Alibaba Cloud Service Mesh:Historical release notes (before 2023)

Feature

Description

Region

Supported Istio version

Edition

References

Adaptive xDS optimization

The adaptive xDS optimization feature is added to automatically generate sidecars that contain service configurations. The feature analyzes the call dependencies among services in an ASM instance based on access logs. This is more efficient compared with the mechanism in which the control plane pushes all service configurations to sidecars on the data plane.

All regions

1.15 and later

Enterprise and Ultimate

Use adaptive xDS optimization to improve the configuration push efficiency of the control plane

Custom authorization service

The custom authorization service can be configured by using an ingress gateway in a few steps. This enhanced the security capabilities of ingress gateways.

All regions

1.15 and later

Enterprise and Ultimate

Implement custom authorization by using an ingress gateway

Enhanced observability with SLOs

Service level objectives (SLOs) can be configured for applications in ASM. After you configure SLOs for an application in ASM, a Prometheus rule is automatically generated. You can import the generated Prometheus rule to the Prometheus system for the SLOs to take effect.

All regions

1.15 and later

Enterprise and Ultimate

Configure SLOs for applications in ASM

OPA version update

The version of Open Policy Agent (OPA) is updated to 0.46.1, and more features are supported.

All regions

1.15 and later

All

Use OPA to implement fine-grained access control in ASM

Feature

Description

Region

Supported Istio version

Edition

References

Support for Istio 1.15.x versions

Open source Istio 1.15 series and Kubernetes 1.21 to 1.25 versions are supported.

All regions

1.15

All

None

Enhanced security capabilities of ingress gateways

A whitelist or blacklist can be configured for an ingress gateway to accept or reject requests from a specific IP address, HTTP domain, or port.

All regions

1.15 and later

Enterprise and Ultimate

Configure a blacklist or whitelist for an ingress gateway

Inbound traffic interception by using the TPROXY mode

• Inbound traffic interception can be implemented by using a transparent proxy so that source IP addresses and port numbers are preserved.

• The TPROXY mode can be set at the global, namespace, and workload levels.

All regions

1.15 and later

Enterprise and Ultimate

Preserve the source IP address of a client when the client accesses services in ASM

Advanced features of Managed Service for OpenTelemetry

Advanced features of Managed Service for OpenTelemetry are supported. You can specify a sampling percentage and set tags for applications.

All regions

1.15 and later

Enterprise and Ultimate

None

Generation of SLOs based on Prometheus monitoring

SLOs and alert rules can be generated based on the monitoring metrics.

All regions

1.15 and later

Enterprise and Ultimate

SLO overview

Configuration of TLS versions for the ingress gateway

Transport Layer Security (TLS) of versions earlier than V1.2 can be disabled to enhance the security of the ingress gateway.

All regions

1.14 and later

Enterprise and Ultimate

Configure TLS versions on an ingress gateway to enhance security

Feature

Description

Region

Supported Istio version

Edition

References

CNI plug-in

• Pod traffic redirection by using the Container Network Interface (CNI) plug-in is supported in ASM. You no longer need to configure iptables rules in each pod to manage the traffic flow of the pod.

• The CNI plug-in does not require that you have elevated Kubernetes role-based access control (RBAC) permissions. This reduces the requirements for user permissions and improves the security of Service Mesh.

All regions

1.14 and later

Enterprise and Ultimate

Enable a CNI plug-in to improve security

Selective service discovery

The selective service discovery feature is supported. You can use this feature to ensure that the Service Mesh control plane discovers and processes only applications in the data-plane namespaces that you specify. This way, the control plane pushes configurations to the data plane in a more efficient manner.

All regions

1.14 and later

All

Use service discovery selectors to improve the efficiency of pushing ASM configurations

Topology-powered observability

The mesh topology feature of ASM is enhanced. You can use this feature to view the topology and monitor the traffic flow in your ASM instance. This way, you can understand the structure and health status of your Service Mesh instance.

All regions

1.14 and later

All

Use Mesh Topology to view the topology of an application

ASM security policies

• ASM security policies are added. You can use the security policies to encapsulate scenario-based Istio native security resources. This way, you can complete security configurations with ease in common scenarios.

• ASM security policies are implemented by using one of the following methods: single sign-on (SSO) by using OpenID Connect (OIDC) and JSON Web Token (JWT) authentication. You can specify the workloads and requests on which an ASM security policy takes effect.

All regions

1.14 and later

Enterprise and Ultimate

Overview of ASM security policies

Observability of throttling metrics

Throttling metrics are collected and displayed. After you configure local throttling for an ASM instance, you can view the collected throttling metrics.

