Tetrate Extends Scope and Reach of Istio Service Mesh

Tetrate’s Brooklyn update to its distribution of the open source Istio service mesh automates deployment of security policies.

In addition, high availability has now been extended across clusters, regions and clouds running the Tetrate Service Bridge (TSB) with no manual intervention required.

Step 1 of 7

14%

Which of the following best describes how you currently monitor and manage systems across your hybrid cloud environment?(Required)

Multiple separate tools for different environments

Multiple separate tools for different monitoring and management functions

Single consolidated dashboard

Custom built monitoring and management solution

No full monitoring and management solution

Don’t know

How valuable would it be for your monitoring and management solution to incorporate predictive analytics to help you identify and address system issues that are critical and not waste time or effort working through all the data and “noise” that is not critical?(Required)

Extremely valuable

Moderately valuable

Somewhat valuable

Slightly valuable

Not valuable

How do you most typically address potential system issues BEFORE they impact your operations?(Required)

Automated workflows and playbooks to remediate potential issues as soon as they are detected

An orchestrated response process that leverages automation, AI, and human expertise to rapidly respond to potential issues

Advanced monitoring tools such as predictive analytics and anomaly detection to proactively identify and address potential issues

Respond to issues as they arise, using manual processes and troubleshooting techniques

A combination of automated remediation, orchestrated response, and/or proactive monitoring to address potential system issues

Don’t know

Other

What methods does your organization use to control and monitor cloud/IT spending?(Required)

Centralized procurement processes

Pre-approved budget thresholds

Automated cost monitoring tools

Department-level spending controls

Regular cost audits and reviews

Cloud cost optimization platform

Approval workflows for resource provisioning

Native financial operations tools provided by the cloud provider

No formal controls in place

Don’t know

Other

Please specify:

Which methods do you rely on most to detect security vulnerabilities in your systems?(Required)

Automated scanning tools

Manual assessments

Vendor notifications

Threat modeling (for early detection)

None of these

Don’t know

Other

Please specify:

What are the TWO most common ways you prioritize vulnerabilities to address within your environment?(Required)

Based on potential impact

Based on exploitability

Regulatory compliance requirements

Based on CVSS scores

Risk-based analysis of multiple factors

First-in-first-out approach

No formal prioritization process

Don’t know

How do you typically handle system updates and security patches?(Required)

Automated updates and patches

Manually review and apply updates and patches on a regular schedule

A combination of automation and manual review

Apply updates and patches on an as-needed basis.

Outsourced update and patch management

No defined process

Don’t know

Other

Δ

Finally, the company is making available a set of best practices for deploying TSB and has hardened the platform for use in production environments.

Tetrate CEO Varun Talwar says that while TSB provides IT teams with a service mesh that can be deployed on Kubernetes clusters, the company has gone a step further by integrating legacy platforms with its service mesh. As IT environments become more complex in the cloud-native era, Talwar says it’s apparent there is a need for a service mesh that spans multiple platforms.

That approach will enable IT teams to programmatically manage security and networking at a high level of abstraction, he says. The goal is to provide these capabilities in a way that makes it simpler for developers to self-service their requirements in a way that can still be centrally managed, notes Talwar.

Most organizations initially adopt a service mesh to manage application programming interfaces (APIs) across a cluster. As organizations deploy fleets of Kubernetes clusters, the need to centrally manage APIs becomes more acute in a cloud-native application environment. Organizations are increasingly adopting Istio as the control plane, Envoy as the data plane, the Kubernetes Gateway API for ingress and BoringCrypto for FIPS 140-2 approved cryptographic algorithms to achieve that goal, says Talwar.

However, organizations also have legacy monolithic applications that will not be replaced any time soon; the need to manage services at a higher level creates a need to extend Istio, he notes. The extensions make it possible, for example, to enforce security policies in alignment with corporate policies while also allowing for exceptions involving unique application use cases, says Talwar.

It’s still early days as far as adoption of service mesh platforms in production environments is concerned, but the way networking and security services are managed is on the cusp of major change. Instead of waiting for networking and security operations teams to provision services, each development team will be able to self-service their own requirements within a set of guidelines defined by a central IT management team. That approach will also make it much simpler to integrate the provisioning of those services within DevOps workflows to accelerate application deployment.

There is, of course, no shortage of options when it comes to service mesh platforms, and it will undoubtedly take time for the culture within IT organizations to evolve as more instances of service mesh platforms are deployed. In the meantime, IT teams would be well advised to, at the very least, start aggressively experimenting with service meshes—if for no other reason than to provide a layer of abstraction for managing everything from APIs to underlying networking services and eliminate a lot of the low-level tasks that get in the way of building and deploying software.