How to Use Zadig’s Self‑Test Mode for Isolated Microservice Development with Istio and SkyWalking

Introduction

Microservice architectures are widely adopted in enterprise development, but rapid business growth can lead to hundreds of services and complex test environments. Zadig v1.11.0 introduces an environment self‑test mode that lets engineers spin up low‑cost, dedicated sub‑environments based on a full‑service baseline, using Istio’s dynamic routing and SkyWalking’s tracing to avoid environment‑related bottlenecks.

Project Overview

The tutorial uses the PiggyMetrics Spring Boot project as a representative microservice application, together with Istio, SkyWalking, and a set of supporting services (MongoDB instances, RabbitMQ, etc.). The goal is to demonstrate how to create a developer sub‑environment for the

statistics-service

and

config-service

components.

Service Composition

The example consists of eight Spring Boot services:

account-service

auth-service

config-service (manages ConfigMaps and Secrets)

gateway

monitoring-service

notification-service

registry-service

statistics-service

Four MongoDB instances and one RabbitMQ instance provide the required data stores.

Prerequisite Components

Kubernetes v1.20.11 (2 nodes, 8 CPU / 16 GB each)

Zadig v1.11.0+

SkyWalking v8.8.1

ElasticSearch 7.5.1

Istio 1.12.1

Installation Steps

1. Install Zadig

Follow the official “Quick Install” documentation.

2. Install Istio

Refer to the Istio Installation Guides.

3. Install SkyWalking

<code>kubectl create ns skywalking
git clone https://github.com/apache/skywalking-kubernetes
cd skywalking-kubernetes
helm repo add elastic https://helm.elastic.co
helm dep up chart/skywalking
helm install skywalking skywalking -n skywalking -f ./skywalking/values-es7.yaml</code>

4. Prepare Agent Image

<code>FROM busybox:latest
RUN mkdir -p /usr/skywalking/agent/
ADD apache-skywalking-apm-bin/agent/ /usr/skywalking/agent/
WORKDIR /</code>

5. Build Business Service Image

<code>FROM java:8-jre
ADD ./target/statistics-service.jar /app/
ENTRYPOINT ["sh","-c","java -Dapp.id=$SW_AGENT_NAME -Xmx200m $JAVA_OPTS -Dskywalking.agent.service_name=$SW_AGENT_NAME -Dskywalking.collector.backend_service=$SW_AGENT_COLLECTOR_BACKEND_SERVICES -jar /app/statistics-service.jar"]
EXPOSE 7000</code>

Create Baseline Environment

In Zadig, create a project named

piggymetrics

and import all service YAML files from the Zadig code repository. The baseline environment is named

base

.

Enable Self‑Test Mode

After the baseline is ready, create a sub‑environment

subdev

that includes

config-service

and

statistics-service

. Modify the sub‑environment’s ConfigMap

special-config-env

to point middleware addresses to the appropriate

.svc.cluster.local

DNS names.

<code>apiVersion: v1
data:
  account_mongodb_host: account-mongodb.piggymetrics-env-base.svc.cluster.local
  auth_mongodb_host: auth-mongodb.piggymetrics-env-base.svc.cluster.local
  auth_service_host: auth-service.piggymetrics-env-base.svc.cluster.local
  notification_mongodb_host: notification-mongodb.piggymetrics-env-base.svc.cluster.local
  rabbitmq_host: rabbitmq.piggymetrics-env-base.svc.cluster.local
  registry_service_host: registry.piggymetrics-env-base.svc.cluster.local
  statistics_mongodb_host: statistics-mongodb.piggymetrics-env-base.svc.cluster.local
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
  name: special-config-env</code>

Verification

Expose the

gateway

service of the baseline environment:

<code>kubectl port-forward service/gateway 8085:80 -n piggymetrics-env-base</code>

Access the baseline via Chrome or

curl

:

<code>curl -v -X PUT -H "Authorization: Bearer c7f5d94f-8eca-4702-96b4-f496837e8e29" -H "Content-Type:application/json" -d '{"note":null,"incomes":[{"income_id":1,"title":"10000www","icon":"wallet","currency":"USD","period":"MONTH","amount":"10000","converted":"NaN"}],"expenses":[],"saving":{"amount":0,"capitalization":false,"deposit":false,"currency":"USD","interest":0}}' localhost:8085/accounts/current</code>

To test the sub‑environment, add the headers

x-env: subdev

and the SkyWalking

sw8

propagation header:

<code>curl -v -X PUT -H "Authorization: Bearer c7f5d94f-8eca-4702-96b4-f496837e8e29" -H 'x-env: subdev' -H 'sw8: 1-Mjk3ZWIyYTIzNzk2NGQzZDgzMzVkMjk3MTA3NjliNjQuNDkuMTY1MTczNjc1NDEwNTAwMDE=-Mjk3ZWIyYTIzNzk2NGQzZDgzMzVkMjk3MTA3NjliNjQuNDkuMTY1MTczNjc1NDEwNTAwMDA=-1-U2VydmljZUI=-MTEwY2VhMzFhODcwNDBlZTkwN2QxZjQxOTg0MjUzMTFAMTkyLjE2OC4wLjI0MA==-R0VUOi9ncmVldGluZy97bmFtZX0=-U2VydmljZUE6ODA' -H "Content-Type:application/json" -d '{"note":null,"incomes":[{"income_id":1,"title":"10000www","icon":"wallet","currency":"USD","period":"MONTH","amount":"10000","converted":"NaN"}],"expenses":[],"saving":{"amount":0,"capitalization":false,"deposit":false,"currency":"USD","interest":0}}' localhost:8085/accounts/current</code>

Check the logs of

statistics-service

in the sub‑environment to confirm the request reached the isolated instance:

<code>kubectl logs statistics-service-5966d6b65c-5sc98 -n piggymetrics-env-subdev | grep "statistics-service-"</code>

Conclusion

By using Zadig’s self‑test mode, engineers can quickly create personal sub‑environments that share the baseline services while remaining isolated, dramatically reducing waiting time and environment‑related conflicts during large‑scale microservice development.