Feature Status

Starting with 0.3, Istio releases are delivered on a monthly cadence. You can download the current version by visiting our release page.

Please note that the phases (alpha, beta, and stable) are applied to individual features within the project, not to the project as a whole. Here is a high level description of what these labels means:

Feature Phase Definition

 AlphaBetaStable
PurposeDemo-able, works end-to-end but has limitationsUsable in production, not a toy anymoreDependable, production hardened
APINo guarantees on backward compatibilityAPIs are versionedDependable, production-worthy. APIs are versioned, with automated version conversion for backward compatibility
PerformanceNot quantified or guaranteedNot quantified or guaranteedPerf (latency/scale) is quantified, documented, with guarantees against regression
Deprecation PolicyNoneWeak - 3 monthsDependable, Firm. 1 year notice will be provided before changes

Istio features

Below is our list of existing features and their current phases. This information will be updated after every monthly release.

Traffic Management

FeaturePhase
Protocols: HTTP 1.1Beta
Protocols: HTTP 2.0Alpha
Protocols: gRPCAlpha
Protocols: TCPAlpha
Protocols: WebSocketAlpha
Protocols: MongoDBAlpha
Routing Rules: RetryAlpha
Routing Rules: TimeoutAlpha
Routing Rules: Circuit BreakAlpha
Routing Rules: Header RewriteAlpha
Routing Rules: Traffic SplittingAlpha
Memquota Implementation and IntegrationAlpha
Ingress TLSAlpha

Observability

FeaturePhase
Prometheus IntegrationBeta
Local Logging (STDIO)Beta
Statsd IntegrationStable
Service Dashboard in GrafanaBeta
Stackdriver IntegrationAlpha
Service GraphAlpha
Distributed Tracing to Zipkin / JaegerAlpha
Istio Component Dashboard in Grafana - New to 0.5Alpha

Security

FeaturePhase
Deny CheckerBeta
List CheckerBeta
Kubernetes: Service Credential DistributionBeta
Pluggable Key/Cert Support for Istio CAStable
Service-to-service mutual TLSBeta
Incremental Enablement of service-to-service mutual TLSAlpha
VM: Service Credential DistributionAlpha
OPA CheckerAlpha

Core

FeaturePhase
Kubernetes: Envoy Installation and Traffic InterceptionBeta
Kubernetes: Istio Control Plane InstallationBeta
Pilot Integration into Kubernetes Service DiscoveryStable
Attribute Expression LanguageBeta
Mixer Adapter Authoring ModelBeta
VM: Envoy Installation, Traffic Interception and Service RegistrationAlpha
VM: Istio Control Plane Installation and Upgrade (Galley, Mixer, Pilot, CA)Alpha
Kubernetes: Istio Control Plane UpgradeAlpha
Pilot Integration into ConsulAlpha
Pilot Integration into EurekaAlpha
Pilot Integration into Cloud Foundry Service DiscoveryAlpha
Basic Config Resource ValidationAlpha

Bulb Please get in touch by joining our community if there are features you’d like to see in our future releases!