Istio Service Mesh Cheatsheet

Istio is an open-source service mesh that helps to control and secure microservice architectures. It provides features such as traffic management, security, observability, and reliability (like fault injection, retries, and timeouts) for microservices, making it easier to manage complex architectures. It’s beneficial in Kubernetes environments, though it can be used with other orchestration platforms.

Istio Cheatsheet by Rohit Ghumare

1. Core Concepts:

• Service Mesh: A dedicated infrastructure layer for handling service-to-service communication.
• Envoy Proxy: Sidecar proxies deployed alongside services to manage traffic.
• Control Plane: Manages and configures the proxies to route traffic.
• Data Plane: Consists of sidecar proxies that handle traffic routing between services.

2. Key Istio Components:

• Istiod: Incorporates services like Pilot, Citadel, Galley, and Sidecar Injector into one service.
• Envoy: The high-performance proxy deployed as a sidecar to manage all inbound and outbound traffic for services in the mesh.