Istio Reviews

Name: Istio
Brand: Isito
Rating: 4.2 (10 reviews)

Vendor: Isito

4.2 out of 5

10 reviews
100% willing to recommend

What is Istio?

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Intelligently control the flow of traffic and API calls between services, conduct a range of tests, and upgrade gradually with red/black deployments.

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Istio is the #1 ranked solution in top Service Mesh solutions. PeerSpot users give Istio an average rating of 8.4 out of 10. Istio is most commonly compared to VMware Tanzu Platform: Istio vs VMware Tanzu Platform. Istio is popular among the large enterprise segment, accounting for 72% of users researching this solution on PeerSpot. The top industry researching this solution are professionals from a computer software company, accounting for 21% of all views.

Helped 831,158 peers since 2012

Featured reviews

JETTI DINESH REDDY

Infra , DevSecOps & Automation Architect at Zuellig Pharma

When our developers are building the microservices, instead of imposing additional burdens or additional thinking on them, especially as part of network features such as traffic management, security, or observability, we deploy something from the infrastructure side, so developers need only focus…

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Redentor Del Rosario

Sr. Solution Architect at Civatech Solutions

We can implement load balancing to distribute traffic across multiple service instances. Istio also offers traffic routing capabilities and circuit-breaking functionality. For security, it handles authentication using mutual TLS (mTLS) between services. It can authorize services using JWT tokens. Istio also allows defining policies for rate limiting to control traffic within services. I use network collection to see error rates and resource utilization. Prometheus is a popular monitoring system I use for queries. I also use distributed tracing. For logging, I centralize and capture logs from all services. I've used Splunk for log analysis and querying. With Splunk, I can create command-line queries to search and index large amounts of data in enterprise environments. This allows me to monitor user behavior, like detecting unusual data transfers (e.g., downloads or uploads over 20-25 MB) that could indicate potential security issues. I can create automated queries to capture and analyze user activities across different locations and systems. This helps identify any concerning or "underground" behavior that could harm the company. The observability features let me automate the monitoring of the entire system and get insights into service and user activities. Integration is generally possible with different systems, but understanding the specific components is needed. For example, integrating Splunk with AWS may require agents, plugins, or APIs. You have to research and understand these requirements. I had a project using Okta for identity and access management with a SaaS application. We faced challenges connecting it to the browser using SAML protocol. We didn't initially realize we needed PKI. This shows how you need to understand all the "ingredients" or components required for integration.

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PatrickHaggerty

Director of Google Cloud Learning at ROI Training

Istio is in the middle of a big evolution. We're about to go to a proxyless version of Istio. So Istio is about to drastically change the way it works. They've been talking about it for the last year or two, but they're just about to roll out their big shift, and they're going to move away from the Envoy proxy, which has been the cornerstone of Istio since its inception. So it'll be interesting to see how that works and the pros and cons that come with that. There's a certain amount of overhead that comes with Istio. So, if you're in really, really high-volume workloads, you might be concerned with the overhead that this middle layer adds. Because, Istio is essentially operating as a middle layer, and every communication goes from the origin to Istio to the destination, and maybe Istio on that end and then to the real destination. So you have a certain amount of overhead that Istio adds. I've seen applications where they had such strict time constraints, they couldn't use Istio because it was too much overhead. Now, again, the normal amount of overhead we're talking about here is fractions of a second. So it's not like it's a tremendous amount of overhead. But if you're doing it enough, that can add up. I think the biggest challenges with Istio are probably just learning how to use it properly. There's a lot of adjustments, a lot of knobs to tune. So you have to know how to configure it properly. And then, you also have to understand that it's giving you a lot of good benefits. But in addition to some configuration overhead, there's also going to be some performance overhead that Istio adds in, just not a lot. And it'll be interesting to see with the shift towards a proxyless version of Istio. I've seen a lot of changes recently in the way Kubernetes communicates internally. So as Kubernetes shifts towards a new data plane communication and as Istio shifts to keep up with that, it'll be interesting to see if Istio gets more performant or is it more important or less important as Kubernetes continues to evolve?

