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What is Istio? in view of this question, this article introduces in detail the corresponding analysis and answers, hoping to help more partners who want to solve this problem to find a more simple and feasible way.

I don't know how many people in the technology community have this view, and in 35 years' time, our lives will be like a sequel to Blade Runner. " Blade Runner shows us the future of technology, and many of its visual buildings, such as animated billboards and video calls, are now so common that we couldn't even think of them when we were young. " The scene in Blade Runner is so fully realized that people like me start thinking about what the cloud can do, if we think about it attentively.

For many years, this meant large-scale applications-and a lot of sustainable work. There's nothing more. One of the results when our technology goes deep into the cloud native architecture is that we put more emphasis on micro-service-based applications, which means that this single service can provide benefits that are difficult to assess by multiple applications-a bit like the ultimate version of "code reuse".

But when you already have an app that contains thousands of independent services, can you manage your architecture so that you don't let your application, or at least your mind-be completely off track? What we need is an architecture that can help us connect, manage, and secure these microservices. Colleagues provide load balancing, authentication, monitoring, and so on.

If there is such a thing, of course you are willing to participate, aren't you? Of course you will. All right, here's your chance.

Istio is such an open source project that accomplishes all of these things. On Monday, September 25, they had already held a user-tested "hackathon". I think we can get more details directly from those who are involved in this activity, so we will talk to Google software engineers Douglas Reid and Mandar Jog, who are committed to leading these developments.

Nick Chase: gentlemen, thank you very much for taking the time to talk to me today. For those of you who don't know what Istio is, please explain it.

Mandar Jog: Istio is a service grid that provides the cross-functionality required by all microservices. For example, you need traffic management. You need to find the services you need to touch, and someone has to decide which services you need to dock with.

And then it's observable, basically telemetry and indicators. So you need to find out how many times something has been called, again, can be traced back. The logs are all recorded in the same area.

Then there is mandatory policy, that is, access control, or the formulation of specific policies of any kind, such as under what conditions a particular service should communicate with another.

Finally, Istio authentication provides authentication, so you can implement service-to-service authentication and central authentication based on your overall identity and authentication story.

Douglas Reid: these are just functional things, but from a different perspective, I think Istio is the product of user experience in deploying, managing, and serving applications in distributed environments such as Lyft,IBM and Google. This is a bit like some of the best practices accumulated over the years on how to simply manage scale, especially distributed systems.

NC: so basically, what you have is this kind of micro service, and Istio is such a request choreographer?

MJ:Istio is between different services. It explains the requests we mentioned earlier.

NC: I hear a lot about Envoy and Istio at the same time. What's the difference between them?

DR:Envoy is a component of Istio. Envoy is the agent of the service. It is the data plane layer of Istio. Istio also has a control panel called Pilot.Pilot that controls the deployment of Envoy and then helps configure them, as well as Mixer to help make decisions. Envoy calls Mixer at request time. PPilot also controls the deployment of all other parts that Envoy uses to protect traffic.

NC: is Istio focused on its own area, or are you building relationships with other projects to create an ecology?

MJ: there is no doubt yet. For example, LinkerD can now also run with Istio. They can call Mixer, so basically LinkerD, in the simplest sense, can replace Envoy as the interpreter or proxy of the request, and then just as Envoy calls Mixer to make a decision, LinderD can also call Mixer to make a decision. Nginx is also running, or has been informed that they will communicate with Mixer, so you can use Ngix as your proxy instead of Envoy.

In fact, the protocol between Mixer and Envoy is well defined and published, which means that it is theoretically irreplaceable. So as Istio, we define the interface for configuration and how Envoy communicates with Mixer.

DR:Mixer uses Prometheus as its built-in metric reporting mechanism, and we also have plug-ins for StatsD, and I'm sure there will be plug-ins for other proprietary metrics and telemetry solutions. We are planning to implement a quota system. We have a quota system. I think now that it's built on Redis, we look forward to seeing more third-party development, just as we allow us to write an ecosystem of adapters to build more connections with other projects.

MJ: again, at a strategic level, Istio is working with several other partners. For example, the Open Policy Organization (OPA) is the first strategy adaptor we are working with, and you can implement your strategy in the new semi-standard language, which is consistent with the standards of community work.

