Overview

Istio

Stacks2.3K

Followers1.5K

Votes54

GitHub Stars37.6K

Forks8.1K

AWS App Mesh

Stacks23

Followers205

Votes0

AWS App Mesh vs Istio: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this article, we will discuss the key differences between AWS App Mesh and Istio, two popular service mesh solutions for managing and securing microservices architectures.

Service Provider: AWS App Mesh is a fully managed service provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that allows users to easily monitor and control their microservices-based applications. On the other hand, Istio is an open-source service mesh platform developed in collaboration between Google, IBM, and Lyft.
Platform Compatibility: While AWS App Mesh is specifically designed to work with services hosted on AWS, Istio is platform-agnostic and can be used with any Kubernetes cluster, regardless of the underlying infrastructure.
Integration with AWS Services: AWS App Mesh seamlessly integrates with other AWS services, such as Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS), Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), and AWS Fargate. It provides native integration with AWS Cloud Map for service discovery. In contrast, Istio does not have built-in integrations with AWS services and requires additional configuration to work with AWS-specific resources.
Fine-Grained Control: AWS App Mesh offers fine-grained control over traffic routing and observability through its rich set of features, including weighted routing, circuit braking, retries, timeouts, and distributed tracing. Istio provides similar capabilities, but it also allows users to define more complex traffic management policies using its powerful routing and traffic shifting capabilities.
Ease of Use: AWS App Mesh is a fully managed service, which means users do not have to worry about the operational aspects of running a service mesh. It provides an easy-to-use console for configuration and monitoring. Istio, on the other hand, requires manual installation and configuration, making it more suitable for advanced users who require greater flexibility and control.
Community Support: As an open-source project, Istio benefits from a large and active community of contributors and users. This community-driven development model ensures a rapid pace of innovation, frequent updates, and a wealth of resources and support. AWS App Mesh, while not open-source, has the backing of AWS, a major player in the cloud computing industry, which guarantees support, updates, and integration with other AWS services.

In summary, AWS App Mesh and Istio have different strengths and target different use cases. AWS App Mesh is a fully managed service with seamless integration with AWS services, making it easier to use for users already on the AWS platform. Istio, being open-source and platform-agnostic, offers more flexibility and control but requires manual installation and configuration. The choice between the two depends on the specific requirements and preferences of the user or organization.

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Advice on Istio, AWS App Mesh

Prateek

Mar 14, 2020

Decided

Istio based on powerful Envoy whereas Kong based on Nginx. Istio is K8S native as well it's actively developed when k8s was successfully accepted with production-ready apps whereas Kong slowly migrated to start leveraging K8s. Istio has an inbuilt turn-keyIstio based on powerful Envoy whereas Kong based on Nginx. Istio is K8S native as well it's actively developed when k8s was successfully accepted with production-ready apps whereas Kong slowly migrated to start leveraging K8s. Istio has an inbuilt turn key solution with Rancher whereas Kong completely lacks here. Traffic distribution in Istio can be done via canary, a/b, shadowing, HTTP headers, ACL, whitelist whereas in Kong it's limited to canary, ACL, blue-green, proxy caching. Istio has amazing community support which is visible via Github stars or releases when comparing both.

322k views322k

Comments

Mohammed

CTO at Famcare

Jan 16, 2020

Needs advice

One of our applications is currently migrating to AWS, and we need to make a decision between using AWS API Gateway with AWS App Mesh, or Kong API Gateway with Kuma.

Some people advise us to benefit from AWS managed services, while others raise the vendor lock issue. So, I need your advice on that, and if there is any other important factor rather than vendor locking that I must take into consideration.

38.7k views38.7k

Comments

lyc218

Feb 21, 2020

Needs advice

Envoy proxy is widely adopted in many companies for service mesh proxy, but it utilizes BoringSSL by default. Red Hat OpenShift fork envoy branch with their own OpenSSL support, I wonder any other companies are also using envoy-openssl branch for compatibility? How about AWS App Mesh?

Any input would be much appreciated!

42.7k views42.7k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Istio	AWS App Mesh
Istio is an open platform for providing a uniform way to integrate microservices, manage traffic flow across microservices, enforce policies and aggregate telemetry data. Istio's control plane provides an abstraction layer over the underlying cluster management platform, such as Kubernetes, Mesos, etc.	AWS App Mesh is a service mesh based on the Envoy proxy that makes it easy to monitor and control containerized microservices. App Mesh standardizes how your microservices communicate, giving you end-to-end visibility and helping to ensure high-availability for your applications. App Mesh gives you consistent visibility and network traffic controls for every microservice in an application. You can use App Mesh with Amazon ECS (using the Amazon EC2 launch type), Amazon EKS, and Kubernetes on AWS.
Statistics
GitHub Stars 37.6K	GitHub Stars -
GitHub Forks 8.1K	GitHub Forks -
Stacks 2.3K	Stacks 23
Followers 1.5K	Followers 205
Votes 54	Votes 0
Pros & Cons
Pros 14 Zero code for logging and monitoring 9 Service Mesh 8 Great flexibility 5 Powerful authorization mechanisms 5 Ingress controller Cons 17 Performance	No community feedback yet
Integrations
Kubernetes Docker	Amazon EKS Amazon EC2 Kubernetes Envoy Amazon EC2 Container Service

What are some alternatives to Istio, AWS App Mesh?

Azure Service Fabric

Azure Service Fabric is a distributed systems platform that makes it easy to package, deploy, and manage scalable and reliable microservices. Service Fabric addresses the significant challenges in developing and managing cloud apps.

Moleculer

It is a fault tolerant framework. It has built-in load balancer, circuit breaker, retries, timeout and bulkhead features. It is open source and free of charge project.

Express Gateway

A cloud-native microservices gateway completely configurable and extensible through JavaScript/Node.js built for ALL platforms and languages. Enterprise features are FREE thanks to the power of 3K+ ExpressJS battle hardened modules.

ArangoDB Foxx

It is a JavaScript framework for writing data-centric HTTP microservices that run directly inside of ArangoDB.

Dapr

It is a portable, event-driven runtime that makes it easy for developers to build resilient, stateless and stateful microservices that run on the cloud and edge and embraces the diversity of languages and developer frameworks.

Zuul

It is the front door for all requests from devices and websites to the backend of the Netflix streaming application. As an edge service application, It is built to enable dynamic routing, monitoring, resiliency, and security. Routing is an integral part of a microservice architecture.

linkerd

linkerd is an out-of-process network stack for microservices. It functions as a transparent RPC proxy, handling everything needed to make inter-service RPC safe and sane--including load-balancing, service discovery, instrumentation, and routing.

Jersey

It is open source, production quality, framework for developing RESTful Web Services in Java that provides support for JAX-RS APIs and serves as a JAX-RS (JSR 311 & JSR 339) Reference Implementation. It provides it’s own API that extend the JAX-RS toolkit with additional features and utilities to further simplify RESTful service and client development.

Ocelot

It is aimed at people using .NET running a micro services / service oriented architecture that need a unified point of entry into their system. However it will work with anything that speaks HTTP and run on any platform that ASP.NET Core supports. It manipulates the HttpRequest object into a state specified by its configuration until it reaches a request builder middleware where it creates a HttpRequestMessage object which is used to make a request to a downstream service.

Micro

Micro is a framework for cloud native development. Micro addresses the key requirements for building cloud native services. It leverages the microservices architecture pattern and provides a set of services which act as the building blocks