All regions

1.14 and later

Enterprise and Ultimate

Configure local throttling in ASM

Trial run of security policies

ASM administrators can conduct trial runs for security policies to ensure that the effect of the security policies meets expectations.

All regions

1.14 and later

All

Run an ASM authorization policy in trial mode

Management of applications in ACK edge clusters

Management of applications in Container Service for Kubernetes (ACK) edge clusters that are added to Service Mesh instances is supported.

All regions

1.14 and later

Enterprise and Ultimate

Manage applications in ACK edge clusters

Support for the flow management feature in lane mode

The isolation of traffic flow from the ingress gateway to different services is supported. This facilitates the release of multiple services and the parallel development of multiple versions of a service.

All regions

1.14 and later

Enterprise and Ultimate

Use lanes to manage traffic

Feature

Description

Region

Supported Istio version

Edition

References

Competence Center

The Competence Center page is added to the ASM console. The page provides an overview of the features that you can integrate with ASM.

All regions

All

All

Ecosystem integration

Instance warm-up

New instances have time to warm up before processing requests that are distributed based on the specified load balancing policy. This prevents new instances from being knocked down by a large number of simultaneous requests when the instances are starting.

All regions

1.14 and later

Enterprise and Ultimate

Use the warm-up feature

Trial run of security policies

ASM administrators can conduct trial runs for security policies to ensure that the effect of the security policies meets expectations.

All regions

1.14 and later

All

Run an ASM authorization policy in trial mode

Latency-related parameters available in access logs

You can edit the access log format to add latency-related parameters that provide reference for latency analysis.

All regions

All

All

None

Easier sidecar proxy configuration

• Default values are provided for you to configure global settings for a sidecar proxy.

• Recommended configurations are provided for you to configure the lifecycle of a sidecar proxy.

• The ASM console provides the same configuration items on the pages used to configure a sidecar proxy at the namespace level and the workload level.

All regions

All

All

Sidecar proxy management

Support for multiple JWT algorithms

ASM administrators can choose among different JWT algorithms for request authentication.

All regions

1.13 and later

All

JWT FAQ

OIDC-based SSO

SSO to applications in ASM is supported. You can authorize an OIDC application that is added to an Alibaba Cloud Identity as a Service (IDaaS) instance by using the external authorization service of ASM, and use the authorized OIDC identity provider to get access to all the applications in ASM. Alibaba Cloud IDaaS and user-created identity authentication services are supported.

All regions

1.13 and later

All

• Integrate Alibaba Cloud IDaaS with ASM to implement single sign-on

• Integrate Keycloak with ASM to implement SSO

Feature

Description

Region

Supported Istio version

Edition

References

Support for Istio 1.14.x versions

• Open source Istio 1.14 series and Kubernetes 1.21 to 1.25 versions are supported.

• The mesh diagnostics feature is enhanced to improve the troubleshooting efficiency of users.

• Enhanced rendering techniques are used to display the call topology between application services and ASM information in different dimensions.

• Third-party tokens are compatible with ACK clusters. This feature improves workload security.

• A plug-in marketplace is released. Out-of-the-box plug-ins allow users to customize Envoy filters.

All regions

1.14

All

• Enable plug-ins to extend ASM capabilities

• Manage Envoy filters

Intra-zone Provider First

The Intra-zone Provider First (also called intra-zone routing) feature is added. You can use this feature without the need to modify the application code. This feature makes traffic flow in the same zone to reduce service latency.

All regions

1.13 and later

Enterprise and Ultimate

Enable the Intra-zone Provider First feature

Enhanced Ingress gateway features and optimized user interface (UI)

• Route-level circuit breaking is supported.

• The UIs for domain names, certificates, upstream services, and route management are optimized.

All regions

1.13 and later

Enterprise and Ultimate

Use the route-level circuit breaking feature of ASM

Feature

Description

Region

Supported Istio version

Edition

References

New region

ASM is available in the Philippines (Manila) region.

Philippines (Manila)

1.13 and later

Standard, Enterprise, and Ultimate

Supported regions

Support for Istio 1.13.x versions

The component version is updated.

All regions

1.13

Standard, Enterprise, and Ultimate

None

Canary release of the Istio control plane

A smoother update method is provided in addition to the in-place update for the Istio control plane. Canary release ensures the availability of the control plane during the update process and supports quick rollback.

