Feature Status
This page lists the relative maturity and support level of every Istio feature. 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 mean.
Feature phase definitions
| Alpha | Beta | Stable | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Demo-able, works end-to-end but has limitations | Usable in production, not a toy anymore | Dependable, production hardened |
| API | No guarantees on backward compatibility | APIs are versioned | Dependable, production-worthy. APIs are versioned, with automated version conversion for backward compatibility |
| Performance | Not quantified or guaranteed | Not quantified or guaranteed | Performance (latency/scale) is quantified, documented, with guarantees against regression |
| Deprecation Policy | None | Weak - 3 months | Dependable, 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
| Feature | Phase |
|---|---|
| Protocols: HTTP1.1 / HTTP2 / gRPC / TCP | Stable |
| Protocols: Websockets / MongoDB | Stable |
| Traffic Control: label/content based routing, traffic shifting | Stable |
| Resilience features: timeouts, retries, connection pools, outlier detection | Stable |
| Gateway: Ingress, Egress for all protocols | Stable |
| TLS termination and SNI Support in Gateways | Stable |
| Enabling custom filters in Envoy | Alpha |
| CNI container interface | Alpha |
| Sidecar API | Alpha |
| SNI (multiple certs) at ingress | Alpha |
Telemetry
| Feature | Phase |
|---|---|
| Prometheus Integration | Stable |
| Local Logging (STDIO) | Stable |
| Statsd Integration | Stable |
| Client and Server Telemetry Reporting | Stable |
| Service Dashboard in Grafana | Stable |
| Istio Component Dashboard in Grafana | Stable |
| Stackdriver Integration | Beta |
| Distributed Tracing to Zipkin / Jaeger | Beta |
| Service Tracing | Beta |
| Logging with Fluentd | Beta |
| Trace Sampling | Beta |
Security and Policy Enforcement
| Feature | Phase |
|---|---|
| Deny Checker | Stable |
| List Checker | Stable |
| Pluggable Key/Cert Support for Istio CA | Stable |
| Service-to-service mutual TLS | Stable |
| Kubernetes: Service Credential Distribution | Stable |
| VM: Service Credential Distribution | Beta |
| Mutual TLS Migration | Beta |
| Authentication policy | Alpha |
| End User (JWT) Authentication | Alpha |
| OPA Checker | Alpha |
| Authorization (RBAC) | Alpha |
| Per-Path Authentication | Alpha |
| TCP Authorization | Alpha |
| Cert management on Ingress Gateway | Alpha |
| Vault integration | Alpha |
| SDS Integration | Alpha |
Core
| Feature | Phase |
|---|---|
| Kubernetes: Envoy Installation and Traffic Interception | Stable |
| Kubernetes: Istio Control Plane Installation | Stable |
| Attribute Expression Language | Stable |
| Mixer In-Process Adapter Authoring Model | Deprecated |
| Mixer Out-of-Process Adapter Authoring Model | Beta |
| Helm | Beta |
| Multicluster Mesh over VPN | Alpha |
| Kubernetes: Istio Control Plane Upgrade | Beta |
| Consul Integration | Alpha |
| Basic Configuration Resource Validation | Alpha |
| Mixer Self Monitoring | Beta |
| Custom Mixer Build Model | deprecated |
| Out of Process Mixer Adapters (gRPC Adapters) | Beta |
| Istio CNI plugin | Alpha |