Istio is an open source service mesh that helps organizations run distributed, microservices-based apps anywhere. It provides a uniform and more efficient way to secure, connect, and monitor services, with few or no code changes. In this blog post, I will explain how Istio works and what benefits it can bring to your applications.
A service mesh is a dedicated infrastructure layer that you can add to your applications. It allows you to transparently add capabilities like observability, traffic management, and security, without adding them to your own code. A service mesh consists of two main components: a data plane and a control plane.
The data plane is composed of a set of proxies (also called sidecars) that are injected alongside each service in your application. These proxies intercept and route all the network traffic between your services, and also collect telemetry data and enforce policies.