Installing BEL (Demo-grade install)

Installing BEL on a Kubernetes cluster is easy and can be accomplished in a few minutes.

Note: this guide contains “quick start” instructions intended for demo, experimental, and other non-production use. For installations that handle production traffic, please see our complete BEL installation guide.

Install the Gateway API

Linkerd uses Kubernetes Gateway API resources to configure certain features and must be installed first. To install the latest version of the Gateway API, run:

kubectl apply --server-side -f https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/gateway-api/releases/download/v1.4.0/standard-install.yaml

If you already have the Gateway API CRDs on your cluster, you can likely just use them as is. For details, see our Managing Gateway API resources doc.

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]

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-2.19.1

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

linkerd check --pre

Install BEL onto your cluster

At this point, we’re ready to install BEL on your cluster.

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 see our complete BEL installation guide.

To install BEL, first install Linkerd’s CRDs using the --crds flag, then install the control plane itself:

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.

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. To configure a production install, please see our full BEL installation guide.

Happy meshing!