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Azure Kubernetes Engine VS Istio

Compare Azure Kubernetes Engine VS Istio and see what are their differences

Azure Kubernetes Engine logo Azure Kubernetes Engine

AKS Engine: Units of Kubernetes on Azure! Contribute to Azure/aks-engine development by creating an account on GitHub.

Istio logo Istio

Open platform to connect, manage, and secure microservices
  • Azure Kubernetes Engine Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-13
  • Istio Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-01

Azure Kubernetes Engine features and specs

  • Integration with Azure Services
    AKS Engine provides seamless integration with various Azure services, such as Azure Monitor, Azure Active Directory, and Azure DevOps, allowing users to leverage a comprehensive cloud environment.
  • Customizable Kubernetes Deployments
    Users can customize Kubernetes cluster configurations to suit their specific needs, offering flexibility in node sizing, network setup, and more.
  • Scaling and Upgrading
    AKS Engine supports easy scaling and upgrading of Kubernetes clusters, enabling users to manage workload changes efficiently and ensure their applications remain available and up-to-date.
  • Open-source Community
    Being open-source, AKS Engine benefits from community contributions, ensuring continual improvements, quick issue resolutions, and a large pool of shared knowledge and expertise.

Possible disadvantages of Azure Kubernetes Engine

  • Complexity in Setup
    Initial setup and configuration can be complex, requiring in-depth knowledge of both Azure and Kubernetes concepts.
  • Management Overhead
    While AKS Engine provides flexibility, it also necessitates management of Kubernetes infrastructure, unlike fully managed services such as Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).
  • Support Requirements
    Since AKS Engine is an open-source project, it may not offer the same level of commercial support that Azure's managed services provide, potentially requiring internal expertise for troubleshooting.
  • Frequent Updates
    Keeping up with Kubernetes and AKS Engine updates can be demanding, requiring careful planning and execution to maintain cluster stability and security.

Istio features and specs

  • Traffic Management
    Istio provides powerful traffic management capabilities, including fine-grained control over the flow of traffic and API calls between services.
  • Observability
    Istio enhances observability with metrics, logs, and tracing, making it easier to monitor microservices and gain insights into performance and behavior.
  • Security
    Istio improves security by providing service-to-service and end-user authentication, as well as powerful policy enforcement for access control.
  • Policy Enforcement
    Istio allows for the enforcement of organizational policy and access control, making it easier to ensure compliance and governance.
  • Service Resilience
    Capabilities such as circuit breakers, retries, and timeouts make applications more resilient to failures and ensure greater availability.
  • Platform Agnostic
    Istio is designed to be platform agnostic and can be deployed on any Kubernetes platform, making it highly flexible.

Possible disadvantages of Istio

  • Complexity
    Istio adds a significant amount of complexity to a system, which can make it harder to manage, especially for teams without experience in service meshes.
  • Resource Consumption
    Istio can be resource-intensive, requiring additional CPU, memory, and storage, which can lead to higher operational costs.
  • Learning Curve
    There is a steep learning curve associated with Istio, making it challenging for new users to get up to speed quickly.
  • Operational Overhead
    Managing and operating Istio might require dedicated personnel and can introduce operational overhead, including the need for monitoring and updating the control plane and sidecar proxies.
  • Latency
    The addition of sidecar proxies and other Istio components can introduce some latency in the network traffic between services.

Azure Kubernetes Engine videos

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Istio videos

Istio Service Mesh Explained

More videos:

  • Review - What is Istio?
  • Review - Module 1: Istio - Kubernetes - Getting Started - Installation and Sample Application Review

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Azure Kubernetes Engine and Istio)
Developer Tools
16 16%
84% 84
Containers As A Service
100 100%
0% 0
Cloud Computing
17 17%
83% 83
DevOps Tools
30 30%
70% 70

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Istio seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 57 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Azure Kubernetes Engine mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Azure Kubernetes Engine yet. Tracking of Azure Kubernetes Engine recommendations started around Mar 2021.

Istio mentions (57)

  • Traefik's 10-Year Journey from Zero to Standard
    With Envoy (https://www.envoyproxy.io/) and Contour (https://projectcontour.io/) being official CNCF sanctioned projects in the Service Proxy space, Istio (https://istio.io/) and Linkerd (https://linkerd.io/) being official CNCF sanctioned projectin the Service Mesh space and Emissary Ingress (https://emissary-ingress.dev/) the same in the API Gateway space, just to name a few, naming yourself a standard are some... - Source: Hacker News / 10 days ago
  • Istio vs Linkerd: Whatโ€™s the Best Service Mesh + API Gateway?
    Service meshes have revolutionized API management by becoming essential components for handling complex microservices architectures. The right service mesh can dramatically enhance your API gateway's security, performance, and observability, but choosing between industry leaders Istio and Linkerd requires understanding their distinct approaches and tradeoffs. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Kubernetes Overview: Container Orchestration & Cloud-Native
    Service Mesh: Istio and Linkerd provide advanced traffic management, security, and observability for microservices communication. Service mesh comparison reveals adoption correlates strongly with application complexity and compliance requirements. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • Securing your AWS EKS cluster
    Service meshes like Istio or AWS App Mesh provide traffic encryption, authentication, and authorization at the service level, adding another layer of security beyond network policies. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • Building an API Gateway with Istio and EKS
    However, a limitation of a mesh is that it deals with east/west traffic. That means service to service communication. But what about that critical north/south traffic? The kind that comes from users? Can my mesh provider in Istio play a role in this as well? And how about pairing with Amazon's EKS? Let's dive in! - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Azure Kubernetes Engine and Istio, you can also consider the following products

Google Kubernetes Engine - Google Kubernetes Engine is a powerful cluster manager and orchestration system for running your Docker containers. Set up a cluster in minutes.

linkerd - Linkerd is an ultralight service mesh for Kubernetes. It gives you observability, reliability, and security without requiring any code changes.

Amazon ECS - Amazon EC2 Container Service is a highly scalable, high-performanceโ€‹ container management service that supports Docker containers.

Kubernetes - Kubernetes is an open source orchestration system for Docker containers

Docker - Docker is an open platform that enables developers and system administrators to create distributed applications.

KintoHub - A modern fullstack app platform