Service mesh
A service mesh is an infrastructure layer that manages communication and cross-cutting concerns such as traffic control, security, and observability between distributed services.
Effective Platform Engineering
A service mesh is an infrastructure layer that manages communication, routing, security, and observability between application services.
- How it is used
- Standardizes microservice communication policies and supports a self-service ingress pattern in an engineering platform.
- How deep it goes
- Explains proxy behavior and placement trade-offs, then demonstrates Istio deployment and ingress configuration; it does not detail proxy internals.
- Examples
- Uses token validation, connection retries, encrypted proxy traffic, and an HTTPS request routed through an Istio VirtualService.
- What you can do after
- Apply it via Istio to configure application ingress and verify an HTTPS route with a functional test.
Read how Effective Platform Engineering explains service mesh →
Authorization in Action
A service mesh is an infrastructure layer that manages communication among microservices, including routing, load balancing, discovery, security, and observability.
- How it is used
- Secures internal microservice API calls by enforcing authorization at each service-to-service hop.
- How deep it goes
- Explains sidecar request flow, mTLS identity, Cedar decisions, and gateway or proxy tradeoffs without detailing mesh installation.
- Examples
- Illustrates Docs sending documents to Search, where Legal documents are denied indexing and other documents are allowed.
- What you can do after
- Evaluate/understand where mesh sidecars provide internal authorization coverage relative to API gateways and per-service proxies.
Software Security for Developers
A service mesh is an infrastructure layer that manages communication between distributed services, commonly providing traffic control, observability, and security.
- How it is used
- Secures internal microservice communication by centralizing mTLS, service identity checks, and baseline authorization outside application code.
- How deep it goes
- Explains mTLS, sidecars, traffic direction, policy placement, and tradeoffs, but does not detail mesh configuration or protocol internals.
- Examples
- Uses inventory calls, sidecars, internal east-west traffic, external north-south traffic, API gateways, and Istio as concrete examples.
- What you can do after
- Evaluate authorization placement and apply a mixed model that combines mesh enforcement with application-level business rules.
Read how Software Security for Developers explains service mesh →
Google Anthos in Action
A service mesh is an infrastructure layer that manages communication, traffic, security, and observability for distributed services.
- How it is used
- Manages communication, security, observability, resilience, and traffic flow across distributed services.
- How deep it goes
- Explains control-plane responsibilities, sidecar and proxyless architectures, telemetry, security, and deployment patterns without detailing implementation configuration.
- Examples
- Uses sidecars, proxyless services, telemetry dashboards, weighted canaries, A/B tests, retries, circuit breaking, and migration bridging.
- What you can do after
- Operate service communication through Anthos Service Mesh, inspect dependencies and metrics, secure traffic, and control progressive releases.
Kubernetes in Action, Second Edition
A service mesh is an infrastructure layer that manages communication, observability, traffic, and security between services without requiring application code changes.
- How it is used
- Manages communication, observability, traffic, and security between services without requiring application code changes.
- How deep it goes
- Defines east/west service communication and configuration models, but defers a full service-mesh explanation.
- Examples
- Uses an HTTPRoute with a destination Service parentRef to represent direct interservice traffic.
- What you can do after
- Apply it via Gateway API and GAMMA concepts to configure communication between services.
Read how Kubernetes in Action, Second Edition explains service mesh →
Kafka for Architects
A service mesh is an infrastructure layer that manages service-to-service communication and cross-cutting network concerns independently of service business logic.
- How it is used
- Separates microservice business functionality from standardized service-to-service communication and cross-cutting infrastructure concerns.
- How deep it goes
- Explains the sidecar split, proxy routing, configurable concerns, and contrast with centralized middleware without detailing implementation.
- Examples
- Uses separate business-logic and sidecar containers, with traffic routed through proxies handling encryption, retries, auditing, and load balancing.
- What you can do after
- Operate/configure reusable sidecars to offload integration responsibilities from microservice business code.
Related concepts
- Istioincludes · Istio is an open-source service mesh platform that provides traffic management, security, and observability for service-to-service communication.
- control planehas part · A control plane is the management and coordination part of a system that governs the configuration, policies, state, and operations of its components and resources.
- data planehas part · A data plane is the part of a networked or distributed system that executes workloads and carries or processes application data and traffic.
- sidecar processuses · The sidecar pattern deploys an auxiliary process or component alongside a primary application to provide supporting functionality separately from the application’s core code.
- API gatewayalternative to · An API gateway is an intermediary that provides an entry point for client requests to backend APIs or services and routes or otherwise mediates those requests.
These guides are generated from the text of Manning books by Manning's knowledge graph and link to the sections they draw on. The full books are available on liveBook and at manning.com.