Tech Glossary
What is Istio?
Istio is an open source project that makes it possible to create microservices-based applications that are easy to scale and manage. The project is a collaboration between Google, IBM and Lyft. Istio uses a sidecar container that is installed next to each microservice instance to manage traffic, security and communication. Istio has several uses, including: - Traffic management: Istio can be used to control traffic between microservices, for example to balance the load or to enable A/B tests. - Security: Istio can be used to manage security at the microservices level, for example by configuring access control or encryption. - Observability: Istio can be used to collect and analyze data from microservices, for example to find faulty code or to do performance analyses. Istio is one of the first tools to offer these features in an integrated way. However, there are similar tools, such as Linkerd and Envoy, that also offer microservices support.