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Version: 2.4.15

Role-based Access Control

This section describes the permissions required to access Istio features.

The rancher istio chart installs three ClusterRoles

Cluster-Admin Access#

By default, only those with the cluster-admin ClusterRole can:

  • Install istio app in a cluster
  • Configure resource allocations for Istio

Admin and Edit access#

By default, only Admin and Edit roles can:

  • Enable and disable Istio sidecar auto-injection for namespaces
  • Add the Istio sidecar to workloads
  • View the traffic metrics and traffic graph for the cluster
  • Configure Istio's resources (such as the gateway, destination rules, or virtual services)

Summary of Default Permissions for Kubernetes Default roles#

Istio creates three ClusterRoles and adds Istio CRD access to the following default K8s ClusterRole:

ClusterRole create by chartDefault K8s ClusterRoleRancher Role
istio-adminadminProject Owner
istio-editeditProject Member
istio-viewviewRead-only

Rancher will continue to use cluster-owner, cluster-member, project-owner, project-member, etc as role names, but will utilize default roles to determine access. For each default K8s ClusterRole there are different Istio CRD permissions and K8s actions (Create ( C ), Get ( G ), List ( L ), Watch ( W ), Update ( U ), Patch ( P ), Delete( D ), All ( * )) that can be performed.

CRDsAdminEditView
config.istio.io, adapters, attributemanifests, handlers, httpapispecbindings, httpapispecs, instances, quotaspecbindings, quotaspecs, rules, templatesGLWGLWGLW
networking.istio.io,destinationrules, envoyfilters\<li>gateways, serviceentries, sidecars, virtualservices, workloadentries**GLW
security.istio.io,authorizationpolicies, peerauthentications, requestauthentications**GLW