Using different istioctl versions with multiple Istio clusters

When you are working with multiple Istio clusters running different versions of Istio, it’s easy to mess up the client and run with the wrong istioctl for the target cluster. You also don’t want to spend a few hours debugging an issue to find that you weren’t used the right version of istioctl.

This is really useful when you are managing different clusters with different Istio versions: for example, you have upgraded your dev and integration cluster to Istio 1.1 for testing but your staging and production still run with Istio 1.0 or even when you are managing multiple clusters for different customers.

Then add istioctl plugin:

Output:

Check that istioctl plugin appears in the list of plugins:

List all available versions of istioctl:

Let’s install two versions: 1.0.7 and 1.1.6.

Now you can easily list the installed versions and easily switch between them:

List versions:

Set a version:

Check istioctl version:

Switch to 1.1.6:

Check istioctl version:

And voila, hope it is helpful!

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