Service Mesh

    AuthenticationPolicy defines authentication policy. It can be set for different scopes (mesh, service …), and the most narrow scope with non-INHERIT value will be used. Mesh policy cannot be INHERIT.

    Certificate

    Certificate configures the provision of a certificate and its key. Example 1: key and cert stored in a secret { secretName: galley-cert secretNamespace: istio-system dnsNames: - galley.istio-system.svc - galley.mydomain.com } Example 2: key and cert stored in a directory { dnsNames: - pilot.istio-system - pilot.istio-system.svc - pilot.mydomain.com }

    FieldTypeDescriptionRequired
    secretNamestring

    Name of the secret the certificate and its key will be stored into. If it is empty, it will not be stored into a secret. Instead, the certificate and its key will be stored into a hard-coded directory.

    No
    dnsNamesstring[]

    The DNS names for the certificate. A certificate may contain multiple DNS names.

    No

    ConfigSource

    ConfigSource describes information about a configuration store inside a mesh. A single control plane instance can interact with one or more data sources.

    FieldTypeDescriptionRequired
    addressstring

    Address of the server implementing the Istio Mesh Configuration protocol (MCP). Can be IP address or a fully qualified DNS name. Use fs:/// to specify a file-based backend with absolute path to the directory.

    No
    tlsSettingsTLSSettings

    Use the tlssettings to specify the tls mode to use. If the MCP server uses Istio mutual TLS and shares the root CA with Pilot, specify the TLS mode as ISTIOMUTUAL.

    No
    subscribedResources

    Describes the source of configuration, if nothing is specified default is MCP

    No

    LocalityLoadBalancerSetting

    Locality-weighted load balancing allows administrators to control the distribution of traffic to endpoints based on the localities of where the traffic originates and where it will terminate. These localities are specified using arbitrary labels that designate a hierarchy of localities in {region}/{zone}/{sub-zone} form. For additional detail refer to The following example shows how to setup locality weights mesh-wide.

    Given a mesh with workloads and their service deployed to “us-west/zone1/” and “us-west/zone2/”. This example specifies that when traffic accessing a service originates from workloads in “us-west/zone1/”, 80% of the traffic will be sent to endpoints in “us-west/zone1/”, i.e the same zone, and the remaining 20% will go to endpoints in “us-west/zone2/”. This setup is intended to favor routing traffic to endpoints in the same locality. A similar setting is specified for traffic originating in “us-west/zone2/”.

    If the goal of the operator is not to distribute load across zones and regions but rather to restrict the regionality of failover to meet other operational requirements an operator can set a ‘failover’ policy instead of a ‘distribute’ policy.

    The following example sets up a locality failover policy for regions. Assume a service resides in zones within us-east, us-west & eu-west this example specifies that when endpoints within us-east become unhealthy traffic should failover to endpoints in any zone or sub-zone within eu-west and similarly us-west should failover to us-east.

    Locality load balancing settings.

    FieldTypeDescriptionRequired
    distributeDistribute[]

    Optional: only one of distribute or failover can be set. Explicitly specify loadbalancing weight across different zones and geographical locations. Refer to If empty, the locality weight is set according to the endpoints number within it.

    No
    failoverFailover[]

    Optional: only failover or distribute can be set. Explicitly specify the region traffic will land on when endpoints in local region becomes unhealthy. Should be used together with OutlierDetection to detect unhealthy endpoints. Note: if no OutlierDetection specified, this will not take effect.

    No

    LocalityLoadBalancerSetting.Distribute

    Describes how traffic originating in the ‘from’ zone or sub-zone is distributed over a set of ‘to’ zones. Syntax for specifying a zone is {region}/{zone}/{sub-zone} and terminal wildcards are allowed on any segment of the specification. Examples: * - matches all localities us-west/* - all zones and sub-zones within the us-west region us-west/zone-1/* - all sub-zones within us-west/zone-1

    FieldTypeDescriptionRequired
    fromstring

    Originating locality, ‘/’ separated, e.g. ‘region/zone/sub_zone’.

    No
    tomap<string, uint32>

    Map of upstream localities to traffic distribution weights. The sum of all weights should be == 100. Any locality not assigned a weight will receive no traffic.

