What Istio Got Wrong: Learnings from the last seven years of service mesh
Building complex systems often requires simplicity in components—a lesson the Istio project has learned throughout its seven(plus)-year journey. Although Istio offers a lot of powerful features for application networking, crucial for many organizations, the path to maturity and broader adoption was fraught with challenges. In this talk, we explore the key mistakes made during Istio's development, including its initially complex architecture, an overload of features, premature release of version 1.0, difficulties faced by contributors, and delays in joining the CNCF. We will discuss the impact of these mistakes, how these missteps were addressed, and how they have positioned Istio as a leader in the service mesh market. This presentation will detail how Istio's evolution reflects a shift towards simpler, more modular components that together offer effective solutions for managing APIs and service-to-service communication regardless of platform.
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What Istio Got Wrong: Learnings from the last seven years of service mesh
- 1. 1 What Istio Got Wrong Learnings From the Last Seven Years of Service Mesh Christian Posta Louis Ryan
- 2. The Leaders in Cloud-Native Application Connectivity - CTO - Creator of Istio and GRPC - Istio TOC Member Louis Ryan - Sr. Architect - #1 CNCF Contributor - Istio TOC Member John Howard - Field CTO - Instio Steering Committee - Istio in Action - Istio Ambient Mesh Christian Posta - Director Open Source - Istio TOC Member - Istio Ambient Mesh Lin Sun - CEO - Founder of Solo Idit Levine - Chief Architect - Envoy Contributor - Leader, WASM Yuval Kohavi - Director Field Eng - Former Istio SC - Istio Contributor Ram Vennam - Field Engineer - Istio Contributor Nick Nellis Today’s Business Digital Business Cloud | Kubernetes | GenAI | Open Source Omni-Directional API and Service Connectivity
- 3. Agenda 01 02 03 04 05 Paradigm Shift The 1.0 Debacle Architecture Complexity Istio’s Future Community Missteps
- 4. Hype Cycle
- 5. Timeline
- 6. Cloud Native Projects Need a Clear Vision and Focus
- 7. Reasons Why Cloud Native Open Source Projects May Struggle? ● Too much vision, not enough focus ● Overwhelming users ● Quality issues & tech debt ● Lacking documentation ● Poor community engagement ● Funding & investment challenges ● Governance and decision making ● Lack of marketing & outreach ● Sustaining momentum with new features
- 10. It Didn’t Work!
- 12. Key Learnings ● Focus on one thing for 1.0; do it well ● Know your primary user ● Know your primary “buyer” ● Establish predictable release schedule ● Find ways to measure net-promoter
- 15. Microservices
- 17. Mixer
- 18. Sidecars
- 19. Key Learnings ● Complex architecture trickles down to all parts of the system ● People don’t “buy” microservices ● Don’t architect for “what might be” ● Don’t confuse yourself for the user ● Don’t say yes to every partner ● Don’t try to invent standards in your project
- 24. Key Learnings ● Complexity impacts productivity ● Chose familiar tooling ● Solicit user feedback ● Establish open governance ● Neutral ownership of the project trademark ● Establish clear project boundaries and focus ● Might need to say “no”
- 25. Key Takeaways ● Users buy into a vision ● Maintainers share in the pain ● Learn to say “no” ● Aim for simplicity ● Make clear who it’s for ● Embracing vendors requires open governance
- 26. Istio’s Future
- 29. Nvidia NIM at Scale Join us at 1:15p for AI Inference Model Scaling and Failover Demo!