installing istio operator version 1.15.7 causes operator to reconcile forever

 

1. The istioctl version that you're using dictates which version you will be deploying to. For example, if you're using istioctl 1.16 then you will be deploying istio-operator 1.16

Then run 

istioctl operator init

It will create istio-operator and istio-system namespace.

Then use the following yaml to create the related gateways

apiVersion: install.istio.io/v1alpha1

kind: IstioOperator

metadata:

  namespace: istio-system

  name: example-istiocontrolplane

spec:

  profile: demo

 

Then try to add additional serviceAnnotations to the load balancer

apiVersion: install.istio.io/v1alpha1

kind: IstioOperator

metadata:

  namespace: istio-system

  name: example-istiocontrolplane

spec:

  profile: demo

  components:

    ingressGateways:

    - name: istio-ingressgateway

      enabled: true

      k8s:

        serviceAnnotations:

          service.beta.kubernetes.io/azure-load-balancer-internal: "true"

          service.beta.kubernetes.io/azure-load-balancer-tcp-idle-timeout: 6

          appversion: "1"

Then if you have a looks at the istio-operator logs with the following commands:-

kubectl get io -A -w

kubectl logs  istio-operator-6596684955-7fqbw -n istio-operator -f 

This will give you an good idea of what is going on within the system - after 10-30 seconds, you can see the operator trying to re-concile stuff.

I found out that the reason for this - is because I am using a number rather than a string. For all istio operator related configuration, it is important to use string ONLY.