Introduction to Istio Service Mesh
- 24 hours
- intermediate
About
This course is designed to introduce students to Istio, an open-source service mesh that provides a way to control how microservices share data with one another. Over the duration of this course, students will learn the fundamentals of Istio, its architecture, and how to implement it within a Kubernetes environment.
This course begins with an overview of service meshes in general and Istio in particular. You will learn what problems service meshes solve, and explain Istio’s architecture, how Istio functions, and how the environment around a deployed application is configured to allow the application to join the mesh. Through the course’s lessons and labs, you will experience and learn how Istio facilitates system observability by collecting and publishing metrics and allows you to control how traffic is routed to your application.
Learn how Istio supports canary deployments and other scenarios and makes your distributed applications more resilient through retries, timeouts, and circuit breakers. The final chapter covers more advanced topics, including onboarding workloads running on VMs (outside of Kubernetes) and how Istio provides for extensibility through WebAssembly plugins.
Target audiences
- Developers looking to implement microservices architecture.
- Network administrators for cloud-native infrastructures.
- DevOps teams keen on managing and troubleshooting microservices.
- IT professionals aiming to upskill in cloud technologie
Prerequisite
- Understanding of cloud computing and Kubernetes: Familiarity with cloud services and Kubernetes orchestration is essential.
- Knowledge of DevOps concepts: Concepts such as continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) should be well understood.
- Familiarity with developing and deploying microservices: Experience with microservices architecture and deployment is important.
- Basic programming skills: Preferably in languages like Go or Java, which are commonly used in cloud-native environments.
Hands-on experience with Docker: Proficiency in containerization and container orchestration technologies is required.
Earn a career certificate
- Understanding of cloud computing and Kubernetes: Familiarity with cloud services and Kubernetes orchestration is essential.
- Knowledge of DevOps concepts: Concepts such as continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) should be well understood.
- Familiarity with developing and deploying microservices: Experience with microservices architecture and deployment is important.
- Basic programming skills: Preferably in languages like Go or Java, which are commonly used in cloud-native environments.
Hands-on experience with Docker: Proficiency in containerization and container orchestration technologies is required.
Modules
Introduction to service meshes
The role of Istio in modern infrastructure
Overview of microservices and distributed systems
Istio’s control plane and data plane
Core components: Envoy, Pilot, Citadel, and Galley
Understanding Istio’s CRDs (Custom Resource Definitions)
Pre-requisites for Istio installation
Step-by-step installation process
Verifying the installation
Configuring ingress and egress gateways
Service discovery and load balancing
Advanced routing with request retries and failovers
Mutual TLS (mTLS) and identity verification
Authorization and access control policies
Securing service-to-service communication
Integrating Istio with monitoring tools
Accessing logs and metrics
Using Kiali for service mesh visualization
Deploying a sample application on Istio
Implementing traffic management and security policies
Monitoring and troubleshooting the application
Understanding Istio’s role in continuous deployment strategies
Canary releases and A/B testing
Best practices for operating Istio in production
How Istio contributes to Kubernetes security
Relevant topics covered in the CKS exam
Study tips and resources