Configuration

How to configure Kiali to fit your needs.

The pages in this Configuration section describe most available options for managing and customizing your Kiali installation.

Unless noted, it is assumed that you are using the Kiali operator and that you are managing the Kiali installation through a Kiali CR. The provided YAML snippets for configuring Kiali should be placed in your Kiali CR. For example, the provided configuration snippet for setting up the Anonymous authentication strategy is the following:

spec:
  auth:
    strategy: anonymous

You will need to take this YAML snippet and apply it to your Kiali CR. As an example, an almost minimal Kiali CR using the previous configuration snippet would be the following:

apiVersion: kiali.io/v1alpha1
kind: Kiali
metadata:
  namespace: kiali-namespace
  name: kiali
spec:
  istio_namespace: istio-system
  deployment:
    namespace: kiali-namespace
  auth:
    strategy: anonymous

Then, you can save the finished YAML file and apply it with kubectl apply -f.

It is recommended that you read The Kiali CR and the Example Install pages of the Installation Guide for more information about using the Kiali CR.

Also, for reference, see Kiali CR Reference which documents all available options.


Authentication Strategies

Choosing and configuring the appropriate authentication strategy.

Console Customization

Default selections, find and hide presets and custom metric aggregations.

Custom Dashboards

Configuring additional, non-default dashboards.

Debugging Kiali

How to debug Kiali using traces.

Istio Environment

Kiali’s default configuration matches settings present in Istio’s installation configuration profiles. If you are customizing your Istio installation some Kiali settings may need to be adjusted. Also, some Istio management features can be enabled or disabled selectively.

Kiali CR Reference

Reference page for the Kiali CR. The Kiali Operator will watch for resources of this type and install Kiali according to those resources’ configurations.

Multi-cluster

Configuring Kiali for a multi-cluster mesh.

Namespace access control

Configuring per-user authorized namespaces.

Namespace Management

Configuring the namespaces accessible and visible to Kiali.

No Istiod Access

Kiali behavior with no access to Istiod (the /debug endpoints are not available)

OSSMConsole CR Reference

Reference page for the OSSMConsole CR. The Kiali Operator will watch for a resource of this type and install the OSSM Console plugin according to that resource’s configuration. Only one resource of this type should exist at any one time.

Prometheus, Tracing, Grafana

Kiali data sources and add-ons.

Traffic Health

Customizing Health for Request Traffic.

Virtual Machine workloads

Ensuring Kiali can visualize a VM WorkloadEntry.

Last modified October 27, 2023: docs for OSSMC (#708) (50423f6)