The future: Ambient mesh

Today, Service meshes, such as Istio, depend on sidecar proxies connected to every service instance to handle traffic, security measures, and metric collection. Although this approach works well, it leads to extra resource usage and complexity, particularly in deployments in larger clusters.

In this chapter, we mentioned sidecars a lot – they’re the heart of the mesh, providing the layer that removes all of the complexities of using mesh features without requiring code changes to our applications.

Ambient mesh marks a significant change in the Service mesh design, attempting to make it easier to add Service mesh features to an already complicated system without the need for sidecar proxies for every service. Its goal is to cut down on the extra work and complexity while keeping the main advantages of a Service mesh, including monitoring, security, and traffic management.

As of Istio 1.20, the ambient mesh has the Alpha status. The...