If you have been hearing about Istio and have been wondering what all the fuss is about, we have the ideal overview for you. Read on as we quickly run through what Instio is all about and how this open source technology helps developers and can benefit your organisation.
How Istio Started
Every hero deserves a good origin story and Istio is no different. Istio is an open source service mesh solution, the result of a collaboration between Google, IBM, and Lyft. Launched in May 2017, Istio has since been adopted by enterprises around the world to manage their distributed microservice architecture and facilitate the smooth operation of popular applications.
How does Istio work?
Applications are, of course, made up of several microservices such as the user interface, and many others, The application can only work the way it is intended to when all microservices are able to communicate effectively with one another. The collection of microservices, commonly referred to as a service mesh, can become difficult to manage as the application it serves develops and grows, handling more requests. In short, Istio helps applications to manage their complex deployment processes.
The service mesh itself is developed as an assembly of network proxies with requests passed between the different microservices.It is the combined work of hte microservices and proxies that manages the requests. This is why proxies are referred to as sidecars.
A Deeper Look Into Istio
Let’s take a more detailed look at how Istio helps to manage the service mesh.
- Istio offers greater security by managing authentication and authorisation. Not only does it use encryption to plug information leaks, but it also manages keys and X.509 web certificates, and enforces authentication and authorisation policies. With Istio service identities of many platforms can be used. Amongst these are AWS, GCP, K8s, Firebase Auth, and Google Auth.
- Istio handles traffic by managing load balancing, routing, and rule set proxies. Istio recognises the platform’s service endpoints, directing traffic appropriately to different services, working with HTTP, and TCP, for example.
- All the while Istio collects valuable telemetry data by monitoring traffic, and latency, for instance. It can support applications such as Prometheus, and Grafana, to display the data as insightful information in graphs. Since it also provides logs you can really dig deep and retrieve useful data on specific operations.
- Use fuels and make it so much easier to zero-in on a particular service in the case of a failure.
Istio’s versatility means it can be easily customised to work with existing tools and processes. It configures the proxies according to the desired configuration in the form of a YAML file, and uses K8s CRDs (Custom Resource Definitions).
A Basic Istio Workflow
- Galley: The YAML is initially received by galley and validated and sent to the next component called Pilot.
- Pilot: It can be thought of as the main/driving component, this converts the YAML to Envoy (C++ based proxy developed by Lyft) configuration and sends to each proxy (sidecars).
- Policy: Further roles and policies can be appended with this component.
- Telemetry: Connects with the proxies for logs.
- Citadel: This takes care of the identity management of proxies by producing and handing over certificates to them to help proxies interact among themselves using TLS.
Istio Compatibility
Another exciting aspect of Istio is how it works with multiple environments and on a range of platforms. It works with On-Prem, Cloud, and Kubernetes, to name just a few. Services can be deployed on K8s, HashiCorp, Consul, and on standalone virtual machines.
Istio and You
Istio may be relatively new but it is already making a big splash. Major international companies are using it so it is not likely to disappear any time soon. In fact its popularity is predicted to soar. That’s why organisations such as eBay, HSBC, Walmart, Amadeus, GiffGaff, Yahoo!, and Continental have all adopted early to ensure their applications remain on the cutting edge.
You can join them by investing in an Istio training course that will help your company to reap benefits for years to come. At EDC4IT we are pleased to offer a new 2 day, online Istio course that will get you and your team on the right path from the outset. We also offer a K8S Setup to help you or your team to set up and configure a Kubernetes cluster.
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