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Installing BEL

Installing BEL on any Kubernetes cluster is easy. In this guide, we’ll show you how to do just that.

This guide contains quick start instructions intended for demo, experimental, and other non-production use. For installations that handle production traffic, please see our production-grade BEL installation guide.

Step 0: Get your license key

BEL requires a valid license key to run. Log into the Buoyant portal and follow the instructions there. You should end up with an environment variable like this:

export BUOYANT_LICENSE=[LICENSE]

Step 1: Get the CLI tool

Once you have your license key, the next step is to download and install the BEL CLI:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSfL https://enterprise.buoyant.io/install | sh

Follow the instructions to add the BEL linkerd CLI to your system path.

Verify that the CLI is installed and running the expected version with:

linkerd version --client

You should see:

Client version: enterprise-2.16.2

Finally, validate that your Kubernetes cluster is ready for installation:

linkerd check --pre

Step 2: Install BEL

At this point, we’re ready to install BEL on your cluster. You can do this directly with the CLI or by using Helm.

CLI

Using the CLI to install BEL is quick and easy, but note that the TLS certificates generated by this installation will expire in a year. If you expect your Linkerd installation to run for more than a year, please use the Helm instructions instead.

To install BEL, run:

linkerd install --crds | kubectl apply -f -
linkerd install        | kubectl apply -f -

If you are on GKE 1.29+, you need to set a custom clusterNetworks value. Learn more

--set clusterNetworks=34.118.224.0/20\,10.0.0.0/8\,100.64.0.0/10\,172.16.0.0/12\,192.168.0.0/16\,fd00::/8

For more information see the GKE docs.

Helm

Using Helm to install BEL requires that you generate TLS credentials ahead of time. To do this, please follow the Linkerd Trust Root CA & Identity Certificates & Keys docs. You will need the resulting ca.crt, issuer.crt, and issuer.key files.

Then, run these commands:

helm repo add linkerd-buoyant https://helm.buoyant.cloud
helm repo update

helm install linkerd-crds \
  --create-namespace \
  --namespace linkerd \
  linkerd-buoyant/linkerd-enterprise-crds

helm install linkerd-control-plane \
  --namespace linkerd \
  --set license=$BUOYANT_LICENSE \
  --set-file linkerd-control-plane.identityTrustAnchorsPEM=ca.crt \
  --set-file linkerd-control-plane.identity.issuer.tls.crtPEM=issuer.crt \
  --set-file linkerd-control-plane.identity.issuer.tls.keyPEM=issuer.key \
  linkerd-buoyant/linkerd-enterprise-control-plane

If you are on GKE 1.29+, you need to set a custom clusterNetworks value. Learn more

--set linkerd-control-plane.clusterNetworks=34.118.224.0/20\,10.0.0.0/8\,100.64.0.0/10\,172.16.0.0/12\,192.168.0.0/16\,fd00::/8

For more information see the GKE docs.

Step 3: Verify your installation

After the installation is complete, you can verify the health and configuration of Linkerd by running the linkerd check command:

linkerd check

That’s it!

Congratulations! You have successfully installed BEL onto your cluster. Note that your installation is optimized for non-production traffic such as demos and experiments. For production installs, please see our production-grade BEL installation guide.

Happy meshing!