for the --enable-addons parameter.
```
az aks create \
  --resource-group myResourceGroup \
  --name myAKSCluster \
  --enable-addons open-service-mesh
```

Important

You can't enable the OSM add-on on an existing cluster if an OSM mesh is already on your cluster. Uninstall any existing OSM meshes on your cluster before enabling the OSM add-on.

When installing on an existing clusters, use the az aks enable-addons command. The following code shows an example:

az aks enable-addons \
 --resource-group myResourceGroup \
 --name myAKSCluster \
 --addons open-service-mesh

Get the credentials for your cluster

Get the credentials for your AKS cluster using the az aks get-credentials command.
```
az aks get-credentials --resource-group myResourceGroup --name myAKSCluster
```

Verify the OSM add-on is installed on your cluster

Verify the OSM add-on is installed on your cluster using the az aks show command with and specify 'addonProfiles.openServiceMesh.enabled' for the --query parameter. In the output, under addonProfiles, the enabled value should show as true for openServiceMesh.
```
az aks show --resource-group myResourceGroup --name myAKSCluster  --query 'addonProfiles.openServiceMesh.enabled'
```

Verify the OSM mesh is running on your cluster

Verify the version, status, and configuration of the OSM mesh running on your cluster using the kubectl get deployment command and display the image version of the osm-controller deployment.
```
kubectl get deployment -n kube-system osm-controller -o=jsonpath='{$.spec.template.spec.containers[:1].image}'
```
The following example output shows version 0.11.1 of the OSM mesh:
```
mcr.microsoft.com/oss/openservicemesh/osm-controller:v0.11.1
```
Verify the status of the OSM components running on your cluster using the following kubectl commands to show the status of the app.kubernetes.io/name=openservicemesh.io deployments, pods, and services.
```
kubectl get deployments -n kube-system --selector app.kubernetes.io/name=openservicemesh.io
kubectl get pods -n kube-system --selector app.kubernetes.io/name=openservicemesh.io
kubectl get services -n kube-system --selector app.kubernetes.io/name=openservicemesh.io
```
Important

If any pods have a status other than Running, such as Pending, your cluster might not have enough resources to run OSM. Review the sizing for your cluster, such as the number of nodes and the virtual machine's SKU, before continuing to use OSM on your cluster.

Verify the configuration of your OSM mesh using the kubectl get meshconfig command.

kubectl get meshconfig osm-mesh-config -n kube-system -o yaml

The following example output shows the configuration of an OSM mesh:

apiVersion: config.openservicemesh.io/v1alpha1
kind: MeshConfig
metadata:
  creationTimestamp: "0000-00-00A00:00:00A"
  generation: 1
  name: osm-mesh-config
  namespace: kube-system
  resourceVersion: "2494"
  uid: 6c4d67f3-c241-4aeb-bf4f-b029b08faa31
spec:
  certificate:
    serviceCertValidityDuration: 24h
  featureFlags:
    enableEgressPolicy: true
    enableMulticlusterMode: false
    enableWASMStats: true
  observability:
    enableDebugServer: true
    osmLogLevel: info
    tracing:
      address: jaeger.osm-system.svc.cluster.local
      enable: false
      endpoint: /api/v2/spans
      port: 9411
  sidecar:
    configResyncInterval: 0s
    enablePrivilegedInitContainer: false
    envoyImage: mcr.microsoft.com/oss/envoyproxy/envoy:v1.18.3
    initContainerImage: mcr.microsoft.com/oss/openservicemesh/init:v0.9.1
    logLevel: error
    maxDataPlaneConnections: 0
    resources: {}
  traffic:
    enableEgress: true
    enablePermissiveTrafficPolicyMode: true
    inboundExternalAuthorization:
      enable: false
      failureModeAllow: false
      statPrefix: inboundExtAuthz
      timeout: 1s
    useHTTPSIngress: false

The example output shows enablePermissiveTrafficPolicyMode: true, which means OSM has permissive traffic policy mode enabled. With this mode enabled in your OSM mesh:

The SMI traffic policy enforcement is bypassed.
OSM automatically discovers services that are a part of the service mesh.
OSM creates traffic policy rules on each Envoy proxy sidecar to be able to communicate with these services.

Delete your cluster

When you no longer need the cluster, you can delete it using the az group delete command, which removes the resource group, the cluster, and all related resources.
```
az group delete --name myResourceGroup --yes --no-wait
```

Note

Alternatively, you can uninstall the OSM add-on and the related resources from your cluster. For more information, see Uninstall the Open Service Mesh add-on from your AKS cluster.

Next steps

This article showed you how to install the OSM add-on on an AKS cluster and verify it's installed and running. With the OSM add-on installed on your cluster, you can deploy a sample application or onboard an existing application to work with your OSM mesh.