Istio is a foundational component of Batteries Included, providing the service mesh infrastructure that powers secure communication between services.
Both the Istio and Istio Gateway batteries come pre-installed by default in your cluster, requiring no setup while delivering powerful networking capabilities.
What is Istio?
The Istio battery is an open-source service mesh that manages communication between services in your cluster. It provides:
- Traffic management and routing control.
- Service-to-service authentication and encryption.
- Detailed monitoring and tracing of service communications.
- Access control and traffic policies.
Istio Gateway
The Istio Gateway battery, installed alongside Istio by default, serves as the entry point for external traffic into your cluster’s service mesh. It acts as a smart load balancer that:
- Routes incoming traffic to the appropriate services.
- Manages TLS termination for secure connections.
- Enforces traffic policies and access controls.
- Provides a unified entry point for all external requests.
In most cases, you won’t need to interact directly with either of these batteries - Batteries Included handles all configuration and management automatically, letting you focus on building your applications!
Additional Resources
- Visit Monitoring for observability setup.
- See Knative for serverless deployment integration with Istio.