All regions

1.13 and later

Enterprise and Ultimate

Update an ASM instance

Integration with Alibaba Cloud IDaaS to support external authorization and SSO

External authorization and SSO are supported. Service Mesh uses the external authorization capability to allow access requests authenticated by using the OIDC protocol.

All regions

1.13 and later

Standard, Enterprise, and Ultimate

• Integrate Alibaba Cloud IDaaS with ASM to implement single sign-on

• Integrate Keycloak with ASM to implement SSO

Management of Istio resources by using software development kits (SDKs)

SDKs for Golang and Java are supported to manage Istio resources.

All regions

All

Standard, Enterprise, and Ultimate

• Use ASM SDK to manage Istio resources in code

• Use the SDK for Java to manage Istio resources

• Use the SDK for Go to manage Istio resources

Feature

Description

Region

References

Support for Istio 1.13.4

Istio 1.13.4 is supported. This feature is in canary release.

All regions

None

Integration with systems such as ArgoCD, Argo Rollouts, Apsara DevOps, and Flagger

Systems such as ArgoCD, Argo Rollouts, , Apsara DevOps, and Flagger are integrated with ASM to implement blue-green or canary release of application services based on traffic management.

All regions

• Integrate ArgoCD with ASM to implement GitOps

• Integrate ASM with Argo Rollouts to implement canary releases

Knative components and traffic-based auto scaling

The installation and deployment of Knative components and traffic-based auto scaling are supported. This allows you to install and use Knative components without the need to maintain Istio.

All regions

Serverless containers and traffic-based auto scaling

Support for AI services based on KServe

AI services based on KServe is supported. This feature allows you to implement blue-green or canary release of model services and control traffic distribution among different versions of the services. KServe allows you to deploy serverless inference workloads that support auto scaling, and supports high scalability and concurrency-based intelligent routing.

All regions

Run AI services based on KServe

Integration with ALB by using Ingress gateways

Integration with Application Load Balancer (ALB) by using Ingress gateways is supported. This feature allows you to use ALB and ASM together.

All regions

Integrate ASM with ALB by using Ingress gateways

Enhanced observability

Mesh Topology, Prometheus monitoring, log center, and log dashboard features can be enabled for an ASM instance with a few clicks. These features are in the Enabled state after they are enabled. If a status error occurs, you are prompted with an error message. This improves the observability and user experience of ASM.

All regions

None

More traffic management features provided

• getHeader(key) can be configured by using TrafficLabel CustomResourceDefinition (CRDs). This feature allows you to obtain traffic labels from request headers based on custom header keys.

• Regular expressions can be set for the matching rules of the secondary virtual service.

• The local throttling feature is enhanced. You can customize headers and the response body.

All regions

Use the local throttling feature of ASM

Synchronization of namespaces and tags from ACK clusters to global namespaces

Namespaces and tags can be synchronized from ACK clusters to global namespaces. This implements two-way synchronization of namespaces between ASM and ACK clusters.

All regions

None

Feature

Description

Region

References

Terraform for managing ASM instances

Terraform is supported to create and update ASM instances and grant permissions to RAM users.

All regions

Use Terraform to manage ASM instances

Support for Istio 1.12.4

The service management module is added to help you manage services and configure policies in an efficient manner. Mesh Topology can be used to observe applications in ASM instances. This feature provides a GUI that allows you to monitor service behavior.

All regions

• Use Istio resources to route traffic to different versions of a service

• Use Mesh Topology to view the topology of an application

Istio CNI plug-in

The CNI plug-in is supported to configure pod traffic redirection in the network setup phase of the pod lifecycle. If the CNI plug-in is enabled, pods no longer need to include an init container that requires the NET_ADMIN capability. This improves the security for ASM.

All regions

Enable a CNI plug-in to improve security

Configuration of a sidecar proxy by adding resource annotations

Configuration of a sidecar proxy by adding resource annotations is supported. You can modify the configurations of a sidecar proxy at the global, namespace, and workload levels. This allows you to implement more flexible and fine-grained management of sidecar proxies.

All regions

Configure a sidecar proxy by adding resource annotations

Enhanced mesh diagnosis capabilities

ASM instances can be diagnosed based on more items. This helps you identify more types of exceptions and locate the exceptions in an efficient manner.

All regions

Diagnose ASM instances

Enhanced observability

A unified dashboard is provided to view monitoring logs, Prometheus monitoring is enhanced, and the mesh topology is optimized.

All regions

Enable Mesh Topology to observe an ASM instance in the ASM console

Feature

Description

Region

References

Commercial release

Commercial editions of ASM are released on April 1, 2022. The commercial editions are Enterprise Edition and Ultimate Edition.

