Managing Microservices with a Service Mesh

In an era when every business is a software business, or needs to become one, using microservices is one of the keys to building a distributed application that can be scaled to meet changes in demand, modified to better engage customers, or extended to pursue new market opportunities.

A microservices architecture breaks up the functions of an application into a set of small, discrete, decentralized, goal-oriented processes, each of which can be independently developed, tested, deployed, replaced, and scaled. Each instance of a microservice typically resides its own container.

A service mesh manages the interactions of microservices at the application layer above virtual IP addresses and ports. A service mesh delivers service discovery, forwarding, monitoring, and service-to-service authentication.

Istio is an example of a service mesh. Istio intercepts network communications among the microservices that make up a containerized application deployed on Kubernetes to manage and help secure the microservices as they interact. Istio lets you oversee the interactions of microservices at a microscopic level.

Find out more by reading the following two-page paper on managing microservices at the application layer with Istio: