This page describes features that are supported in Anthos Service Mesh 1.11.8 with an in-cluster control plane. To see the supported features for Anthos Service Mesh 1.11.8 with a Google-managed control plane instead, see Google-managed control plane.
Supported versions
Support for Anthos Service Mesh follows the Anthos Version Support Policy. Google supports the current and previous two (n-2) minor versions of Anthos Service Mesh. The following table shows the supported versions of Anthos Service Mesh and the earliest end-of-life (EOL) date for a version.
| Release version | Release date | Earliest EOL date |
|---|---|---|
| 1.14 | July 20, 2022 | April 20, 2023 |
| 1.13 | March 30, 2022 | December 30, 2022 |
| 1.12 | December 9, 2021 | September 9, 2022 |
If you are on an unsupported version of Anthos Service Mesh, then you must upgrade to Anthos Service Mesh v1.12 or later. For information on how to upgrade, see Upgrade Anthos Service Mesh.
The following table shows the unsupported versions of Anthos Service Mesh and their end-of-life (EOL) date.
| Release version | Release date | EOL date |
|---|---|---|
| 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 and whether the GKE on Google Cloud clusters are in the same project or in different projects.
The Other Anthos clusters columns refer to clusters that are outside of Google Cloud, for example:
- Anthos on-prem - Includes Anthos clusters on VMware (GKE on-prem) and Anthos on bare metal. Unless there are differences between the platforms, this page uses Anthos on-prem.
- Anthos clusters on AWS - Includes Anthos Multi-Cloud and previous generation.
- Amazon EKS 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 Anthos 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 Anthos Service Mesh 1.11.8.
The default and optional features are fully supported by Google Cloud Support. Features not explicitly listed in the tables receive best-effort support.
Install/upgrade/downgrades
Using install_asm and istioctl install is deprecated and support for these
tools for installations and upgrades of Anthos Service Mesh will be removed when
Anthos Service Mesh 1.12 is released. Please update your scripts and tools to use
asmcli. For more information see
Transitioning to asmcli.
The other methods of installing Istio
are unsupported.
Using asmcli
| Feature | GKE clusters on Google Cloud | Anthos on-prem | Anthos clusters on AWS | Amazon EKS clusters |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New installations | ||||
| Upgrades | ||||
| Enabling optional features |
Using the install_asm script
The install_asm script calls istioctl install. For more information about
the install_asm script, see
GKE single project.
| Feature | GKE clusters on Google Cloud same project | GKE clusters on Google Cloud different projects | Other Anthos clusters |
|---|---|---|---|
| New installations | |||
| Upgrades | |||
| Enabling optional features |
Using istioctl install
| Feature | GKE clusters on Google Cloud | Other Anthos clusters |
|---|---|---|
| New installations | ||
| Upgrades | ||
| Enabling optional features |
For information on migrating from OSS Istio to Anthos Service Mesh, see Migrating from Istio 1.7 or later to Anthos Service Mesh and Mesh CA.
Security
Certificate distribution/rotation mechanisms
| Feature | GKE clusters on Google Cloud | Other Anthos clusters |
|---|---|---|
| Workload certificate management | ||
| External certificate management on ingress and egress gateways. |
Certificate authority (CA) support
| Feature | GKE clusters on Google Cloud | Anthos clusters on-premises | Other Anthos clusters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anthos Service Mesh certificate authority (Mesh CA) | |||
| Certificate Authority Service | |||
| Istio CA (previously known as Citadel) | * | * | |
| Integration with custom CAs |
Anthos Service Mesh security features
In addition to supporting Istio security features, Anthos Service Mesh provides even more capabilities to help you secure your applications.
| Feature | GKE clusters on Google Cloud | Anthos on-prem | Anthos clusters on AWS | Amazon EKS clusters |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IAP integration | ||||
| End-user authentication | ||||
| Audit policies | * | |||
| Authorization policy advanced features (dry-run mode and denial logging) |
Authorization policy
| Feature | GKE clusters on Google Cloud | Other Anthos clusters |
|---|---|---|
| Authorization v1beta1 policy |
Authentication policy
Peer authentication
| Feature | GKE clusters on Google Cloud | Other Anthos 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 Anthos clusters |
|---|---|---|
| JWT authentication |
Telemetry
Metrics
| Feature | GKE clusters on Google Cloud | Anthos clusters on-premises | Other Anthos clusters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cloud Monitoring (HTTP in-proxy metrics) | |||
| Cloud Monitoring (TCP in-proxy metrics) | |||
| Prometheus metrics export to customer-installed Prometheus, Grafana, and Kiali dashboards | Compatible | Compatible | Compatible |
| Custom adapters/backends, in or out of process | |||
| Arbitrary telemetry and logging backends | |||
| The integration between Anthos Service Mesh and metrics export to Prometheus is supported. | |||
| 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. | |||
Access logging
| Feature | GKE clusters on Google Cloud | Anthos clusters on-premises | Other Anthos clusters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cloud Logging | |||
Direct Envoy to stdout |
* | * | * |
Tracing
| Feature | GKE clusters on Google Cloud | Anthos clusters on-premises | Other Anthos 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 |
| The integration between Anthos Service Mesh and Jaeger or Zipkin is supported. See Distributed Tracing for details. | |||
Networking
Traffic interception/redirection mechanism
| Feature | GKE clusters on Google Cloud | Other Anthos 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 Anthos Service Mesh's routing logic), then the protocol isn't supported.
| Feature | GKE clusters on Google Cloud | Other Anthos clusters |
|---|---|---|
| IPv4 | ||
| HTTP/1.1 | ||
| HTTP/2 | ||
| TCP byte streams (Note 1) | ||
| gRPC | ||
| IPv6 |
Notes:
- Although TCP is a supported protocol for networking, TCP metrics aren't collected or reported. Metrics are displayed only for HTTP services in the console.
Envoy deployments
| Feature | GKE clusters on Google Cloud | Other Anthos clusters |
|---|---|---|
| Sidecars | ||
| Ingress gateway | ||
| Egress directly out from sidecars | ||
| Egress using egress gateways | * | * |
CRD support
| Feature | GKE clusters on Google Cloud | Other Anthos clusters |
|---|---|---|
| Istio API support (exceptions below) | ||
| custom Envoy filters |
Load balancer for the Istio ingress gateway
| Feature | GKE clusters on Google Cloud | Other Anthos clusters |
|---|---|---|
| Public 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 Anthos clusters on VMware
- Anthos clusters on AWS: Creating a load balancer
Load balancing policies
| Feature | GKE clusters on Google Cloud | Other Anthos clusters |
|---|---|---|
| Round-robin | ||
| Least connections | ||
| Random | ||
| Passthrough | ||
| Consistent hash | ||
| Locality-weighted |
For more information on load balancing policies, see Destination Rules.
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 | Anthos clusters on-premises | Other Anthos clusters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Single network | |||
| Multi-network |
Deployment model
| Feature | GKE clusters on Google Cloud | Anthos clusters on-premises | Other Anthos 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.
Anthos 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 same project | GKE clusters on Google Cloud different projects | Anthos clusters on VMware (GKE on-prem) | Anthos on bare metal | Other Anthos clusters |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anthos Service Mesh dashboards in the console | |||||
| Cloud Monitoring | |||||
| Cloud Logging | |||||
| Cloud Trace |