In-cluster control plane supported features

This page describes features that are supported in Cloud Service Mesh 1.23.3 with an in-cluster control plane. To see the supported features for Cloud Service Mesh 1.23.3 with a managed control plane instead, see Managed control plane.

Supported versions

Support for Cloud Service Mesh follows the GKE Enterprise Version Support Policy.

For managed Cloud Service Mesh with a TRAFFIC_DIRECTOR control plane implementation, Google always supports this control plane.

For managed Cloud Service Mesh with an ISTIOD control plane implementation, Google supports the current Cloud Service Mesh versions available in each release channel.

For self-installed in-cluster Cloud Service Mesh, Google supports the current and previous two (n-2) minor versions of Cloud Service Mesh.

The following table shows the supported versions of self-installed in-cluster Cloud Service Mesh and the earliest end-of-life (EOL) date for a version.

Release version	Release date	Earliest end of life date
1.23	September 19, 2024	June 19, 2025
1.22	July 25, 2024	April 25, 2025
1.21	June 4, 2024	March 4, 2025

If you are on an unsupported version of Cloud Service Mesh, then you must upgrade to Cloud Service Mesh 1.21 or later. For information on how to upgrade, see Upgrade Cloud Service Mesh.

The following table shows the unsupported versions of Cloud Service Mesh and their end-of-life (EOL) date.

Release version	Release date	End-of-life date
1.20	February 8, 2024	Unsupported (November 12, 2024)
1.19	October 31, 2023	Unsupported (July 31, 2024)
1.18	August 3, 2023	Unsupported (June 4, 2024)
1.17	April 4, 2023	Unsupported (February 8, 2024)
1.16	February 21, 2023	Unsupported (December 11, 2023)
1.15	October 25, 2022	Unsupported (August 4, 2023)
1.14	July 20, 2022	Unsupported (April 20, 2023)
1.13	March 30, 2022	Unsupported (February 8, 2023)
1.12	December 9, 2021	Unsupported (October 25, 2022)
1.11	October 6, 2021	Unsupported (July 20, 2022)
1.10	June 24, 2021	Unsupported (March 30, 2022)
1.9	March 4, 2021	Unsupported (December 14, 2021)
1.8	December 15, 2020	Unsupported (December 14, 2021)
1.7	November 3, 2020	Unsupported (December 14, 2021)
1.6	June 30, 2020	Unsupported (March 30, 2021)
1.5	May 20, 2020	Unsupported (February 17, 2021)
1.4	December 20, 2019	Unsupported (September 18, 2020)

For more information about our support policies, refer to Getting support.

Platform differences

There are differences in supported features between supported platforms.

The Other GKE Enterprise clusters columns refer to clusters that are outside of Google Cloud, for example:

• Google Distributed Cloud:

  • Google Distributed Cloud
  • Google Distributed Cloud (software only) for bare metal

  This page uses Google Distributed Cloud where the same support is available on both Google Distributed Cloud (software only) for VMware and Google Distributed Cloud (software only) for bare metal, and the specific platform where there are differences between the platforms.

• GKE Enterprise on other public clouds:

  • GKE on AWS
  • GKE on Azure

• GKE attached clusters - Third-party Kubernetes clusters that have been registered to a fleet. Cloud Service Mesh is supported on the following cluster types:

  • Amazon EKS clusters
  • Microsoft AKS clusters

In the following tables:

• – indicates the feature is enabled by default.
• * – indicates the feature is supported for the platform and can be enabled, as described in Enabling optional features or the feature guide linked in the feature table.
• Compatible – indicates the feature or third-party tool will integrate or work with Cloud Service Mesh, but is not fully supported by Google Cloud Support and a feature guide is not available.
• – indicates either the feature isn't available or it isn't supported in Cloud Service Mesh 1.23.3.

The default and optional features are fully supported by Google Cloud Support. Features not explicitly listed in the tables receive best-effort support.

Base Images

Feature	GKE clusters on Google Cloud	Other GKE Enterprise clusters
Distroless proxy image

Security

Certificate distribution/rotation mechanisms

Feature	GKE clusters on Google Cloud	Other GKE Enterprise clusters
Workload certificate management
External certificate management on ingress and egress gateways.

