An Economical Service Mesh - Istio Ambient

All service mesh tools based on a sidecar architecture require additional CPU and memory. The more workloads and associated additional sidecars are operated, the higher these costs are. License costs, such as those with RedHat OpenShift, are also calculated based on the CPU required. Especially in the (public) cloud, this can lead to a not-insignificant cost factor. To counteract this cost problem, Istio has developed a new service mesh architecture: Istio Ambient. The sidecar is replaced by a shared agent and, if necessary, a waypoint proxy. Overall, fewer resources are required for this. Mixed operation of Istio Ambient and the conventional Istio (with sidecar) is also possible. This new architecture will be presented in detail during the session. The advantages and disadvantages of Istio Ambient, as well as the consequences of possible mixed operation, are examined in more detail.

DevOpsCon:
An Economical Service Mesh - Istio Ambient