Kiali releases 1.46 to 1.48: Features update

Hello community. Since my last post, the Kiali project did several releases, and most recent release is v1.48, which came with a bunch of new features.

As usual, all live presentations are recorded and posted on Kiali channel:

Kiali v1.47 updates — about 23 mins long

Kiali v1.48 updates — about 27 mins long

And here we have listed the highlighted improvements in Kiali for recent releases:

Graph: Find/Hide by Labels

The find/hide feature of the Graph is extended to support custom labels. Find/Hide supports “label:<name>[=<val>]” format, and allows to highlight or hide portions of large graphs based on custom labeling.

Highlighting only nodes in “west” “dataCenter”

Graph Layouts

The Graph layouts are improved now. The Dagre has became the default one. Also several new layouts have been introduces, such as Grid, Concentric, BreadthFirst. Additionally you can now choose between Dagre and BreadthFirst within the Namespace Box. Cola/Cose layouts are removed.

Graph Usability and Edge Handling

Various improvements have been done on graph usability and edge handling, such as:

• One-click edge hide
• One-click healthy edge hide
• Smarter hover behavior, such as “contextInfo” when no label available and end-to-end path highlighting
• Improved highlighting and contrast
• Faster edge-health calculation

Support for Unified Metrics

There was no support of multiple meshes working with a shared Prometheus, and when selecting a particular namespace in Graph, it was showing metrics for all namespaces.

For discriminating metrics, a query-scope was introduced in Kiali CR. This allows to add label-value pairs that are applied to every Prometheus query. Each Kiali instance can use this to ensure its metrics queries are scoped appropriately, avoiding potential namespace-clash when the same namespace is used in different meshes.

Istio Config Preview

While creating Istio Config resources in Kiali, now it is possible to preview the YAML files, which are going to be applied. This allows the Kiali users to modify the YAML files manually before applying, or even copy/download those files.

The feature is added in Overview page, Service Wizards and in Istio Config creation.

Traffic Policies creation in Overview page

Traffic Shifting creation in Service Wizard

Topology generator/proxy

The Topology generator demo application is improved. Internal tooling is added which is useful for generating and testing large graphs without needing to deploy actual workloads. Intercepts graph api calls and responds with mock data.

Side panel redesign of Istio Config Details

Side panel is now available for all configuration objects. There is a new place for references related to the Istio config. Validation references are also there. Also, a new help section is added that dynamically helps the user when editing/adding key fields.

Wrap up

These were all the main features I wanted to highlight in this post. Feel free to share your thoughts about what type of information you want to see in next posts. And as always, we appreciate any ideas and feedback about Kiali features.

Remember that Kiali is OpenSource and you can contribute to build a better project! It would be nice if you also contribute with written content in Kiali’s Medium publication!