Istio, the open-source container- and microservice-optimized technology, has hit the version 1.0.
Backed by leading companies like Google, IBM and Red Hat, Istio is a service mesh that helps developers to connect, manage and secure microservices of applications developed using containers.
Istio was launched around 14 months ago to reduce the complexity of managing the applications that comprises large number of microservices. The microservices are increasingly used by enterprises for flexible development process.
Since the launch of Istio 0.1, the project has gained traction of over 200 contributors. It handles the routing, load balancing, flow control, as well as security requirements of microservices.
With the Istio 1.0, the developers can add multiple Kubernetes clusters to a single mesh and enable cross-cluster communication. New networking APIs have been included for efficient control over the traffic through a mesh. Support for multi-cluster and new APIs are now available in beta.
Users can roll out mutual TLS (transport layer security) without having to update the clients of a service. Istio has simplified the mutual TLS configuration to provide strong security for service to service communication and end-user to service communication.
Istio mentioned that authorization policies for controlling access to services will now be evaluated locally in Envoy for improved performance and reliability. Further, Istio will recommend users to install Helm chart method by default, that comes with rich customization options for adoption of Istio.
Istio 1.0 also brings JWT authentication, telemetry buffering, new policy cache, as well as increased and refactored test suites.
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“We’ve put a lot of effort into performance including continuous regression testing, large scale environment simulation and targeted fixes. We’re very happy with the results and will share more on this in detail in the coming weeks,” wrote Team Istio in a blog post.