    No

    LocalityLoadBalancerSetting.Failover

    Specify the traffic failover policy across regions. Since zone and sub-zone failover is supported by default this only needs to be specified for regions when the operator needs to constrain traffic failover so that the default behavior of failing over to any endpoint globally does not apply. This is useful when failing over traffic across regions would not improve service health or may need to be restricted for other reasons like regulatory controls.

    FieldTypeDescriptionRequired
    fromstring

    Originating region.

    No
    tostring

    Destination region the traffic will fail over to when endpoints in the ‘from’ region becomes unhealthy.

    No

    MeshConfig

    MeshConfig defines mesh-wide variables shared by all Envoy instances in the Istio service mesh.

    NOTE: This configuration type should be used for the low-level global configuration, such as component addresses and port numbers. It should not be used for the features of the mesh that can be scoped by service or by namespace. Some of the fields in the mesh config are going to be deprecated and replaced with several individual configuration types (for example, tracing configuration).

    FieldTypeDescriptionRequired
    mixerCheckServerstring

    Address of the server that will be used by the proxies for policy check calls. By using different names for mixerCheckServer and mixerReportServer, it is possible to have one set of Mixer servers handle policy check calls while another set of Mixer servers handle telemetry calls.

    NOTE: Omitting mixerCheckServer while specifying mixerReportServer is equivalent to setting disablePolicyChecks to true.

    No
    mixerReportServerstring

    Address of the server that will be used by the proxies for policy report calls.

    No
    disablePolicyChecksbool

    Disable policy checks by the Mixer service. Default is false, i.e. Mixer policy check is enabled by default.

    No
    policyCheckFailOpenbool

    Allow all traffic in cases when the Mixer policy service cannot be reached. Default is false which means the traffic is denied when the client is unable to connect to Mixer.

    No
    sidecarToTelemetrySessionAffinitybool

    Enable session affinity for Envoy Mixer reports so that calls from a proxy will always target the same Mixer instance.

    No
    proxyListenPortint32

    Port on which Envoy should listen for incoming connections from other services.

    No
    proxyHttpPortint32

    Port on which Envoy should listen for HTTP PROXY requests if set.

    No
    connectTimeoutDuration

    Connection timeout used by Envoy. (MUST BE >=1ms)

    No
    protocolDetectionTimeout

    Automatic protocol detection uses a set of heuristics to determine whether the connection is using TLS or not (on the server side), as well as the application protocol being used (e.g., http vs tcp). These heuristics rely on the client sending the first bits of data. For server first protocols like MySQL, MongoDB, etc., Envoy will timeout on the protocol detection after the specified period, defaulting to non mTLS plain TCP traffic. Set this field to tweak the period that Envoy will wait for the client to send the first bits of data. (MUST BE >=1ms)

    No
    tcpKeepaliveTcpKeepalive

    If set then set SO_KEEPALIVE on the socket to enable TCP Keepalives.

    No
    ingressClassstring

    Class of ingress resources to be processed by Istio ingress controller. This corresponds to the value of “kubernetes.io/ingress.class” annotation.

    No
    ingressServicestring

    Name of theKubernetes service used for the istio ingress controller.

    No
    ingressControllerMode

    Defines whether to use Istio ingress controller for annotated or all ingress resources.

    No
    enableTracingbool

    Flag to control generation of trace spans and request IDs. Requires a trace span collector defined in the proxy configuration.

    No
    accessLogFilestring

    File address for the proxy access log (e.g. /dev/stdout). Empty value disables access logging.

    No
    accessLogFormatstring

    Format for the proxy access log Empty value results in proxy’s default access log format

    No
    accessLogEncodingAccessLogEncoding

    Encoding for the proxy access log (text or json). Default value is text.

    No
    enableEnvoyAccessLogServicebool

    This flag enables Envoy’s gRPC Access Log Service. See for details about Envoy’s gRPC Access Log Service API.

    No
    defaultConfigProxyConfig

    Default proxy config used by the proxy injection mechanism operating in the mesh (e.g. Kubernetes admission controller) In case of Kubernetes, the proxy config is applied once during the injection process, and remain constant for the duration of the pod. The rest of the mesh config can be changed at runtime and config gets distributed dynamically.

    No
    outboundTrafficPolicy

    Set the default behavior of the sidecar for handling outbound traffic from the application. If your application uses one or more external services that are not known apriori, setting the policy to ALLOWANY will cause the sidecars to route any unknown traffic originating from the application to its requested destination. Users are strongly encouraged to use ServiceEntries to explicitly declare any external dependencies, instead of using allowany, so that traffic to these services can be monitored.

