#Service Mesh 2.x

Alauda Service Mesh is built on the Istio project and is installed using a new Istio Operator derived from the Sail Operator (hosted in the istio-ecosystem GitHub organization). The Operator provides an expanded set of custom resource definitions (CRDs) to manage Istio components.

Alauda Service Mesh introduces a transparent, infrastructure-level abstraction that integrates with existing applications without requiring modifications to application code. It facilitates communication between services and enhances the reliability, security, and observability of service interactions.

The service mesh supports core networking capabilities such as service discovery, load balancing, service-to-service authentication, failure recovery, metrics collection, and monitoring. It also enables advanced deployment strategies and operational features, including A/B testing, canary deployments, fine-grained access control, and end-to-end authentication.

In microservices architectures, applications are decomposed into independently deployable services. While this approach improves scalability and maintainability, it can introduce challenges related to service communication, observability, and control. Alauda Service Mesh addresses these challenges by intercepting traffic between services and enabling centralized management of communication policies and telemetry.