Istio Knowledge Path

Istio – Introduction

• Prerequisites: none
• Description: The individual learns what is Istio service mesh, what advantages and downsides does it bring. Skill also includes basic knowledge of features available in the Istio.
• Principal: -
• Curriculum:
  • Check out the official site
• Test: -

Istio – Preparing Application and Running Istio

• Prerequisites: none
• Description: The individual learns how to install Istio to Kubernetes or GKE, how to decide whether to use GKE managed Istio or manage Istio by themselves. Skill also includes knowledge needed for keeping Istio running (updates, …).
• Principal: -
• Curriculum:
  • Requirements
  • Installation
  • Managed Istio on GKE
• Test: -

Istio – Basics

• Prerequisites: none
• Description: The individual knows function of single Istio components such as Pilot, Mixer, Proxy, etc. They should also know basic objects needed for configuration.
• Principal: -
• Curriculum:
  • Go through bookinfo example and read documentation of used objects
• Test: -

Istio – Consuming External Services

• Prerequisites: none
• Description: The skill includes knowledge needed to configure application to consume external services. This can _ be configured multiple ways – bypassing proxy for all outgoing traffic (during installation), allowing all outgoing traffic but proxying through proxy or allow just needed traffic using VirtualService and ServiceEntry. _ The individual knows which one is the best.
• Principal: -
• Curriculum:
  • Egress control
• Test: -

Istio – Telemetry

• Prerequisites: none
• Description: The skill includes deep knowledge of telemetry features in the Istio – Metrics, Logging, Tracing. The individual knows how to setup collection of the telemetry data and how to leverage them for use.
• Principal: -
• Curriculum:
  • Collecting metrics
  • Collecting logs
  • Collecting distributed traces
  • Visualizing data in Grafana and Kiali
  • Exporting telemetry data to Stackdriver
• Test: -

Istio – Traffic Management

• Prerequisites: none
• Description: The individual knows mechanisms that allow management of traffic – splitting traffic to multiple services, mirroring of traffic, setting timeouts, applying circuit breakers or routing based on the http headers.
• Principal: -
• Curriculum:
  • Traffic management
• Test: -

Istio – Security

• Prerequisites: none
• Description: The skill includes knowledge of Istio Security features such as mutual TLS, authorization policies or even more hardened Istio setup with SDS enabled.
• Principal: -
• Curriculum:
  • Authentication and Mutual TLS tutorial
  • Hardened SDS setup
• Test: -

Istio – Performance and Scaling

• Prerequisites: none
• Description: The individual knows what are the limits of Istio from performance and scalability perspective. The skills include knowledge of potential bottlenecks and how to get rid of them. They also include deeper knowledge of Istio components and how they are affected in the different situations (for example, during the performance peaks or application’s rolling update).
• Principal: -
• Curriculum:
  • Istio Performance
  • Namespace isolation using Sidecar resource
  • 🔧 And more
• Test: -