Anthos and Istio , are they right for you ?

Anthos, Google Cloud’s service mesh platform, has transformed how organizations manage, deploy, and secure their applications. For those that have used istio , especially with anthos will know there is a lack of documentation especially around upgrading ( migration notes ) , best practices but also help to debug areas . These collection of blog posts will run through some of my best practices , blockers i have hit and simple use of anthos service mesh to introduce Mtls across your services in your cluster .

What is Istio and why use it ?

Managing the complexities of microservices communication, security, and observability can be a daunting task for platform engineers. Enter Istio, the open-source service mesh platform that promises to revolutionize the way platform engineers approach microservices management.

Do use istio if :

1. Complex Microservices Architecture: When dealing with a large and complex microservices architecture with numerous services communicating with each other, managing traffic, security, and observability can become challenging. Istio’s service mesh capabilities provide a centralized and standardized way to handle these complexities, making it a valuable tool for platform engineers.
2. Advanced Traffic Management: If the application requires sophisticated traffic management strategies, such as A/B testing, canary deployments, or blue-green deployments, Istio’s robust traffic routing and load balancing features offer a seamless way to implement these strategies without disrupting service availability.
3. Enhanced Security and Compliance: Istio provides a strong security framework with mutual TLS encryption, fine-grained access control, and policy enforcement. For applications that handle sensitive data or require strict compliance with security regulations.
4. Centralized Observability: In large-scale microservices environments, monitoring and debugging can be challenging. Istio’s observability features, including distributed tracing, service metrics, and logging, provide a comprehensive view of service interactions and performance. This makes it easier for platform engineers to identify bottlenecks and troubleshoot issues effectively. I recommend installing kiali for istio debugging.
5. Resilience and Fault Tolerance: In high-availability systems, mitigating the risk of cascading failures is crucial. Istio’s circuit breakers and fault injection mechanisms allow platform engineers to build more resilient systems, ensuring that failures in one service do not lead to the collapse of the entire application.
6. Future Scalability and Extensibility: Introducing Istio into the microservices architecture from the beginning allows platform engineers to build a solid foundation for future scalability. As the application grows, Istio provides the flexibility to adapt to evolving requirements, making it easier to introduce new features and capabilities without major code changes. I have seen developers store endpoints in gsm secrets which has ended in a disaster.

Do NOT use istio if :

1. Small-scale Applications: If you are working on a small-scale application with only a handful of microservices and relatively simple communication patterns, introducing Istio might add unnecessary complexity. In such cases, relying on native Kubernetes features for basic service discovery and load balancing might be sufficient.
2. Overhead and Performance: Istio adds a certain amount of overhead to the service-to-service communication path due to its proxies, sidecars, and additional network hops. For highly performance-critical applications or low-latency requirements, the added overhead might not be justified. Careful performance testing and evaluation are necessary before deciding to use Istio in these cases.
3. Time Constraints and Learning Curve: Introducing Istio to an existing microservices architecture might require substantial effort and time for configuration, testing, and troubleshooting. If your team is on a tight schedule or lacks the time and resources to learn and implement Istio properly, it might be better to postpone its adoption for a later stage. Istio is a simple concept but a beast when it comes to configuration , especially when you don’t want the off-the-shelve configuration.
4. Incompatible with Certain Applications: Some legacy applications or certain frameworks might not be fully compatible with Istio’s sidecar injection or other features. In such cases, retrofitting those applications to work seamlessly with Istio might be impractical or require significant code changes.

What is anthos and why does it help :

Now anthos has alot of features other than its integration with istio but we will only focus in these blogs with istio related features and how it can be used with microservice architecture . . Istio can be easily deployed and managed within Anthos environments, enhancing the service mesh capabilities and security features of the entire platform.

1. Anthos provides a tool called asmcli which can be use to install , upgrade and manage your istio control plane
2. You can monitor SLO and SLAs of each of your applications in your mesh and set alert policies for any of these services that arent meeting your objectives ( google provides some nice dashboards and an overview of these in the anthos service mesh panel )
3. Anthos can work with multicloud / hybrid configuration , i have seen this done to balance traffic across aws and gcp but something im not familiar with on setup at this point .
4. Managed control plane , now this is a God-send , anthos will abstract some of the other pieces os istio like citadel , pilot etc but more importantly managed upgrade of proxies , gateway etc when you use anthos with fleet API : https://cloud.google.com/service-mesh/docs/managed/provision-managed-anthos-service-mesh .
   I have used anthos 1.06 and upgrade consectivtily up to 1.11 and trust me it is such a pain to upgrade with the docs , tools and the abstraction of gateways and control plans in 1.11 , this managed upgrades will save your platform team alot of time .

Conclusion ….. is it for you ?

Anthos and Istio offer a powerful combination for modernizing microservices applications and managing them effectively in hybrid and multi-cloud environments. The seamless integration between the two platforms empowers platform engineers to build resilient, scalable, and secure applications. However, the complexity, resource consumption, cost, and compatibility considerations should be carefully evaluated before adopting Anthos and Istio in any organization’s technology stack. Although istio does come with its learning curve , hopefully this block will ease some of these concerns