    No
    enableClientSidePolicyCheckbool

    Enables client side policy checks.

    No
    sdsUdsPathstring

    Unix Domain Socket through which Envoy communicates with NodeAgent SDS to get key/cert for mTLS. Use secret-mount files instead of SDS if set to empty.

    No
    configSources

    ConfigSource describes a source of configuration data for networking rules, and other Istio configuration artifacts. Multiple data sources can be configured for a single control plane.

    No
    enableAutoMtlsBoolValueNo
    trustDomainstring

    The trust domain corresponds to the trust root of a system. Refer to

    No
    trustDomainAliasesstring[]

    The trust domain aliases represent the aliases of trust_domain. For example, if we have

    Any service with the identity td1/ns/foo/sa/a-service-account, td2/ns/foo/sa/a-service-account, or td3/ns/foo/sa/a-service-account will be treated the same in the Istio mesh.

    No
    defaultServiceExportTostring[]

    The default value for the ServiceEntry.export_to field and services imported through container registry integrations, e.g. this applies to Kubernetes Service resources. The value is a list of namespace names and reserved namespace aliases. The allowed namespace aliases are:

    • - All Namespaces . - Current Namespace ~ - No Namespace

    If not set the system will use “” as the default value which implies that services are exported to all namespaces.

    ‘All namespaces’ is a reasonable default for implementations that don’t need to restrict access or visibility of services across namespace boundaries. If that requirement is present it is generally good practice to make the default ‘Current namespace’ so that services are only visible within their own namespaces by default. Operators can then expand the visibility of services to other namespaces as needed. Use of ‘No Namespace’ is expected to be rare but can have utility for deployments where dependency management needs to be precise even within the scope of a single namespace.

    For further discussion see the reference documentation for ServiceEntry, Sidecar, and Gateway.

    No
    defaultVirtualServiceExportTostring[]

    The default value for the VirtualService.exportto field. Has the same syntax as ‘defaultserviceexportto’.

    If not set the system will use “” as the default value which implies that virtual services are exported to all namespaces

    No
    defaultDestinationRuleExportTostring[]

    The default value for the DestinationRule.exportto field. Has the same syntax as ‘defaultserviceexportto’.

    If not set the system will use “*” as the default value which implies that destination rules are exported to all namespaces

    No
    rootNamespacestring

    The namespace to treat as the administrative root namespace for Istio configuration. When processing a leaf namespace Istio will search for declarations in that namespace first and if none are found it will search in the root namespace. Any matching declaration found in the root namespace is processed as if it were declared in the leaf namespace.

    The precise semantics of this processing are documented on each resource type.

    No
    localityLbSettingLocalityLoadBalancerSetting

    Locality based load balancing distribution or failover settings.

    No
    dnsRefreshRate

    Configures DNS refresh rate for Envoy clusters of type STRICT_DNS

    No
    disableReportBatchbool

    The flag to disable report batch.

    No
    reportBatchMaxEntriesuint32

    When disablereportbatch is false, this value specifies the maximum number of requests that are batched in report. If left unspecified, the default value of reportbatchmax_entries == 0 will use the hardcoded defaults of istio::mixerclient::ReportOptions.

    No
    reportBatchMaxTimeDuration

    When disablereportbatch is false, this value specifies the maximum elapsed time a batched report will be sent after a user request is processed. If left unspecified, the default reportbatchmax_time == 0 will use the hardcoded defaults of istio::mixerclient::ReportOptions.

    No
    h2UpgradePolicy

    Specify if http1.1 connections should be upgraded to http2 by default. if sidecar is installed on all pods in the mesh, then this should be set to UPGRADE. If one or more services or namespaces do not have sidecar(s), then this should be set to DONOTUPGRADE. It can be enabled by destination using the destinationRule.trafficPolicy.connectionPool.http.h2UpgradePolicy override.

    No
    inboundClusterStatNamestring

    Name to be used while emitting statistics for inbound clusters. By default, Istio emits statistics with the pattern inbound|||. For example inbound|7443|grpc-reviews|reviews.prod.svc.cluster.local. This can be used to override that pattern.

