Istio is a configurable, open source service-mesh layer that connects, monitors, and secures the containers in a Kubernetes cluster
Istio makes it easy to create a network of deployed services with load balancing, service-to-service authentication, monitoring, and more, with few or no code changes in service code. You add Istio support to services by deploying a special sidecar proxy throughout your environment that intercepts all network communication between microservices, then configure and manage Istio using its control plane functionality, which includes:
- Automatic load balancing for HTTP, gRPC, WebSocket, and TCP traffic.
- Fine-grained control of traffic behavior with rich routing rules, retries, failovers, and fault injection.
- A pluggable policy layer and configuration API supporting access controls, rate limits and quotas.
- Automatic metrics, logs, and traces for all traffic within a cluster, including cluster ingress and egress.
- Secure service-to-service communication in a cluster with strong identity-based authentication and authorization.
Istio is designed for extensibility and meets diverse deployment needs. It does this by intercepting and configuring mesh traffic as shown in the following diagram:
Istio layers on top of Kubernetes, adding containers that are essentially invisible to the programmer and administrator. Called “sidecar” containers, these act as a “person in the middle,” directing traffic and monitoring the interactions between components. The two work in combination in three ways: configuration, monitoring, and management.
Istio features:
- Traffic management
- Security
- telemetry
- vizualization
Reference :
Infra Cloud Solutions 