In-cluster control plane supported features
This page describes features that are supported in Cloud Service Mesh 1.19.10 with an in-cluster control plane. To see the supported features for Cloud Service Mesh 1.19.10 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, 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 1.20 | February 8, 2024 | November 8, 2024 |
| 1.19 | October 31, 2023 | July 31, 2024 |
| 1.18 | August 3, 2023 | June 1, 2024 |
If you are on an unsupported version of Cloud Service Mesh, then you must upgrade to Cloud Service Mesh 1.17 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 1.17 | 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
This page uses Google Distributed Cloud where the same support is available on both Google Distributed Cloud and Google Distributed Cloud, and the specific platform where there are differences between the platforms.
GKE Enterprise on other public clouds:
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 1.19.10.
The default and optional features are fully supported by Google Cloud Support. Features not explicitly listed in the tables receive best-effort support.
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 |
Anthos 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 |
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:
- Third-party JWT is enabled by default.
Base Images
| Feature | GKE clusters on Google Cloud | Other GKE Enterprise clusters |
|---|---|---|
| Distroless proxy image |
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 |
Networking
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:
- 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
- GKE on AWS: Creating a load balancer
- Expose an ingress gateway using an external load balancer
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.
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 | 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 or Upgrading Google Distributed Cloud.