    A Pattern can be composed of various pre-defined variables. The following variables are supported. %SERVICE% - Will be substituted with name of the service. %SERVICEFQDN% - Will be substituted with FQDN of the service. %SERVICEPORT% - Will be substituted with port of the service. %SERVICEPORTNAME% - Will be substituted with port name of the service.

    Following are some examples of supported patterns for reviews. %SERVICEFQDN%%SERVICEPORT% will use reviews.prod.svc.cluster.local7443 as the stats name. %SERVICE% will use reviews.prod as the stats name.

    No
    outboundClusterStatNamestring

    Name to be used while emitting statistics for outbound clusters. By default, Istio emits statistics with the pattern outbound|||. For example outbound|8080|v2|reviews.prod.svc.cluster.local. This can be used to override that pattern.

    A Pattern can be composed of various pre-defined variables. The following variables are supported. %SERVICE% - Will be substituted with name of the service. %SERVICEFQDN% - Will be substituted with FQDN of the service. %SERVICEPORT% - Will be substituted with port of the service. %SERVICEPORTNAME% - Will be substituted with port name of the service. %SUBSET_NAME% - Will be substituted with subset.

    Following are some examples of supported patterns for reviews. %SERVICEFQDN%%SERVICEPORT% will use reviews.prod.svc.cluster.local7443 as the stats name. %SERVICE% will use reviews.prod as the stats name.

    No
    certificatesCertificate[]

    Configure the provision of certificates.

    No

    MeshConfig.AccessLogEncoding

    NameDescription
    TEXT
    JSON

    Default Policy for upgrading http1.1 connections to http2.

    MeshConfig.IngressControllerMode

    NameDescription
    OFF

    Disables Istio ingress controller.

    DEFAULT

    Istio ingress controller will act on ingress resources that do not contain any annotation or whose annotations match the value specified in the ingress_class parameter described earlier. Use this mode if Istio ingress controller will be the default ingress controller for the entireKubernetes cluster.

    STRICT

    Istio ingress controller will only act on ingress resources whose annotations match the value specified in the ingress_class parameter described earlier. Use this mode if Istio ingress controller will be a secondary ingress controller (e.g., in addition to a cloud-provided ingress controller).

    MeshConfig.OutboundTrafficPolicy

    FieldTypeDescriptionRequired
    modeModeNo

    MeshConfig.OutboundTrafficPolicy.Mode

    NameDescription
    REGISTRY_ONLY

    outbound traffic will be restricted to services defined in the service registry as well as those defined through ServiceEntries

    ALLOW_ANY

    outbound traffic to unknown destinations will be allowed, in case there are no services or ServiceEntries for the destination port

    MeshNetworks

    MeshNetworks (config map) provides information about the set of networks inside a mesh and how to route to endpoints in each network. For example

    MeshNetworks(file/config map):

    FieldTypeDescriptionRequired
    networksmap<string, >

    The set of networks inside this mesh. Each network should have a unique name and information about how to infer the endpoints in the network as well as the gateways associated with the network.

    Yes

    Network

    Network provides information about the endpoints in a routable L3 network. A single routable L3 network can have one or more service registries. Note that the network has no relation to the locality of the endpoint. The endpoint locality will be obtained from the service registry.

    FieldTypeDescriptionRequired
    endpoints

    The list of endpoints in the network (obtained through the constituent service registries or from CIDR ranges). All endpoints in the network are directly accessible to one another.

    Yes
    gatewaysIstioNetworkGateway[]

    Set of gateways associated with the network.

    Yes

    Network.IstioNetworkGateway

    The gateway associated with this network. Traffic from remote networks will arrive at the specified gateway:port. All incoming traffic must use mTLS.

    FieldTypeDescriptionRequired
    registryServiceNamestring (oneof)

    A fully qualified domain name of the gateway service. Pilot will lookup the service from the service registries in the network and obtain the endpoint IPs of the gateway from the service registry. Note that while the service name is a fully qualified domain name, it need not be resolvable outside the orchestration platform for the registry. e.g., this could be istio-ingressgateway.istio-system.svc.cluster.local.

    Yes
    addressstring (oneof)

    IP address or externally resolvable DNS address associated with the gateway.

    Yes
    portuint32

    The port associated with the gateway.

