Istio has created pre-configured profiles for helm to install Istio with a pre-chosen set of components. A profile is nothing but a values.yaml file—which is an input to the helm command to provide installation options. The following profiles are used:

• Default: Enable a component that is recommended for a production install.
• Demo: Enable an Istio component for demo purposes with minimum resource requirements for CPU and memory. The demo profile comes with or without authentication.
• Minimal: This is the minimal installation that enables traffic management.
• sds-auth: This is similar to the default profile but enables Secret Discovery Service (SDS).

The YAML for the profiles can be found in the /install/kubernetes/helm/istio directory. Consult https://archive.istio.io/v1.3/docs/setup/additional-setup/config-profiles/ for the features available for each of the profiles mentioned at the preceding URL. For this book, we will be using the demo profile for the installation. 

Now that we have downloaded our source code, validated our Kubernetes environment, and selected our installation profile, we have completed all of the required pre-installation tasks and are ready to install Istio. So, let's jump straight into it.