cilium-cli

Project Overview

cilium-cli is the official command-line tool from the Cilium project for managing the full lifecycle of Cilium in Kubernetes clusters. Instead of hand-writing YAML manifests, it auto-detects the cluster type (minikube, kind, EKS, GKE, AKS, k3s, and more), generates environment-appropriate deployment settings, and installs or upgrades with a single command. It also integrates Hubble enablement with port-forwarding and ships a built-in connectivity test suite that deploys test workloads and verifies east-west and north-south traffic step by step.

Item	Value
Platform	Linux, macOS, Windows
Language	Go
Scope	Cilium 1.17+ with CLI v0.20+
License	Apache-2.0

Install Cilium with one command, then validate cluster networking with the built-in test suite.

Key Features

• Automated install: detects cluster type and version, generating a matching Cilium deployment
• Status inspection: cilium status shows the health of the agent, operator, Hubble, and more with a visual output
• Connectivity tests: built-in suite creates workloads and validates pod-to-pod, pod-to-external, and service paths
• Hubble integration: enable Hubble Relay with one command and observe live flow logs via port-forward
• Context management: cilium context displays current cluster connection details for multi-cluster workflows
• Full lifecycle: covers upgrades, configuration changes, and complete uninstall

Target Audience

• Cluster admins running Cilium as their CNI
• Operations engineers adopting eBPF networking
• Developers evaluating Cilium on minikube or kind
• SREs troubleshooting Kubernetes networking

Quick Start

1. Download the latest binary release

   CILIUM_CLI_VERSION=$(curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cilium/cilium-cli/main/stable.txt)
   curl -L --remote-name-all https://github.com/cilium/cilium-cli/releases/download/${CILIUM_CLI_VERSION}/cilium-$(go env GOOS)-$(go env GOARCH).tar.gz{,.sha256sum}

2. Verify and extract to a system path

   sha256sum --check cilium-*.tar.gz.sha256sum
   sudo tar -C /usr/local/bin -xzvf cilium-*.tar.gz

3. Install Cilium

   cilium install

4. Check component status

   cilium status

5. Run the connectivity tests

   cilium connectivity test

Core Advantages

• Environment aware: recognizes major managed and local clusters, eliminating hand-written manifests
• Testing out of the box: the connectivity suite ships complete cases, no custom workloads needed
• Official tooling: maintained in lockstep with Cilium releases for reliable compatibility

System Requirements

Item	Requirement
OS	Linux, macOS, Windows
Cluster	Kubernetes (minikube, kind, EKS, GKE, AKS, k3s, etc.)
Versioning	CLI v0.20+ pairs with Cilium 1.17 and newer

Notes

• Version pairing: supported Cilium versions differ per CLI release; check the release notes table before upgrading
• Hubble dependency: flow log views in connectivity tests require Hubble enabled with port-forwarding