All regions

Billing rules

Envoy filter marketplace

Envoy filter templates are provided. You can bind Envoy filter templates to workloads to implement custom Envoy filter extensions.

All regions

Manage Envoy filters

Association or disassociation of an EIP with or from the API server

A public endpoint for the API server can be generated after an elastic IP address (EIP) is associated with the internal-facing Classic Load Balancer (CLB) instance configured for the API server. You can disassociate the EIP from the API server and associate a new EIP with the API server.

All regions

None

Multiple enhanced capabilities of ingress gateways

Capabilities of ingress gateways are enhanced. Ingress gateways support graceful shutdown of CLB connections, IPv6 addresses, certificate management, and multiple O&M and management capabilities. For example, you can retain the CLB instance of an ASM instance after the ASM instance is deleted, obtain the source IP address of a client that accesses an ingress gateway, and use CLB instances with different specifications to expose an ingress gateway.

All regions

• Enable graceful shutdown to prevent traffic loss

• Create an ingress gateway that uses an IPv6 address

• Bind a certificate to a domain name

• Access an ASM gateway by using multiple CLB instances

• Obtain the originating IP address of a client from the HTTP request header

• Configure traffic routing for an ASM gateway

Multiple enhanced security capabilities

• A role-based access control (RBAC) role can be used to implement fine-grained control over mesh management permissions. You can view the users that are authorized to access an ASM instance on the Authorization Information page after you access the details page of the ASM instance.

• The external authorization capability is enhanced. A header can be overwritten if access requests pass or fail to pass the authentication by an HTTP-based external authorization service.

• Refined Resource Access Management (RAM) authorization is supported to meet the diverse authorization requirements of users.

All regions

• Grant permissions to RAM users and RAM roles

• Implement custom authorization by using the gRPC protocol

Enhanced O&M capabilities

O&M capabilities are enhanced. The ASM console can detect the alert rules that you configure for the CLB instance for exposing Istio Pilot. You can navigate to the monitoring page of the CLB instance for exposing Istio Pilot from the ASM console.

All regions

None

Feature

Description

Region

References

OPA injection scope control

The injection scope of OPA can be controlled by using the opa-istio-injection label of a namespace. This decouples OPA from the automatic injection policy of Istio-proxy, and allows you to control the effective scope of OPA.

All regions

Control the injection scope of OPA sidecars

Domain name and certificate management

cert-manager can be used to issue certificates for ingress gateways. This way, you can use the ingress gateways to access services over HTTPS. This ensures data transmission security.

All regions

Use cert-manager to manage certificates for ASM gateways

Updated Envoy filter marketplace

Envoy filter templates can be bound to workloads to implement custom Envoy filter extensions. The following built-in templates are provided. You can also customize Envoy filter templates.

• Template that supports Spring Cloud services

• Template that adds the HTTP body to access logs

• Template that retains the case of request and response headers

• Template that sets the allow_connect parameter to true to allow updated protocol connections

• Template that adds request header information to response headers

• Template that adds HTTP response headers

All regions

None

Feature

Description

Region

References

Support for Istio 1.12.x versions and Kubernetes 1.22

Open source Istio 1.12 series and Kubernetes 1.22 are supported.

All regions

None

Envoy filter template

A plug-in center is added to the ASM console, in which Envoy filters can be managed. In addition, Envoy filters can be created by using Envoy filter templates.

All regions

Manage Envoy filters

Local throttling

The local throttling feature is supported in ASM to throttle the traffic of gateways and services so as to protect the system.

All regions

Use the local throttling feature of ASM

Feature

Description

Region

References

ASM gateway update

• ASM gateway details and configuration modification pages are added.

• ASM gateways can be associated with upstream services, and traffic policies can be created.

All regions

None

Enhanced ASM Professional Edition features

• CLB traffic is lossless when ASM gateway replica instances are offline.

• Gateways can be deployed on models that support Multi-Buffer for TLS acceleration.

All regions

None

Spring Cloud services

Spring Cloud services can be managed by using ASM.

All regions

Manage Spring Cloud services

New region

ASM is available in the China (Guangzhou), China (Hohhot), China (Heyuan), and India (Mumbai) regions.

China (Guangzhou), China (Hohhot), China (Heyuan), and India (Mumbai)

None

Support for Istio 1.11.5

Istio 1.11.5 is supported.

All regions

None

Feature

Description

Region

References

Flexible external authorization

External authorization services can be declared in meshes, and external authorization can be flexibly customized by using authorization policies.

