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

AlphaBetaStable
PurposeDemo-able, works end-to-end but has limitations. If you use it in production and encounter a serious issue we may not be able to fix it for you, so be sure that you can continue to function if you have to disable itUsable 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 guaranteedPerformance (latency/scale) is quantified, documented, with guarantees against regression
Deprecation PolicyNoneWeak - 3 monthsDependable, Firm. 1 year notice will be provided before changes
SecuritySecurity vulnerabilities will be handled publicly as simple bug fixesSecurity vulnerabilities will be handled according to our security vulnerability policySecurity vulnerabilities will be handled according to our security vulnerability policy

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: HTTP1.1 / HTTP2 / gRPC / TCPStable
Protocols: Websockets / MongoDBStable
Traffic Control: label/content based routing, traffic shiftingStable
Resilience features: timeouts, retries, connection pools, outlier detectionStable
Gateway: Ingress, Egress for all protocolsStable
TLS termination and SNI Support in GatewaysStable
SNI (multiple certs) at ingressStable
Locality load balancingBeta
Enabling custom filters in EnvoyAlpha
CNI container interfaceAlpha
Sidecar APIAlpha

The Sidecar runtime is considered Beta. However, its API is still subject to a backwards incompatible change. Due to this, we advertise it as Alpha.

Telemetry

FeaturePhase
Prometheus IntegrationStable
Local Logging (STDIO)Stable
Statsd IntegrationStable
Client and Server Telemetry ReportingStable
Service Dashboard in GrafanaStable
Istio Component Dashboard in GrafanaStable
Distributed TracingStable
Stackdriver IntegrationBeta
Distributed Tracing to Zipkin / JaegerBeta
Logging with FluentdBeta
Trace SamplingBeta

Security and Policy Enforcement

FeaturePhase
Deny CheckerStable
List CheckerStable
Pluggable Key/Cert Support for Istio CAStable
Service-to-service mutual TLSStable
Kubernetes: Service Credential DistributionStable
VM: Service Credential DistributionBeta
Mutual TLS MigrationBeta
Cert management on Ingress GatewayBeta
Authorization (RBAC)Alpha
End User (JWT) AuthenticationAlpha
OPA CheckerAlpha
TCP Authorization (RBAC)Alpha
SDS IntegrationAlpha

The ‘Authorization (RBAC)’ runtime is considered Beta. However, its API is still subject to a backwards incompatible change. Due to this, we advertise it as Alpha.

Core

FeaturePhase
Operator installationAlpha
Kubernetes: Envoy Installation and Traffic InterceptionStable
Kubernetes: Istio Control Plane InstallationStable
Attribute Expression LanguageStable
Mixer Out-of-Process Adapter Authoring ModelBeta
HelmBeta
Multicluster Mesh over VPNAlpha
Kubernetes: Istio Control Plane UpgradeBeta
Consul IntegrationAlpha
Basic Configuration Resource ValidationBeta
Configuration Processing with GalleyBeta
Mixer Self MonitoringBeta
Custom Mixer Build Modeldeprecated
Out of Process Mixer Adapters (gRPC Adapters)Beta
Istio CNI pluginAlpha
IPv6 support for KubernetesAlpha
Distroless base images for IstioAlpha