Service Mesh

A service mesh is a layer of infrastructure that sits between the applications in a microservices architecture and the underlying network and handles communication between the different microservices. It is an example of how we use another layer of new technology to solve certain complexities while introducing more system complexities. An example of industry leading service mesh technology is Istio. Istio is an open-source service mesh platform that provides a way to manage the microservices that make up an entire modern application. When used in combination with OpenShift, Istio offers a powerful solution for deploying and managing microservice-based applications. One of the key benefits of using Istio on OpenShift is that it provides a uniform way to manage the communication between microservices. This means that instead of having to deal with the complexity of individual service-to-service communication, developers can use Istio to define a set of rules and policies that govern how services interact with each other. An example of protocol used for this communication is gRPC using Protocol Buffers. The most recent production ready RPC is called tRPC. This simplifies the development process and makes it easier to deploy and manage microservice-based applications on OpenShift. Another advantage of using Istio on OpenShift is that it provides a range of security features that help to protect your microservices from potential threats. This includes features such as authentication, authorization, and encryption, which can help to prevent unauthorized access to your services and protect sensitive data. In addition to its management and security capabilities, Istio also offers powerful observability features that make it easier to monitor and troubleshoot your microservice-based applications. This includes features such as distributed tracing and service-level metrics, which can help you to identify and diagnose problems with your applications. Overall, Istio is a valuable tool for anyone working with microservices on OpenShift. It provides a simple and effective way to connect, manage, and secure the services that make up your applications, and offers a range of powerful features that make it easy to deploy and operate microservice-based applications on Kubernetes. Similarly, service mesh technology for Azure Kubernetes Service is called Open Service Mesh (OSM). Red Hat OpenShift's service mesh technology is called OpenShift Service Mesh. Read into each companys' official documentation for more details on the what, why and hows of service meshes.