All regions

Implement custom authorization by using the gRPC protocol

Sidecar resources automatically recommended based on access log analysis

Sidecar resources can be automatically recommended based on access log analysis. This way, the sidecars of workloads focus only on the services that have dependency relationships with the workloads.

All regions

Use the sidecars that are automatically recommended based on access log analysis

Global and namespace-level sidecar proxies

Global and namespace-level sidecar proxies can be configured in ASM.

All regions

Configure namespace-level sidecar proxies

Custom metrics

Custom metrics are supported in ASM. You can customize metrics for a specific ASM instance, namespace, or workload.

All regions

Create custom metrics in ASM

Dashboards for scenarios such as gateway monitoring and global mesh status monitoring

Dashboards can be added to monitor items such as gateways or global mesh status. On the details page of a mesh, choose Observability Management > Prometheus Monitoring in the left-side navigation pane. Then, you can add the dashboards on the Prometheus Monitoring page.

All regions

None

Support for Istio 1.10.5

Istio 1.10.5 is supported.

All regions

None

Feature

Description

Region

References

Multi-Buffer for TLS acceleration

Intel Multi-Buffer can be used to optimize the performance of TLS encryption and decryption. This way, encrypted communication between services can be accelerated.

All regions

Enable Multi-Buffer for TLS acceleration

Selective service discovery

Mesh administrators are allowed to modify global mesh configurations to optimize service discovery. This way, the control plane needs to only discover and process the services in a specific namespace.

All regions

Use service discovery selectors to improve the efficiency of pushing ASM configurations

Improved gateway updates

In the ASM console, the versions of ASM gateways can be viewed and ASM gateways can be manually updated on the gateway update page. This improves gateway stability during updates.

All regions

None

Detailed gateway and data plane logs

The log center feature is integrated into the observability management page of the ASM console. This allows you to view detailed gateway and data plane logs.

All regions

None

Check item for Envoy filters that are not provided by ASM on the control plane

A check item is provided by the mesh diagnostics feature. This check item allows you to check whether the control plane contains Envoy filters that are not provided by ASM.

All regions

None

Feature

Description

Region

References

Rollback of Istio resources to previous versions

When you update fields in the spec block of an Istio resource, ASM records the resource version before the update. ASM stores up to five latest versions. You can roll back an Istio resource to a previous version to meet your business needs.

All regions

Roll back an Istio resource to an earlier version

Support for the Kubernetes API of clusters on the data plane to access Istio resources

The Kubernetes API of clusters on the data plane is allowed to access ASM-managed Istio resources. You can use the kubeconfig file to install, update, and uninstall Helm packages, such as Istio resources.

All regions

Use the Kubernetes API of clusters on the data plane to access Istio resources

Cross-region failover and load balancing

The cross-region traffic distribution feature is supported to implement cross-region load balancing by routing traffic to multiple clusters based on their weights. The cross-region failover feature is also supported to implement cross-region disaster recovery by transferring traffic from a faulty region to another region.

All regions

Use ASM to implement cross-region disaster recovery and load balancing

Control-plane log collection and alerting

The control-plane log collection and alerting features are supported. For example, if the control plane pushes configurations to the sidecar proxies on the data plane, you can query the logs of the ASM instance for information about the operation.

All regions

Enable control-plane log collection and log-based alerting in an ASM instance of a version earlier than 1.17.2.35

Prometheus monitoring

ASM is integrated with Managed Service for Prometheus to allow you to view the statistics of data-plane services and workloads in the ASM console.

All regions

None

Optimized ASM gateways

• The Create ASM Gateways page is optimized to improve user experience.

  You can select a gateway type and specify the number of gateway instances when you create an ASM gateway.

• By default, horizontal pod autoscaling (HPA) is disabled. You can configure a Horizontal Pod Autoscaler for an ASM Professional Edition instance based on custom metrics including CPU and memory.

• By default, syntax checking is enabled to ensure the accuracy of the definition of Istio gateways.

All regions

None

Optimized access log collection feature

The access log collection feature is optimized. You can create new projects and use existing projects.

All regions

None

Feature

Description

Region

References

asmctl command line tool available for use

The asmctl diagnostics tool is provided to detect configuration problems in ASM.

All regions

• Install and use asmctl

• Common asmctl commands

OPA policy

OPA policies can be configured in the ASM console.

All regions

Use OPA to implement fine-grained access control in ASM

RBAC permissions

RAM users are allowed to grant each other RBAC permissions.

