Istio was getting a lot of attention this quarter — and I finally got a chance to evaluate it for observability use cases.
What impressed me:
- Sidecar pattern meant zero code changes
- Native metrics via Prometheus
- Distributed tracing with Jaeger
What concerned me:
- Steep learning curve
- Debugging envoy config wasn’t fun
- Resource overhead wasn’t negligible
Still, the out-of-the-box observability, retries, and circuit breakers made it attractive for teams struggling with consistency across services.
Verdict: Not for every team, but a strong candidate for multi-service environments needing robust traffic control.