What is Istio?
A service mesh that adds mTLS, traffic management, and observability to Kubernetes services.
Istio is an open-source service mesh that adds mTLS encryption, fine-grained traffic management (canary, A/B testing, fault injection), and deep observability to microservices without code changes. Originally deployed as sidecars (Envoy proxy alongside each pod), Istio now offers an Ambient mode (no sidecars, eBPF-based). Core resources: VirtualService (routing rules), DestinationRule (traffic policies), Gateway (ingress/egress). Kiali provides the Istio topology visualization.
Deep Dive Guide
how to set up istio service mesh
Related Terms
More Networking Terms
API Gateway
A server that acts as entry point for APIs, handling routing, auth, and rate limiting.
Cilium
eBPF-based networking, security, and observability for Kubernetes clusters.
CNI (Container Network Interface)
A specification and plugins for configuring network interfaces in Linux containers.
eBPF
A Linux kernel technology for running sandboxed programs without changing kernel source code.
Network Policy
A Kubernetes resource that controls which pods can communicate with each other.
Service Mesh
A dedicated infrastructure layer for managing service-to-service communication in microservices.
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