All regions

None

Custom access logs

The access logging feature can be configured and customized. ASM allows you to enable or disable the feature and customize the content of access logs on the data plane.

All regions

Customize access logs on the data plane

Cross-origin resource sharing (CORS)

CORS is supported. You can set the corsPolicy field in the virtual service that is defined for a service to allow cross-origin requests that are initiated to the service and enable CORS.

All regions

Implement CORS in ASM

GUI for destination rules and gateways

Destination rules and gateways can be created by using a GUI.

All regions

None

Feature

Description

Region

References

Zero-trust security capabilities

Multiple zero-trust security capabilities are supported, such as peer authentication, request authentication, Istio authorization policies, and OPA-based fine-grained permission control. You can use these capabilities to strengthen the security of applications.

All regions

None

Optimized ASM gateways

ASM gateways are optimized in the following ways:

• Custom host networks and Domain Name System (DNS) policies are supported.

• Rolling updates are supported in ASM Professional Edition. The rolling update feature allows you to perform scaling without interrupting the traffic of online business.

• High availability is supported for ASM gateways.

• Custom access logs are supported.

All regions

• Create and manage an ingress gateway by using the Kubernetes API

• Improve availability for the ingress gateway service of an ASM instance

Optimized ASM console

The ASM console is optimized. For example, security policies and virtual services can be created by using a GUI, custom resources can be created by using YAML templates, and the page for configuring automatic sidecar proxy injection is optimized.

All regions

Enable automatic sidecar proxy injection

Optimized ASM observability

• Mesh Topology is updated to V1.34.

• The monitoring metrics of Managed Service for Prometheus are obtained by Mesh Topology over the internal network. Before this feature update, the metrics are obtained over the Internet.

• The logs of an ingress gateway service are collected only by the Logstore that is specified for the ingress gateway service. Logstores that are used to collect the logs of sidecar proxies no longer collect the logs of ingress gateway services.

• The observability dashboards are optimized to fix the issue that dashboards display null values. The dashboards provide you with data such as top 10 provinces or cities with the most access traffic and top visitors by URL or IP address.

All regions

• Enable Mesh Topology to observe an ASM instance in the ASM console

• Use Simple Log Service to collect logs of ingress gateways on the data plane

• Use Simple Log Service to collect access logs on the data plane

Feature

Description

Region

References

Connection to one or more Consul service registries

ASM can be connected to one or more Consul service registries.

All regions

Connect to Consul

Dynamic update of OPA policies

The authorization mechanism of Service Mesh is improved to support the dynamic update of OPA policies.

All regions

Dynamically update OPA policies in ASM

Feature

Description

Region

References

Governance of applications deployed on edge Kubernetes clusters in ASM instances

Edge Kubernetes clusters that are provided by ACK can be added to Service Mesh instances. This allows you to manage ASM instances in edge computing scenarios that are powered by 5G networks. After this feature update, ASM provides unified governance for services that are deployed on all types of cloud-native heterogeneous computing infrastructure.

All regions

None

Five check items added to the mesh diagnostics feature of ASM

The following five check items are added to the mesh diagnostics feature of ASM:

• Check whether the istio-injection parameter is set to the same value for the namespaces on the data plane and control plane.

• Check whether a port under 1024 can be used in the pod of a gateway.

• Check whether the namespace of a destination rule is valid.

• Check whether the type of the secret of the TLS certificate that is referenced by a gateway is valid.

• Check whether the secret of the TLS certificate that is referenced by a gateway exists.

All regions

Diagnose ASM instances

Feature

Description

Region

References

Canary releases based on routing rules

Canary releases can be implemented based on routing rules. Scope configurations are extended CRDs. ASM Professional Edition instances allow you to use scope configurations to implement canary releases for pods by using virtual services or Envoy filters. You can use a scope configuration to configure a canary release in one of the following modes:

• Selector mode: To use this mode, you must add labels to one or more pods. Then, you can use a scope configuration to apply a rule to route traffic to specific pods based on the specified label information.

• RollingUpdate mode: In this mode, you can apply a rule to route traffic to pods by batch. Istio divides pods into batches as specified and then applies a rule to route traffic to the pods in batches.

You can use scope configurations to control the risks that are brought by changes in routing rules. You can also use scope configurations and Microservices Engine (MSE) to implement canary releases.

All regions

This feature is discontinued.

Feature

Description

Region

References

Delegate capabilities to configure virtual services in an ASM instance

Delegates are introduced to manage routing rules in a finer-grained manner. This reduces risks brought by changes in routing rules.

