In-cluster control plane supported features

This page describes features that are supported in Cloud Service Mesh 1.23.3 with an in-cluster control plane. To see the supported features for Cloud Service Mesh 1.23.3 with a managed control plane instead, see Managed control plane.

Supported versions

Support for Cloud Service Mesh follows the GKE Enterprise Version Support Policy.

For managed Cloud Service Mesh with a TRAFFIC_DIRECTOR control plane implementation, Google always supports this control plane.

For managed Cloud Service Mesh with an ISTIOD control plane implementation, Google supports the current Cloud Service Mesh versions available in each release channel.

For self-installed in-cluster Cloud Service Mesh, Google supports the current and previous two (n-2) minor versions of Cloud Service Mesh.

The following table shows the supported versions of self-installed in-cluster Cloud Service Mesh and the earliest end-of-life (EOL) date for a version.

If you are on an unsupported version of Cloud Service Mesh, then you must upgrade to Cloud Service Mesh 1.21 or later. For information on how to upgrade, see Upgrade Cloud Service Mesh.

The following table shows the unsupported versions of Cloud Service Mesh and their end-of-life (EOL) date.

For more information about our support policies, refer to Getting support.

Platform differences

There are differences in supported features between supported platforms.

The Other GKE Enterprise clusters columns refer to clusters that are outside of Google Cloud, for example:

• Google Distributed Cloud:

  • Google Distributed Cloud
  • Google Distributed Cloud (software only) for bare metal

  This page uses Google Distributed Cloud where the same support is available on both Google Distributed Cloud (software only) for VMware and Google Distributed Cloud (software only) for bare metal, and the specific platform where there are differences between the platforms.

• GKE Enterprise on other public clouds:

  • GKE on AWS
  • GKE on Azure

• GKE attached clusters - Third-party Kubernetes clusters that have been registered to a fleet. Cloud Service Mesh is supported on the following cluster types:

  • Amazon EKS clusters
  • Microsoft AKS clusters

In the following tables:

• – indicates the feature is enabled by default.
• * – indicates the feature is supported for the platform and can be enabled, as described in Enabling optional features or the feature guide linked in the feature table.
• Compatible – indicates the feature or third-party tool will integrate or work with Cloud Service Mesh, but is not fully supported by Google Cloud Support and a feature guide is not available.
• – indicates either the feature isn't available or it isn't supported in Cloud Service Mesh 1.23.3.

The default and optional features are fully supported by Google Cloud Support. Features not explicitly listed in the tables receive best-effort support.

Base Images

Security

Certificate distribution/rotation mechanisms

Certificate authority (CA) support

Cloud Service Mesh security features

In addition to supporting Istio security features, Cloud Service Mesh provides even more capabilities to help you secure your applications.

Authorization policy

Authentication policy

Peer authentication

For information on enabling mTLS STRICT mode, see Configuring transport security.

Request authentication

Notes:

1. Third-party JWT is enabled by default.

Telemetry

Metrics

Proxy request logging

Tracing

Networking

Destination rule

Traffic interception/redirection mechanism

Protocol support

Services that are configured with Layer 7 capabilities for the following protocols are not supported: WebSocket, MongoDB, Redis, Kafka, Cassandra, RabbitMQ, Cloud SQL. You might be able to make the protocol work by using TCP byte stream support. If TCP byte stream cannot support the protocol (for example, Kafka sends a redirect address in a protocol-specific reply and this redirect is incompatible with Cloud Service Mesh's routing logic), then the protocol isn't supported.

Notes:

1. Although TCP is a supported protocol for networking, TCP metrics aren't collected or reported. Metrics are displayed only for HTTP services in the Google Cloud console.

Envoy deployments

CRD support

Load balancer for the Istio ingress gateway

For information on configuring load balancers, see the following:

• Setting up your load balancer for Google Distributed Cloud (software only) for VMware
• GKE on AWS: Creating a load balancer
• Expose an ingress gateway using an external load balancer

Kubernetes Gateway API (preview)

In Cloud Service Mesh v1.20 the Kubernetes Gateway API is available as a public preview.

If you are using Microsoft AKS attached clusters or GKE on Azure clusters, you must set the following annotation for the gateway resource to configure health checks over TCP:

  service.beta.kubernetes.io/port_80_health-probe_protocol: tcp

Otherwise, HTTP traffic won't be accepted.

Kubernetes Gateway API preview requirements

The Kubernetes Gateway API preview has the following requirements:

• Use the default automated deployments behavior for Gateways.

• Use the HttpRoute CRD for routing configurations. The HttpRoute must have a parentRef pointing to a Gateway.

• Don't use Istio Gateway CRs and Kubernetes Gateway API CRs on the same cluster.

Load balancing policies

For more information on load balancing policies, see Destination Rules.

Data plane

Multi-cluster support

For multi-primary deployments of GKE clusters in different projects, all the clusters must be in a shared Virtual Private Cloud (VPC).

Network

Notes:

• For attached clusters, only multi-cluster meshes spanning a single platform (Microsoft AKS, Amazon EKS) are supported at this time.

Deployment model

Notes on terminology:

• A primary cluster is a cluster with a control plane. A single mesh can have more than one primary cluster for high availability or to reduce latency. In the Istio 1.7 documentation, a multi-primary deployment is referred to as a replicated control plane.

• A remote cluster is a cluster that connects to a control plane residing outside of the cluster. A remote cluster can connect to a control plane running in a primary cluster or to an external control plane.

• Cloud Service Mesh uses a simplified definition of network based on general connectivity. Workload instances are on the same network if they are able to communicate directly, without a gateway.

User interface

Note: On-premises clusters require GKE Enterprise version 1.11 or later. For more information on upgrading see Upgrading Google Distributed Cloud (software only) for VMware or Upgrading Google Distributed Cloud (software only) for bare metal.