Install Kong Mesh

1. Run the following command to install the Kong Mesh binaries:

   curl -L https://developer.konghq.com/mesh/installer.sh | VERSION=2.13.5 sh -
   

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2. Add the binaries to your system’s path:

   export PATH="$(pwd)/kong-mesh-2.13.5/bin:$PATH"
   

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3. Run the following command to confirm that Kong Mesh is installed correctly:

   kumactl version 2>/dev/null
   

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   You should see the following output:

   Client: Kong Mesh 2.13.5
   

Set up a temporary directory to store resources like data plane tokens, Dataplane templates, and logs. Ensure the path does not end with a trailing /.

If you are using Colima, make sure to adjust the path in the steps of this guide. Colima only allows shared paths from the HOME directory or /tmp/colima/. Instead of /tmp/kong-mesh-demo, you can use /tmp/colima/kong-mesh-demo.

Create the directory if it doesn’t exist:

export KONG_MESH_DEMO_TMP="/tmp/kong-mesh-demo"
mkdir -p "$KONG_MESH_DEMO_TMP"

Create a reusable Dataplane resource template for services:

echo 'type: Dataplane
mesh: default
name: {{ name }}
labels:
  app: {{ name }}
networking:
  address: {{ address }}
  inbound:
    - port: {{ port }}
      tags:
        kuma.io/service: {{ name }}
        kuma.io/protocol: http
  transparentProxying:
    redirectPortInbound: 15006
    redirectPortOutbound: 15001' > "$KONG_MESH_DEMO_TMP/dataplane.yaml"

This template simplifies creating Dataplane configurations for different services by replacing dynamic values during deployment.

Create a configuration file that identifies the data plane proxy user and enables DNS traffic redirection through the mesh:

echo 'kumaDPUser: kong-mesh-data-plane-proxy
redirect:
  dns:
    enabled: true
verbose: true' > "$KONG_MESH_DEMO_TMP/config-transparent-proxy.yaml"

Set up a separate Docker network for the containers. In this example we’ll use IP addresses in the 172.18.78.0/24 range:

docker network create \
  --subnet 172.18.0.0/16 \
  --ip-range 172.18.78.0/24 \
  --gateway 172.18.78.254 \
  kong-mesh-demo