All regions

Use delegates to configure virtual services in an ASM instance

Gzip-based data compression

Gzip-based data compression is supported. After you enable data compression for the ingress gateway service of an ASM instance, the server compresses the response content for HTTP requests. This reduces response time and your traffic usage.

All regions

Enable data compression for the ingress gateway service of an ASM instance

WebAssembly (Wasm)-based Service Mesh instance extension

Wasm allows you to extend the data plane of an ASM instance with new features. Wasm-based Service Mesh instance extension can be enabled in the ASM console.

All regions

Use ORAS to simplify the Wasm-based Service Mesh instance extension

Feature

Description

Region

References

DNS proxy feature

The DNS proxy feature is supported. ASM uses Kubernetes services and defined service entries to configure hostname-to-IP-address mappings for all services that an application may access. When a Service Mesh instance with the DNS proxy feature enabled receives DNS queries from applications, the specified sidecar proxy transparently intercepts the queries and resolves the DNS information in these queries.

The DNS proxy feature improves the performance and availability of Service Mesh instances. You can enable or disable the feature in the ASM console or by using Alibaba Cloud CLI.

All regions

Use the DNS proxy feature in an ASM instance

Modification of kernel parameters

The kernel parameters of ingress gateway services can be modified. This improves the flexibility in optimizing the performance of ingress gateway services.

All regions

CRD fields for an ASM gateway

Read-only configurations

By default, the read-only mode is enabled for the configurations of the API servers and CLB instances that are created in Service Mesh. This prevents accidental operations, such as modification and deletion, on API servers or CLB instances, and improves the availability of Service Mesh.

All regions

None

Unified settings of automatic sidecar proxy injection

The automatic sidecar proxy injection settings for the namespaces of the control plane can be automatically unified with those for the namespaces of the data plane. This improves the usability of namespaces. If you add a Kubernetes cluster to an ASM instance, the automatic sidecar proxy injection settings for the namespace of the ASM instance are automatically unified with those for the namespace of the Kubernetes cluster. You can also manually unify the settings of automatic sidecar proxy injection in the ASM console.

All regions

None

Feature

Description

Region

References

Availability in 12 regions, Istio 1.8.3, ACK Serverless clusters, and applications in Elastic Container Instance pods that run on the Kubernetes clusters that are deployed on elastic container instances

• ASM is updated to support Istio 1.8.3.

• ASM supports ACK Serverless clusters and applications in Elastic Container Instance pods that run on the Kubernetes clusters that are deployed on elastic container instances.

• The service-linked role for ASM is supported. This improves the usability and compatibility of ASM.

• ASM is available in 12 regions.

All regions

• Manage applications deployed in pods that run on elastic container instances in ACK Serverless clusters

• Use ASM to manage applications in ECI-based pods running on virtual nodes of ACK clusters

• Manage the service-linked role for ASM

Custom ingress gateways and better lifecycle management of ingress gateways

• A custom ingress gateway can be created by using a CRD.

• TLS pass-through and Secret Discovery Service (SDS) are supported to improve the security of Istio gateways.

All regions

Create and manage an ingress gateway by using the Kubernetes API

Connection to multiple service registries

• The connection to the Consul service registry is supported. This allows you to migrate microservices in the Consul service registry to Service Mesh.

All regions

Connect to Consul

Simplified Wasm-based ASM instance extension

OCI Registry as Storage (ORAS) is supported. You can use ORAS to simplify Wasm-based ASM instance extension.

All regions

Use ORAS to simplify the Wasm-based Service Mesh instance extension

Feature

Description

Region

References

New region

ASM is available in the China (Chengdu) region on the China site (aliyun.com) and the US (Virginia) region on the international site (alibabacloud.com).

All regions

None

Access log collection, Managed Service for Prometheus, and Mesh Topology

Access log collection, Managed Service for Prometheus, and Mesh Topology can be enabled with a few clicks. This improves the observability of ASM.

All regions

• Use Simple Log Service to collect logs of ingress gateways on the data plane

• Use Simple Log Service to collect access logs on the data plane

• Enable Mesh Topology to observe an ASM instance in the ASM console

HTTP/1.0

HTTP/1.0 is supported. By default, Envoy requires that upstream services use HTTP/1.1 or HTTP/2.0. In this version, ASM allows you to enable HTTP/1.0 in just a few simple steps so that you can ensure compatibility with legacy systems that use HTTP/1.0.

All regions

None

Improved definition of ingress gateways and optimized configuration and version updates

• The definition of ingress gateways is improved. The nodeSelector configuration is supported. The use of annotations to configure CLB is standardized for ingress gateways.

