IBM Cloud

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Follow these instructions to prepare a cluster for Istio using the IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service.

To prepare a cluster before manually installing Istio, proceed as follows:

Install the IBM Cloud CLI, the IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service plug-in, and the Kubernetes CLI.
Create a standard Kubernetes cluster using the following command. Replace <cluster-name> with the name you want to use for your cluster and <zone-name> with the name of an available zone.
You can display your available zones by running ibmcloud ks zones --provider classic. The IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service Locations Reference Guide describes the available zones and how to specify them.
```
$ ibmcloud ks cluster create classic --zone <zone-name> --machine-type b3c.4x16 \
  --workers 3 --name <cluster-name>
```
If you already have a private or a public VLAN, you must specify them in the above command using the --private-vlan and --public-vlan options. Otherwise, they will be automatically created for you. You can view your available VLANs by running ibmcloud ks vlans --zone <zone-name>.
Run the following command to download your cluster configuration.
```
$ ibmcloud ks cluster config --cluster <cluster-name>
```
Make sure to use the kubectl CLI version that matches the Kubernetes version of your cluster.

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