smi-spec VS pipy

The Service Mesh Interface (SMI) specification was created to solve this portability issue.

> I suspect if a Service Mesh is ultimately shown to have broad value, one will make it's way into the K8S core

I'm not so sure. I suspect it'll follow the same roadmap as Gateway API, which it already kind of is with the Service Mesh Interface (https://smi-spec.io/)

It is very common that a service mesh deploys a control plane and a data plane. The control plane does what you might expect; it controls the service mesh and gives you the ability to interact with it. Many service meshes implement the Service Mesh Interface (SMI) which is an API specification to standardize the way cluster operators interact with and implement features.

Before we start, let's review the SMI Access Control Specification. There are two forms of traffic policies in osm-edge: Permissive Mode and Traffic Policy Mode. The former allows services in the mesh to access each other, while the latter requires the provision of the appropriate traffic policy to be accessible.

osm-edge is a simple, complete, and standalone service mesh and ships out-of-the-box with all the necessary components to deploy a complete service mesh. As a lightweight and SMI-compatible Service Mesh, osm-edge is designed to be intuitive and scalable.

I started on Monday, attending ServiceMeshCon2019. My guesstimate is that about 1000 people attended it. I believe Service Mesh is playing such a crucial role in scaling cloud native technologies that large scale cloud-native deployments may not be possible without service mesh. Just like you cannot really succeed in deploying a microservices based application without a microservices orchestration engine, like Kubernetes, you cannot scale the size and capacity of a microservices-based application without service mesh. That’s what makes it so compelling to see all the service mesh creators — Istio, Linkerd, Consul, Kuma — and listen to them. There was also a lot of discussion of SMI (Service Mesh Interface) — a common interface among all services mesh. The panel at the end of the day included all the major service mesh players, and some very thought provoking questions were asked and answered by the panel.

Do you need a Service Mesh?

In the episode with Annie, she gave a great overview of the CNCF and a handful of projects that she's excited about. Those include Helm, Linkerd, Kudo, Keda and Artifact Hub. I gave a bonus example of the Service Mesh Interface project.

SMI official website: https://smi-spec.io

Pipy is an open-source, lightweight, high-performance, modular, programmable, cloud-native network stream processor that is ideal for a variety of use cases ranging from (but not limited to) edge routers, load balancers & proxy solutions, API gateways, static HTTP servers, service mesh sidecars, and other applications. Previously we have covered several use cases, and in this blog post will continue our learning of Pipy by implementing an HTTP Tunnel functionality by only using the PipyJS scripting language.

If you are interested in learning more about SMI-compatible Service Mesh, FSM, and Programmable Proxy, visit our website Flomesh.io for more detailed documentation, tutorials, and use cases.

But as the complexity of your apps and architecture grows, you might require more fine–grain control over your services. And if your organization requires Zero Trust and has a need for end–to–end encryption like mTLS, you should consider a service mesh like osm-edge a light weight, ultra fast, low resources, highly extensible, Service Mesh Interface (SMI) compatible, built for edge and cloud computing service mesh. When you have communication between services (east–west traffic), a service mesh allows you to control traffic at that level.

Below we list the most remarkable changes in the Core API and PipyJS. For a detailed change log, refer to Pipy Release Page

Flomesh Service Mesh(FSM) from Flomesh is Kubernetes North-South traffic manager, provides Ingress controllers, Gateway API, Load Balancer, and cross-cluster service registration and service discovery. FSM uses Pipy - a programmable network proxy, as its data plane and is suitable for cloud, edge, and IoT.

FSM is another open-source product from Flomesh for Kubernetes north-south traffic, gateway api contoller, and multi-cluster management. FSM uses Pipy, a programmable proxy at its core, and provides an Ingress controller, Gateway API controller, load balancer, cross-cluster service registration discovery, and more.

osm-edge is built on top of Open Service Mesh (OSM) v1.1.0 codebase and is a lightweight service mesh for resource-sensitive cloud environments and edge computing scenarios. It uses osm as the control plane and Pipy as the data plane and features high performance, low resources, simplicity, ease of use, scalability, and compatibility (x86/arm64 support).

We're very happy to announce the release of osm-edge 1.1. This release is the culmination of months of effort from the flomesh.io team and we are very excited to unveil it today. osm-edge is built on top of Open Service Mesh v1.1.0 codebase and is built purposely for edge computing and uses lightweight, high-performant, cloud native, and programmable proxy Pipy as its data plane and sidecar proxy.

Below we list the most remarkable changes in the Core API and PipyJS. For detailed change log refer to Pipy Release Page