Introducción a la malla de servicios

Why should we enable a service mesh?

The service mesh is a crucial concept for monitoring, managing and enhancing applications in a microservices infrastructure. In an ever-changing environment, the need to ensure the performance, resiliency and security of your applications is paramount. Here are three main reasons to opt for a service mesh:

1. Consistent Monitoring: You want a standard way to observe your applications' performance, error rates and improve security posture. This is essential for maintaining a high level of service and responding quickly to incidents.

2. Resilience and Secure Deployment: Building resilient services involves implementing secure deployments, which includes fault management. This means that, in the event of an incident, the network is not saturated, but the impact is automatically mitigated.

3. Service Security: Implementing consistent service security means having encryption in transit, zero trust networks and personal data protection, ensuring that only authorized services can communicate with each other.

What is a service mesh and what benefits does it offer?

A service mesh provides a transparent and language-independent way to automate certain network functions easily. Some of its capabilities allow:

• Decouple applications from application networks.
• Manage hybrid or multi-cloud contexts.
• Reduce the need for developers to manage network policies within the code of an application.

Using tools such as ISTIO, an open source project, makes it easier to manage interactions between services, providing an open services platform to contain both containers and virtual machines.

How does traffic management change with a service mesh?

By enabling a service mesh, you can control the flow of traffic both into and out of your cluster, and manage internal traffic. This includes:

• Traffic Forking: To unblock deployment techniques such as Canary or Blue/Green.
• Security and Secure Communication: Through Mutual TLS (mTLS).
• Complete Visibility: Of everything that happens within the services with minimal instrumentation.

What is the difference in operation with and without a service mesh?

Without a service mesh:

• Applications must include libraries to perform common functions such as circuit breaking, traceability and identity which requires more effort from the development team.

With a service mesh:

• Network functions and policies are externalized from the application, managed by a central controller. This means less development effort and a more secure and consistent implementation.

What are the components of a service mesh such as ISTIO?

Control plane

• Pilot: Configuration of communication policies through proxies.
• Citadel: Certificate authority for credentials and TLS security.

Data planes

• Proxy Sidecar: Deploys with each application, manages inbound and outbound network traffic, encrypts communication and reports telemetry.

Observability plugins

• Grafana and Jaeger: Tools for log visualization and service tracing.
• Kiali: Provides graphs for better observability.

In summary, implementing ISTIO and a service mesh not only optimizes traffic management and increases security, but also centralizes many essential functions that were distributed across each application, enabling a more efficient approach. With Google Cloud, several of these services are managed, freeing you from additional concerns.

How does the service mesh improve communication between services?

The service mesh manages the security of communication and identity between services, creating an ecosystem where:

• Each service has its credentials and these cannot be used on other communication channels.
• Proxies automatically configure traffic based on centralized rules, eliminating the need for central load balancing.
• It ensures that every call is authorized and monitors telemetry for continuous supervision.

Implementing these technologies in your architecture will make it easier for you to maintain a secure and exemplary environment, boosting operational efficiency and fostering continuous improvement through accurate observation. Indeed, as the adage goes, "What gets measured, gets better." Don't wait any longer, set up a service mesh today and take your infrastructure to the next level!