• The configuration update of ASM instances and the version update are optimized to reduce waiting duration and improve user experience.

• The verification feature of Envoy filters is enhanced.

All regions

None

Feature

Description

Region

References

Istio 1.7.5 and availability on the international site (alibabacloud.com)

Istio 1.7.5 is supported. ASM is available on the international site (alibabacloud.com).

All regions

None

Istio CNI plug-in

The Istio CNI plug-in is supported for ASM instances whose Istio version is 1.7 or later. The Istio CNI plug-in replaces the istio-init container and does not require you to enable elevated privileges. This improves security.

All regions

Due to conflicts with other CNI plug-ins, this feature is phased out and needs to be re-evaluated.

Mesh Topology

Mesh Topology is supported. This feature provides a GUI that allows you to observe the status of Service Mesh instances.

All regions

None

Hot update of data planes (Beta)

Hot updates of data planes are supported. You can update the data plane of an ASM instance without interrupting services or affecting applications.

All regions

None

Feature

Description

Region

References

Multiple methods of enabling automatic sidecar proxy injection

The following methods are supported for enabling automatic sidecar proxy injection:

• Enable automatic sidecar proxy injection for all namespaces.

• Use pod annotations to enable automatic sidecar proxy injection.

• Enable or disable automatic sidecar proxy injection by setting the alwaysInjectSelector or neverInjectSelector parameter in specific scenarios.

All regions

Enable automatic sidecar proxy injection

Support for Kubernetes 1.18

Kubernetes 1.18 is supported on the data planes of ASM instances. This feature is applicable to all supported versions of Kubernetes clusters.

All regions

None

Feature

Description

Region

References

Support for Istio 1.6.8

Istio 1.6.8 is supported. In addition to dedicated Kubernetes clusters, managed Kubernetes clusters, registered external clusters, elastic container instances, and Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instances, ASM also supports ACK Serverless clusters and ACK clusters that are deployed on elastic container instances.

All regions

None

Enhanced Telemetry V2 Mixerless

Telemetry V2 Mixerless is enhanced to collect telemetry data without the need to use Mixer. ASM automatically adjusts the traffic to the workloads based on the collected telemetry data.

All regions

Implement auto scaling for workloads by using ASM metrics

Mesh diagnostics

Mesh diagnostics is supported. You can diagnose ASM instances based on the following items: the versions of data planes, service ports, applications in ASM instances, labels of applications and versions, destination addresses, and virtual service conflicts. This helps you use and manage your Service Mesh instances.

All regions

Diagnose ASM instances

Feature

Description

Region

References

Cluster domain

A cluster domain can be specified when you create an ASM instance. The default cluster domain is cluster.local. Only Kubernetes clusters that share the same cluster domain can be added to the ASM instance.

All regions

None

ACK Serverless clusters on elastic container instances

ACK Serverless clusters that are deployed on elastic container instances are supported. You can use Service Mesh to throttle traffic for the workloads of elastic container instances in a centralized manner.

All regions

None

Feature

Description

Region

References

Service Mesh available for commercial use

Service Mesh is available for commercial use. Service Mesh is a fully managed platform for service meshes and is compatible with the open source Istio service mesh. Service Mesh allows you to manage services in a simplified manner and helps reduce your development and O&M costs. For example, you can use ASM to route and split inter-service traffic, secure inter-service communication based on authentication, and observe the behavior of services in meshes. ASM builds managed and unified service mesh capabilities in core scenarios, such as hybrid cloud, multi-cloud, multi-cluster, and non-containerized application migration. Service Mesh provides you with the following benefits:

• Centralized management mode

• Centralized traffic throttling

• Managed core components of control planes

  ASM is a free service. When you use ASM, you need to pay only for associated services, such as ACK, CLB, and Simple Log Service.

China (Beijing), China (Hangzhou), China (Zhangjiakou), China (Shanghai), China (Shenzhen), Indonesia (Jakarta), and Germany (Frankfurt)

None

Tracing data export from ASM to user-created systems

Tracing data can be exported. After you enable tracing for an ASM instance, you can export the tracing data to Managed Service for OpenTelemetry or a user-created system that is compatible with Zipkin.

All regions

Export ASM tracing data to a self-managed system

Registered external clusters

Registered external clusters are supported. You can use Service Mesh to manage applications in external Kubernetes clusters that are registered in the ACK console.

All regions

Manage applications in a registered Kubernetes cluster by using ASM