Kiali releases 1.71 to 1.77: Features update
Hello community. Almost four months have passed since my last post. During this time the Kiali project has released seven more versions!
As usual, all live presentations are recorded and posted on Kiali channel:
Kiali v1.71 updates — about 13 mins long
Kiali v1.72 updates — about 14 mins long
Kiali v1.73 updates — about 6 mins long
Kiali v1.74 updates — about 13 mins long
Kiali v1.75 updates — about 16 mins long
Kiali v1.76 updates — about 10 mins long
Kiali v1.77 updates — about 9 mins long
And here we have listed the highlighted improvements in Kiali for recent releases:
Kiali UI migrated to PatternFly 5
Kiali has got a Dark Mode Theme
Multi-cluster support additions
In a Graph page, for remote cluster nodes, there are added Context Menu Wizard options to manage the traffic similar to what is done for the local cluster.
While creating a Config in a wizard, the user can choose the clusters on which to create those configs, and for remote clusters the configs will be created too.
The Control Plane card for the remote clusters in Overview page now have the same size as the Data Plane cards, but with special labeling “Remote Cluster”.
A new config param is introduced: ‘is_multicluster’ (default false) in Kiali CR to check the component existence along all clusters.
Kiali Graph Changes
In the Kiali CR, you can now add the “auto_enable: true” to a predefined graph “hide” or “find” entry. In the example below the graph will automatically enable the “name = tcpserver” find expression.
This allows you to automatically have ‘Find’ or ‘Hide’ applied when your graph is rendered.
More changes in K8s Gateway API Support
The cluster can be configured to have multiple Gateway API implementations running in parallel. For supporting those multiple Gateway API implementations, there is a new configuration param in the Kiali CR called “gateway_api_classes”. So, Kiali can be configured to have the implementation of Gateway API and the Class name. And in the K8s Gateway creation wizard the user can choose which Gateway Class is used to create the K8s Gateway.
When the K8s Gateway API is enabled and a traffic routing to a Service is created by using Gateway API, then on the Graph side panel information about K8s GW API is shown for the Service and Workloads.
Kiali working with Istio Ambient
Kiali now supports Istio Ambient mode. More detailed demo of this feature can be found in Kiali v1.72 and v1.75 demo recording videos linked above.
Grafana Tempo support
Grafana Tempo is a tool for distributed tracing which Kiali started supporting it recently. And of course the the Jaeger Tracing is kept supported and is the default tracing tool.
More information about Grafana Tempo support can be found in Kiali v1.75 and v1.77 demo recording videos.
Wrap up
These are 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 future posts. And, as always, we appreciate any ideas and feedback about Kiali features.
This was my last post regarding Kiali feature updates, I hope all the posts I wrote in past two years were helpful, thank you all for reading them. It was my pleasure to introduce the changes in the Kiali project.
Starting from next release, my colleague Leandro Beretta will keep updates of Kiali project features. Please give a welcome to his first post and do not hesitate to read his other posts. Good luck Leandro with your new role.
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!
