What's new in Istio 1.8

What's new in Istio 1.8

 Istio, an open-source service mesh platform, is used by many developers and operators to manage microservices in their cloud environments. The platform has been evolving rapidly with each new version, and the latest release, Istio 1.8, brings many new features, improvements, and bug fixes.

 In this article, we'll dive into some of the most notable changes that come with Istio 1.8 and explain the key differences between Istio 1.7 and 1.8.

Istio 1.8 vs. 1.7: What's the difference?

Security

Istio 1.8 brings some significant security improvements, including:

• Mutual TLS for all control plane communication: With Istio 1.8, all control plane communication is now encrypted using mutual TLS. This provides an extra layer of security and helps to prevent unauthorized access to your cluster.
• Improved certificate management: Istio 1.8 includes improvements to certificate management, making it easier to deploy and manage your certificates across your environment.
• Role-based access control (RBAC) for Istiod: Istio 1.8 introduces RBAC for Istiod, which allows you to control who has access to the Istiod API.

Traffic management

Istio 1.8 also brings some new features and improvements to traffic management, including:

• A/B testing improvements: Istio 1.8 includes improvements to A/B testing, making it easier to create and manage your traffic splitting configurations.
• Traffic policies for EnvoyFilter: Istio 1.8 introduces traffic policies for EnvoyFilter, which allows you to configure traffic behavior for specific routes or services.

Observability

 Observability is critical for understanding the behavior of your microservices, and Istio 1.8 brings several new features to improve it, including:

• Improved telemetry aggregation: Istio 1.8 includes improvements to telemetry aggregation, making it easier to collect, store, and analyze metrics and logs.
• Kiali dashboard improvements: Kiali is an open-source project that provides a web-based interface for visualizing the topology of your Istio service mesh. Istio 1.8 includes several improvements to the Kiali dashboard, including a new "distributed tracing" view that shows you the flow of requests between your services.

Other changes

In addition to the changes mentioned above, Istio 1.8 includes several other improvements and bug fixes, including:

• Support for Kubernetes 1.20: Istio 1.8 is now compatible with Kubernetes 1.20, the latest version of the popular container orchestration platform.
• Improved Istio operator: The Istio operator, which is used to manage your Istio installation, has been improved in Istio 1.8. The new version includes better error handling and reporting, as well as improved support for multicluster environments.

Conclusion

 Istio 1.8 brings many new features, improvements, and bug fixes that make it easier to manage microservices in your cloud environment. With enhanced security, improved traffic management, and better observability, Istio 1.8 is a significant upgrade from the previous version.

 If you're currently using Istio 1.7, you may want to consider upgrading to Istio 1.8 to take advantage of these new features and improvements. However, it's important to keep in mind that the upgrade process can be complex, so make sure to carefully review the upgrade documentation before proceeding.