Certificate authority (CA) support

Feature	GKE clusters on Google Cloud	GKE Enterprise clusters on-premises	Other GKE Enterprise clusters
Cloud Service Mesh certificate authority
Certificate Authority Service	*	*
Istio CA (previously known as Citadel)	*	*
Plug in your own CA certificates	Supported by CA service and Istio CA	Supported by CA service and Istio CA	Supported by Istio CA

Cloud Service Mesh security features

In addition to supporting Istio security features, Cloud Service Mesh provides even more capabilities to help you secure your applications.

Feature	GKE clusters on Google Cloud	Distributed Cloud	GKE Multi-Cloud	Other GKE Enterprise clusters
IAP integration
End-user authentication
Audit policies (preview)			*
Dry-run mode
Denial logging

Authorization policy

Feature	GKE clusters on Google Cloud	Other GKE Enterprise clusters
Authorization v1beta1 policy
Path templating

Authentication policy

Peer authentication

Feature	GKE clusters on Google Cloud	Other GKE Enterprise clusters
Auto-mTLS
mTLS PERMISSIVE mode

For information on enabling mTLS STRICT mode, see Configuring transport security.

Request authentication

Feature	GKE clusters on Google Cloud	Other GKE Enterprise clusters
JWT authentication ^(Note 1)

Notes:

1. Third-party JWT is enabled by default.

Telemetry

Metrics

Feature	GKE clusters on Google Cloud	GKE Enterprise clusters on-premises	Other GKE Enterprise clusters
Cloud Monitoring (HTTP in-proxy metrics)
Cloud Monitoring (TCP in-proxy metrics)
Istio Telemetry API
Custom adapters/backends, in or out of process
Arbitrary telemetry and logging backends
Prometheus metrics export to customer-installed Prometheus, Grafana, and Kiali dashboards	Compatible	Compatible	Compatible
Google Cloud Managed Service for Prometheus, not including the Cloud Service Mesh dashboard
The topology graph in the Google Cloud console no longer uses the Mesh telemetry service as its data source. Although the data source for the topology graph has changed, the UI remains the same.

Proxy request logging

Feature	GKE clusters on Google Cloud	GKE Enterprise clusters on-premises	Other GKE Enterprise clusters
Traffic logs
Access logs	*	*	*

Tracing

Feature	GKE clusters on Google Cloud	GKE Enterprise clusters on-premises	Other GKE Enterprise clusters
Cloud Trace	*	*
Jaeger tracing (allows use of customer-managed Jaeger)	Compatible	Compatible	Compatible
Zipkin tracing (allows use of customer-managed Zipkin)	Compatible	Compatible	Compatible

Note: You can configure third-party telemetry products (such as Jaeger, Zipkin, and Grafana), but we cannot guarantee future compatibility and Cloud Support cannot provide help managing them.

Networking

Destination rule

Feature	GKE clusters on Google Cloud	Other GKE Enterprise clusters
credentialName

Traffic interception/redirection mechanism

Feature	GKE clusters on Google Cloud	Other GKE Enterprise clusters
Traditional use of iptables using init containers with CAP_NET_ADMIN
Container Network Interface (CNI)	*	*

Protocol support

Services that are configured with Layer 7 capabilities for the following protocols are not supported: WebSocket, MongoDB, Redis, Kafka, Cassandra, RabbitMQ, Cloud SQL. You might be able to make the protocol work by using TCP byte stream support. If TCP byte stream cannot support the protocol (for example, Kafka sends a redirect address in a protocol-specific reply and this redirect is incompatible with Cloud Service Mesh's routing logic), then the protocol isn't supported.

Feature	GKE clusters on Google Cloud	Other GKE Enterprise clusters
IPv4
HTTP/1.1
HTTP/2
TCP byte streams ^(Note 1)
gRPC
IPv6

Notes:

1. Although TCP is a supported protocol for networking, TCP metrics aren't collected or reported. Metrics are displayed only for HTTP services in the Google Cloud console.

