Tetrate Glossary and Definitions

Istio

The Istio Project

Istio is an open-source Service Mesh that extends Kubernetes with a programmable, service-aware network. Istio supports both Kubernetes and traditional workloads, bringing traffic management, telemetry and security in a standard implementation for all workload types.

The Istio project is developed and maintained by a community of providers and consultants, including Tetrate. You'll find it hosted at istio.io.

Community Istio Distribution

The community Istio distribution (often referred to as simply istio) is the build of Istio developed and maintained by the Istio community.

The community Istio distribution is made up of two components:

• The open-source Istio Software that implements the Istio functionality (control-plane, data-plane)
• Base software images, such as golang, boringssl, and envoy which are required parts of the distribution, but are not part of the Istio project

Each community Istio distribution release is supported and maintained (community technical support, bug-fixes, security fixes, CVE updates for base software) for approximately 7 months.

Tetrate Istio Distribution

The Tetrate Istio distribution is a build of the Community Istio Distribution that is supported and maintained by Tetrate. It is built from the official, open-source Istio Software, and a set of base software images that are selected and maintained by Tetrate.

Each Tetrate Istio distribution release is supported and maintained by Tetrate for up-to 14 months.

Tetrate also support and maintain a FIPS-validated build of Tetrate Istio distribution, which is available to Tetrate subscribers.

For more information, refer to the project Support and Maintenance document.

Tetrate Products

Tetrate Istio Distro

Tetrate Istio Distro provides a set of Istio builds (Tetrate Istio distributions) that are supported and maintained beyond upstream Istio.

Tetrate Istio Distribution is built entirely on open source. The binaries are available at no cost, and support is provided by Tetrate Community Slack channels and the Istio community.

For product documentation, visit the Tetrate Istio Distro docs site.

Tetrate Istio Subscription

Tetrate Istio Subscription provides a set of Istio builds (Tetrate Istio distributions) that are supported and maintained beyond upstream Istio, and a growing set of supported Add-Ons for Enterprise use cases. Tetrate Istio Subscription also includes FIPS-validated builds for FedRamp and other compliance-sensitive use cases.

Support is provided by Tetrate Enterprise Support, and includes proactive notification of critical security updates.

For product documentation, visit the Tetrate Istio Subscription docs site.