Understanding the Control Plane and Data Plane
The Service mesh framework enhances how microservices communicate, making these interactions more secure, faster, and more reliable. It is separated into two main components: the control plane and the data plane, each playing a specific role in providing service-to-service communication in Kubernetes. These two layers are what make up the Service mesh as a whole and a basic understanding of each is key to understanding Istio.
The Control Plane
Let’s start with the Istio control plane.
The control plane in Istio is the central authority that controls and directs how services in the mesh communicate with each other. A common analogy is to think of a city’s traffic control, managing roads and traffic signals to ensure safe and efficient traffic flow and order. It plays an important role in the orchestration of service-to-service communication, security, and observability across the entire mesh. We will discuss...