Definition
Istio is an open-source service mesh that provides a way to manage, secure, and observe microservices. It acts as an infrastructure layer, handling communication between services without requiring changes to the application code itself. Istio intercepts network traffic, allowing for sophisticated traffic management, policy enforcement, and telemetry collection. This enables developers and operations teams to gain deep insights into service behavior and performance. For instance, Istio can automatically route traffic to new versions of a service gradually, minimizing the risk of deployment failures. Unlike a simple API gateway that manages external traffic, Istio focuses on inter-service communication within a distributed system. You will encounter Istio concepts in cloud-native security and architecture discussions, particularly relevant for AWS certifications like the Solutions Architect Associate.