Istio

Istio manages and secures microservices in distributed environments by providing a unified service mesh architecture. This architecture extends Kubernetes and supports traditional workloads, enabling standardized traffic management, telemetry, and security.

At its core, Istio deploys proxy infrastructure, notably the Envoy service proxy, which can be used with or without sidecars. This allows for Layer 7 features such as traffic routing, load balancing, and service discovery, as well as Layer 4 performance and security through zero-trust tunnels. The Envoy proxy handles tasks like mutual TLS (mTLS) authentication, authorization, and encryption, simplifying service-to-service security implementations.

Istio requires careful configuration and management, particularly in large-scale deployments. The use of sidecars can add overhead, although alternatives like Istio Ambient mode can mitigate this by managing workload identity and mTLS without the need for sidecars. Key considerations include the impact on network latency and the need for robust monitoring and logging to ensure the service mesh operates efficiently.

Istio integrates deeply with Kubernetes, leveraging its control plane to manage the service mesh. It supports various protocols and can handle high traffic volumes, though query performance and data retention costs can become significant factors in multi-cluster or multi-account setups. Istio's architecture emphasizes real-time monitoring and policy enforcement, providing sub-minute granularity for most metrics and flexible policy management through its control plane.