The Istio community has announced the latest iteration of the open source service mesh platform, Istio 1.8.

To support open hybrid cloud architectures, the Istio 1.8 release adds new features that make Istio easier to upgrade, clearer information about maturity of each feature, better documentation, and tons of exciting experimental features.

The latest release includes updates to clarify when to use in-place upgrades and when to use revision-based upgrades.

The update also allows users to manage gateways separately out of the Istio control plane. Prior to 1.8, the Istio control plane and gateway were updated together so there was no guarantee that Istiod was up and running when the gateway was being updated.

Prior to Istio 1.8, there were two multicluster deployment models (replicated control plane and shared control plane). With the latest version, these deployment models are consolidated into a single multicluster deployment model which is easier to set up.

Users can choose different typologies based on their control plane high availability needs and networks.

Istio 1.8 also adds a host of experimental and alpha features including DNS proxy, Virtual machine integration, and Istio profile for OpenShift.

Further, IBM has incorporated the mesh service into its own products, such as the IBM Cloud Code Engine and Managed Istio on IBM Cloud.

IBM Cloud Satellite is expected to provide a Mesh component, which uses federated Istio service mesh to connect clusters across locations, enabling policy, security, and visibility among applications.