Envoy deployments

Feature	GKE clusters on Google Cloud	Other GKE Enterprise clusters
Sidecars
Ingress gateway
Egress directly out from sidecars
Egress using egress gateways	*	*

CRD support

Feature	GKE clusters on Google Cloud	Other GKE Enterprise clusters
Istio API support (exceptions below)
custom Envoy filters

Load balancer for the Istio ingress gateway

Feature	GKE clusters on Google Cloud	Other GKE Enterprise clusters
Third-party external load balancer
Google Cloud Internal load balancer	*	Not supported. See the links below.

For information on configuring load balancers, see the following:

• Setting up your load balancer for Google Distributed Cloud (software only) for VMware
• GKE on AWS: Creating a load balancer
• Expose an ingress gateway using an external load balancer

Kubernetes Gateway API (preview)

In Cloud Service Mesh v1.20 the Kubernetes Gateway API is available as a public preview.

Feature	GKE clusters on Google Cloud	Other GKE Enterprise clusters
Ingress
Gateway with class: istio
HttpRoute using parentRef
Mesh traffic
Configuring Istio CRDs using the targetRef field including AuthorizationPolicy, RequestAuthentication, Telemetry and WasmPlugin

Warning: Microsoft AKS attached and GKE on Azure clusters require an additional step to use the Kubernetes Gateway API.

If you are using Microsoft AKS attached clusters or GKE on Azure clusters, you must set the following annotation for the gateway resource to configure health checks over TCP:

  service.beta.kubernetes.io/port_80_health-probe_protocol: tcp

Otherwise, HTTP traffic won't be accepted.

Kubernetes Gateway API preview requirements

The Kubernetes Gateway API preview has the following requirements:

• Use the default automated deployments behavior for Gateways.

• Use the HttpRoute CRD for routing configurations. The HttpRoute must have a parentRef pointing to a Gateway.

• Don't use Istio Gateway CRs and Kubernetes Gateway API CRs on the same cluster.

Load balancing policies

Feature	GKE clusters on Google Cloud	Other GKE Enterprise clusters
Round robin
Least connections
Random
Passthrough
Consistent hash
Locality

For more information on load balancing policies, see Destination Rules.

Data plane

Feature	GKE clusters on Google Cloud	Other GKE Enterprise clusters
Sidecar
Ambient

Multi-cluster support

For multi-primary deployments of GKE clusters in different projects, all the clusters must be in a shared Virtual Private Cloud (VPC).

Network

Feature	GKE clusters on Google Cloud	GKE Enterprise clusters on-premises	GKE on AWS	GKE on Azure	Attached clusters
Single network
Multi-network

Notes:

• For attached clusters, only multi-cluster meshes spanning a single platform (Microsoft AKS, Amazon EKS) are supported at this time.

Deployment model

Feature	GKE clusters on Google Cloud	GKE Enterprise clusters on-premises	GKE Enterprise on other public clouds	Attached clusters
Multi-primary
Primary-remote

Notes on terminology:

• A primary cluster is a cluster with a control plane. A single mesh can have more than one primary cluster for high availability or to reduce latency. In the Istio 1.7 documentation, a multi-primary deployment is referred to as a replicated control plane.

• A remote cluster is a cluster that connects to a control plane residing outside of the cluster. A remote cluster can connect to a control plane running in a primary cluster or to an external control plane.

• Cloud Service Mesh uses a simplified definition of network based on general connectivity. Workload instances are on the same network if they are able to communicate directly, without a gateway.

User interface

Feature	GKE clusters on Google Cloud	Google Distributed Cloud	Google Distributed Cloud (software only) for bare metal	Other GKE Enterprise clusters
Cloud Service Mesh dashboards in the Google Cloud console		*	*	*
Cloud Monitoring				*
Cloud Logging				*
Cloud Trace				*

Note: On-premises clusters require GKE Enterprise version 1.11 or later. For more information on upgrading see Upgrading Google Distributed Cloud (software only) for VMware or Upgrading Google Distributed Cloud (software only) for bare metal.