Exploring Envoy, the Istio data plane

Envoy is the key component of the Istio data plane. To understand the Istio data plane, it is important to understand and know about Envoy.

Envoy is an open source project and CNCF graduate. You can find more details about Envoy as a CNCF project at https://www.cncf.io/projects/Envoy/. In this section, we will learn about Envoy and why it was selected as the service proxy for the Istio data plane.

What is Envoy?

Envoy is a lightweight, highly performant Layer 7 and Layer 4 proxy with an easy-to-use configuration system, making it highly configurable and suitable for serving as a standalone edge-proxy in the API gateway architecture pattern, as well as running as a sidecar in the Service Mesh architecture pattern. In both architecture patterns, Envoy runs in its own single process alongside the applications/services, which makes it easier to upgrade and manage and also allows Envoy to be deployed and upgraded transparently across the entire...