Observe traffic using the Kiali web console

Kiali is an observability console for the OpenShift Service Mesh with service mesh configuration and validation capabilities. It helps you understand the structure and health of your service mesh by monitoring traffic flow to infer the topology and report errors.

  1. First, grab the Kiali web console URL. To do so, run the following command:

    echo "https://$(oc get routes -n istio-system kiali -o jsonpath='{.spec.host}')/console"
    Sample Output
    https://kiali-istio-system.apps.rosa-6n4s8.1c1c.p1.openshiftapps.com/console

  2. Next, navigate to that URL in your web browser and click the Login With OpenShift button.

    Kiali Login

    Once logged in, the Kiali Overview screen presents tiles for each project namespace.

    Kiali Console

  3. Now, let’s generate some traffic against the product page service. To do so, run the following command in your terminal:

    while true; do curl -sSL "http://$(oc -n istio-system get route istio-ingressgateway -o jsonpath='{.spec.host}')/productpage" | head -n 5; sleep 1; done

    Leave the loop running and proceed to the next steps.

  4. Return to the Kiali web console and click the Graph option in the sidebar.

  5. Next, select bookinfo from the Namespace list, and App graph from the Graph Type list.

    Kiali Console

  6. Next, choose the Display drop down and tick the Idle nodes box.

    Kiali Console

  7. Next, view the graph and change the display settings to add or remove information from the graph.

    Kiali Console

  8. Next, click the Workload tab and select the details-v1 workload.

    Kiali Console

  9. In your terminal window stop the traffic generation by pressing Ctrl-C.

Congratulations! You should now see traffic flowing between the various services in your bookinfo application.