    Yes
    localitystring

    The locality associated with an explicitly specified gateway (i.e. ip)

    No

    Network.NetworkEndpoints

    NetworkEndpoints describes how the network associated with an endpoint should be inferred. An endpoint will be assigned to a network based on the following rules:

    1. Implicitly: If the registry explicitly provides information about the network to which the endpoint belongs to. In some cases, its possible to indicate the network associated with the endpoint by adding the ISTIO_META_NETWORK environment variable to the sidecar.

    2. Explicitly:

    a. By matching the registry name with one of the “fromRegistry” in the mesh config. A “from_registry” can only be assigned to a single network.

    b. By matching the IP against one of the CIDR ranges in a mesh config network. The CIDR ranges must not overlap and be assigned to a single network.

    FieldTypeDescriptionRequired
    fromCidrstring (oneof)

    A CIDR range for the set of endpoints in this network. The CIDR ranges for endpoints from different networks must not overlap.

    Yes
    fromRegistrystring (oneof)

    Add all endpoints from the specified registry into this network. The names of the registries should correspond to the kubeconfig file name inside the secret that was used to configure the registry (Kubernetes multicluster) or supplied by MCP server.

    Yes

    ProxyConfig defines variables for individual Envoy instances.

    ProxyConfig.InboundInterceptionMode

    The mode used to redirect inbound traffic to Envoy. This setting has no effect on outbound traffic: iptables REDIRECT is always used for outbound connections.

    NameDescription
    REDIRECT

    The REDIRECT mode uses iptables REDIRECT to NAT and redirect to Envoy. This mode loses source IP addresses during redirection.

    TPROXY

    The TPROXY mode uses iptables TPROXY to redirect to Envoy. This mode preserves both the source and destination IP addresses and ports, so that they can be used for advanced filtering and manipulation. This mode also configures the sidecar to run with the CAPNETADMIN capability, which is required to use TPROXY.

    RemoteService

    FieldTypeDescriptionRequired
    addressstring

    Address of a remove service used for various purposes (access log receiver, metrics receiver, etc.). Can be IP address or a fully qualified DNS name.

    No
    tlsSettings

    Use the tls_settings to specify the tls mode to use. If the remote service uses Istio mutual TLS and shares the root CA with Pilot, specify the TLS mode as ISTIO_MUTUAL.

    No
    tcpKeepaliveTcpKeepalive

    If set then set SO_KEEPALIVE on the socket to enable TCP Keepalives.

    No

    Resource

    Resource describes the source of configuration

    NameDescription
    SERVICE_REGISTRY

    Set to only receive service entries that are generated by the platform. These auto generated service entries are combination of services and endpoints that are generated by a specific platform e.g. k8

    SDS

    SDS defines secret discovery service(SDS) configuration to be used by the proxy. For workload, its values are set in sidecar injector(passed as arguments to istio-proxy container). For pilot/mixer, it’s passed as arguments to istio-proxy container in pilot/mixer deployment yaml files directly.

    FieldTypeDescriptionRequired
    enabledbool

    True if SDS is enabled.

    No
    k8sSaJwtPathstring

    Path of k8s service account JWT path.

    No

    Tracing

    Tracing defines configuration for the tracing performed by Envoy instances.

    FieldTypeDescriptionRequired
    zipkinZipkin (oneof)

    Use a Zipkin tracer.

    Yes
    lightstep

    Use a LightStep tracer.

    Yes
    datadogDatadog (oneof)

    Use a Datadog tracer.

    Yes
    stackdriver

    Use a Stackdriver tracer.

    Yes

    Tracing.Datadog

    Datadog defines configuration for a Datadog tracer.

    FieldTypeDescriptionRequired
    addressstring

    Address of the Datadog Agent.

    No

    Tracing.Lightstep

    Defines configuration for a LightStep tracer.

    FieldTypeDescriptionRequired
    addressstring

    Address of the LightStep Satellite pool.

    No
    accessTokenstring

    The LightStep access token.

    No
    securebool

    True if a secure connection should be used when communicating with the pool.

    No
    cacertPathstring

    Path to the trusted cacert used to authenticate the pool.

    No

    Stackdriver defines configuration for a Stackdriver tracer. See Opencensus trace config for details.

    Tracing.Zipkin

    Zipkin defines configuration for a Zipkin tracer.

    FieldTypeDescriptionRequired
    address

    Address of the Zipkin service (e.g. zipkin:9411).

    No