In modern cloud-native architectures, managing the communication between distributed microservices is a critical challenge. SAP Kyma, built on Kubernetes, addresses this challenge by integrating a service mesh—powered by Istio—to provide enhanced traffic management, security, and observability for your microservices and extensions.
This article explores how to deploy and manage services effectively using Kyma’s service mesh, helping SAP developers build resilient, scalable, and secure cloud-native applications.
A service mesh is an infrastructure layer that manages service-to-service communication within a Kubernetes cluster transparently. Kyma leverages Istio, a leading open-source service mesh, to:
With Kyma’s service mesh, developers can focus on business logic while Istio handles network-level complexities.
Develop and containerize your microservice as usual. Apply Kubernetes manifests or use Helm charts to deploy your service in the Kyma cluster.
Example deployment:
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
name: my-service
spec:
replicas: 2
selector:
matchLabels:
app: my-service
template:
metadata:
labels:
app: my-service
spec:
containers:
- name: my-service
image: <your-image>
ports:
- containerPort: 8080
Expose your microservice internally via a Kubernetes Service object:
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
name: my-service
spec:
selector:
app: my-service
ports:
- protocol: TCP
port: 80
targetPort: 8080
Use Kyma’s API Gateway to expose your service externally with secure access controls.
Use VirtualServices and DestinationRules to control traffic flow between services:
Example VirtualService for canary release:
apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3
kind: VirtualService
metadata:
name: my-service
spec:
hosts:
- my-service
http:
- route:
- destination:
host: my-service
subset: v1
weight: 90
- destination:
host: my-service
subset: v2
weight: 10
Istio enables automatic mutual TLS encryption between services in Kyma. This ensures:
You can enforce strict mTLS policies to harden service communication.
Istio integrates with Kyma’s monitoring stack (Prometheus, Grafana, Jaeger) to provide:
Kyma’s integration of Istio service mesh empowers SAP developers to deploy and manage microservices with enhanced security, reliability, and observability. By abstracting complex network concerns, the service mesh lets teams focus on building innovative business solutions while maintaining operational excellence.
Whether you are running simple microservices or complex, event-driven extensions, Kyma’s service mesh is a critical component for resilient and scalable SAP cloud-native applications.