Evaluating Istio for Microservices Observability
Evaluating Istio for Microservices Observability

Evaluating Istio for Microservices Observability

Author
Shiv Bade
Tags
istio
observability
Published
June 10, 2018
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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.