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Istio mindshare

As of January 2025, the mindshare of Istio in the Service Mesh category stands at 23.0%, up from 21.9% compared to the previous year, according to calculations based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Service Mesh

PeerAnalyst reports

Type	Title	Date
Category	Service Mesh	Jan 20, 2025	Download
Product	Reviews, tips, and advice from real users	Jan 20, 2025	Download
Comparison	Istio vs HAProxy	Jan 20, 2025	Download
Comparison	Istio vs VMware Tanzu Platform	Jan 20, 2025	Download

Title	Rating	Mindshare	Recommending
VMware Tanzu Platform	4.0	N/A	100%	20 interviews Add to research
HAProxy	4.1	14.2%	91%	42 interviews Add to research

Valuable Features

Valuable features of Istio include load balancing, traffic management, and monitoring, along with Sidecar injection for security. Mutual TLS provides secure inter-service communication, while built-in telemetry and tracing aid observability. Istio facilitates network troubleshooting and saves time via advanced traffic routing capabilities like canary testing. It enhances security and helps manage access policies using JWT tokens. Integrations with tools like Splunk and Okta support extensive logging and identity management.

"Istio provides tremendous value, particularly in offering TLS and authentication over microservice-to-microservice communication."
"The security feature with mutual TLS authentication, which is identity-based, and the traffic management using cloud load balancers are very valuable."
"Istio makes all that much easier - traffic splits, percentage traffic splits, doing some sort of chaos testing to see how it works."

Room for Improvement

Istio faces challenges with complex setup and insufficient documentation. Users find its security features restrictive and setup time-consuming, with high debugging needs. Its performance is hindered by overhead, affecting scalability in high-volume environments. Incompatibility with certain Kubernetes versions causes issues. Few community forums limit support, and the evolving architecture adds complexity. The learning curve is steep for those unfamiliar with Kubernetes or infrastructure management, requiring greater user-friendliness and improved technical support.

"Handling large-scale environments with proxies can strain resources, but horizontal scaling can improve fault tolerance."
"Reducing the latency between the control plane and the data plane would be beneficial."
"I've seen applications where they had such strict time constraints, they couldn't use Istio because it was too much overhead."

ROI

Istio significantly enhanced organizational efficiency by streamlining Kubernetes deployments and managing microservices. Users reported reduced latency and improved security. Time to market decreased as Istio provided comprehensive traffic management and observability. Running costs were cut due to optimized service mesh configurations.

Pricing

Istio users appreciate its cost-effectiveness, as it is open-source and can be deployed without initial fees, avoiding hidden costs. While there are no charges for Istio itself, usage entails infrastructure-related expenses for CPU and memory. Additional costs arise when integrating with observability tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, and Elasticsearch. Users find financial benefits through its open-source nature but must account for operational expenses related to deployment and management.

"We use the tool's open-source version, so there are no hidden fees or additional costs associated with it."
"You can deploy Istio free of cost and don't need to pay for it."
"It is on the less expensive side. It provides a significant saving for us in terms of cost and other things. It is open-source. We just download it from the open-source framework and use it."

Popular Use Cases

Users primarily implement Istio as a service mesh for microservices, enhancing security, routing, and traffic management in Kubernetes environments. They utilize it for service-to-service communication, load balancing, mutual TLS, and management of large-scale or multi-cluster environments. Istio helps streamline telemetry, outlier detection, and failover, and supports developers by managing network tasks like traffic splitting and fault injection, allowing focus on business logic without embedding complex code.

Service and Support

Istio's customer service and support vary. Many rely on self-help and public resources rather than external tech support. Technical support is mixed, with some citing inadequate assistance and others not reaching out due to using the open-source version. Engineers and support staff have received praise for their expertise and contributions to resolving issues. Some users have noted excellent documentation online, assisting in solving problems without direct support interactions.

Deployment

Istio's initial setup varies in complexity. Some found it straightforward with tools like istioctl and Helm, especially with prior Kubernetes knowledge. Others noted the need for extensive configuration and management, particularly for larger use cases. The learning curve can be steep, requiring familiarity with command-line interfaces. While its flexible nature adds overhead, good documentation aids in the process. Successful setup often involves experienced teams and clear configuration management practices.

Scalability

Istio scales well with Kubernetes and handles significant internal traffic effectively. It automates workload registration, reducing manual intervention, and supports various scaling methods. Challenges like performance issues may arise but can be managed by Google's Cloud integration. Users rate Istio's scalability highly, with ratings often at eight or ten out of ten. It requires resource consideration due to the control and data plane scaling. Deploying proxies is crucial for managing large environments.

Stability

Istio is considered quite stable by many users. They find it functions well under moderate traffic and rate its stability highly. Issues arise mainly with misconfigurations and larger implementations. Bugs may occur, as expected with any software, but access to Istio engineers aids in quick resolutions. Stability depends on proper deployment, architecture, and resource management, ensuring it performs effectively in production environments. Stability ratings typically range from seven to ten out of ten.

These insights are based on the in-depth reviews provided by peers to help you make a better buying decision.

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