Service Mesh

Level 1: Quick Reference

What is a Service Mesh?

A service mesh is an infrastructure layer that provides transparent service-to-service communication with built-in observability, traffic management, and security features without requiring application code changes.

Core Components:

• Control Plane: Configuration and policy management (Istiod)
• Data Plane: Sidecar proxies handling traffic (Envoy)
• Service Identity: Certificate-based authentication (mTLS)

Key Benefits

1. Observability