DR: then there are other projects worth mentioning that Istio is working closely with SPIFFE to support SPIFFE as an authentication protocol for Istio.

Me: so Istio is kind of like an all-embracing umbrella.

MJ: from an operator's point of view, Istio is a configuration that operators can interact with. You can configure Istio to do some network work, and there are also some network features supported by Istio, such as routing rules, destination policies, and other things. Similarly, in terms of policy management and measurement, there are other functions that can be used as plug-ins. So as they evolve, Istio supports them. It's kind of like Istio's big umbrella.

Another problem is how to configure the agent. Pilot also exposes the configuration interface invoked by the special envoy, which is the third interface. Umbrellas define interfaces and protocols, and then we have an implementation of all these components in a working system.

NC: so what's wrong with this Istio user hackathon?

DR: so as we try to develop the next version of Istio, we are getting closer and closer to what we consider to be candidate versions of all components, and we are documenting and all the changes we have made in the past few months. This event is actually intended for early adopters to take a look at it and try to run the documentation to tell us what bug needs to be closed before we consider releasing it, to see where the feature gap is, so that we can start planning for future ISTIO work.

NC: what is the next version of Istio and when do you expect it to be released?

Our goal is to be ready by the end of September.

NC: do you need experience similar to kubernetes or any other specific prerequisites in order to participate in this event?

MJ: some kubernetes will help, but it's not required. We have setup instructions, and we'll show you how to set up a kubernetes cluster and get started so that it doesn't become a real obstacle.

NC: are there any specific hardware prerequisites?

DR: I think what we need to do is that Google will provide a series of experimental projects so that you can build clusters, so you don't need to provide any hardware. I think IBM will do the same on Bluemix, so there should be a considerable amount of infrastructure available for testing. So you need a laptop and the ability to run Git, or even just install the program. So I don't think there are any real hardware requirements that I know.

NC: once this version is released, what do you think is the production scale of Istio?

MJ:Istio 0.2 is a release, and we have enough functionality for people to really get something done, so I'm really looking forward to feedback. Production preparation, performance, and all of these are 0.3 goals.

Doctor: in some ways, it's like the difference between the Istio and the special envoy and the various components. Some of the components of Istio are already in use in a production environment, and we are well aware of their features. In the past few months, as we have learned something and others have undergone great rewriting, we are still beginning to feel what needs to be strengthened and what needs to be addressed. Therefore, depending on what you are trying to do with it, you may have a different view of production preparation. I think we are approaching the state of the beta, but we haven't reached it yet.

NC: so where do you think Istio is going?

DR: Silicon Valley's answer is that Istio will eventually help power all the services in the world, but I think we still have a long way to go. We have a lot to do before we get there. I mean, one of the features we've done in this cycle is to allow VM that doesn't belong to any Kubernetes cluster to join the grid. Therefore, we hope to continue to do so and expand to more environments, supporting multiple environments at the same time. It's kind of like a mixed scene. Therefore, these are some of our near-term goals.

Jordan: I think Doug covers the real long-term and short-term. There are several intermediate goals, but they are a bit of an important essence. What we really want to see is a strong vendor community that is built on top of Istio or on the side of Istio. Istio basically does something, and we want to see which part of the stack these things belong to, and then there are some areas and tasks on the Istio side, and we want to see something there, too.

Doctor: we really focus on getting more communities involved. We've been trying to get things out, but I think we need to start paying more attention to how we make the community possible, how we inspire the community, how we meet the needs of the community, and now we have a preliminary foothold in the world.

NC: so what kind of participation do you need most in the community?

DR: we can use development support, documentation support, design support, process support...

MJ: we also want to see people do situational tests to see if what we think is relevant is relevant to what people actually do. Then we want to see people actually try them and give us some feedback. We really want feedback, especially in terms of configuration, because this is the surface of the operator's contact and the way the operator interacts with the system, so the feedback is very valuable to us.

In addition, the mixer has an adapter

This is the end of the answer to the question about what is Istio. I hope the above content can be of some help to you. If you still have a lot of doubts to solve, you can follow the industry information channel for more related knowledge.

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