Session: Istio Ambient Service Mesh Made Easy
Istio ambient mesh introduces a new sidecar-less data plane mode designed for simplified operations, broader application compatibility, and reduced infrastructure cost. Lin has worked closely with the Istio maintainers on defining and evolving Istio ambient mesh and its APIs from the beginning. Since the initial launch of ambient mesh in 2022, there have been significant simplifications to the ambient design: introducing a custom, lightweight, highly scalable Rust-based ztunnel in favor of the original Envoy-based one; much simplified xDS configuration from Istio control plane to ztunnel; eliminating the consumer-side waypoint proxy; removing the need for Sidecar resource for sidecar-less; explicitly binding authorization policies to waypoint proxies; and many more!
We will discuss the new exciting updates through live demos and explain why the changes were made during an architectural deep dive. As ambient mesh will be released as an alpha feature in Istio 1.18, you’ll walk away knowing how to try Istio ambient mesh on your own and experience the simplification and benefits from the new architecture!
