Subject: SAP-Kyma
Modern cloud-native applications require robust mechanisms for service-to-service communication, traffic management, and security. Service mesh technology addresses these needs by providing transparent infrastructure-layer features such as load balancing, service discovery, traffic routing, and observability without changing application code.
SAP Kyma, built on Kubernetes, includes a built-in service mesh based on Istio, a leading open-source service mesh implementation. This article explains how Kyma’s service mesh integrates with Kubernetes and how it enhances application communication and management within the Kyma ecosystem.
A service mesh is an infrastructure layer that handles service-to-service communication in a microservices architecture. It manages:
- Traffic routing and load balancing
- Service discovery
- Security features like mutual TLS authentication
- Telemetry and observability
- Fault injection and retries
By abstracting these capabilities from application code, developers can focus on business logic while the service mesh ensures reliable and secure connectivity.
Kyma leverages Istio as its service mesh implementation, which runs on top of Kubernetes. The core components include:
- Envoy Proxies: Deployed as sidecars alongside application pods, intercepting all network traffic.
- Istio Control Plane: Manages configuration, policy enforcement, and telemetry collection.
- Kubernetes: Provides the container orchestration and native API integration.
- When deploying applications on Kyma, Istio injects an Envoy sidecar proxy into each pod automatically or manually.
- This proxy intercepts inbound and outbound traffic, enabling fine-grained control over communication.
- Kyma’s service mesh leverages Kubernetes resources like Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs) to configure routing, policies, and telemetry.
- It uses Kubernetes namespaces for scoping and isolating mesh configurations.
- RBAC policies within Kubernetes control who can modify mesh settings.
- Kyma uses Istio’s Kubernetes-native custom resources such as VirtualServices and DestinationRules to manage routing, retries, and failovers.
- Developers can define traffic shifting strategies (e.g., canary releases) declaratively using Kubernetes manifests.
¶ 4. Security and Authentication
- Istio enables mutual TLS (mTLS) between services by integrating with Kubernetes secrets and certificates.
- Kyma configures automatic certificate rotation and secure service identity management.
- The service mesh collects metrics, logs, and traces from Envoy proxies.
- Kyma integrates these telemetry data into dashboards using tools like Grafana, Prometheus, and Jaeger, all running as Kubernetes workloads.
| Benefit |
Description |
| Enhanced Security |
mTLS encryption secures traffic between services. |
| Resilient Communication |
Automatic retries, circuit breaking, and failover improve reliability. |
| Fine-Grained Traffic Control |
Canary deployments, A/B testing, and routing rules via Kubernetes manifests. |
| Observability and Monitoring |
Centralized telemetry helps troubleshoot and optimize performance. |
| Kubernetes-Native Experience |
Manage service mesh configurations using familiar Kubernetes tools and APIs. |
- Canary Deployments: Gradually roll out new versions of microservices with traffic shifting controlled via Kubernetes YAML manifests.
- Secure Extensions: Ensure encrypted communication between custom Kyma extensions and SAP backend services.
- Multi-Tenant Isolation: Use namespaces combined with service mesh policies to isolate tenant workloads securely.
- Troubleshooting: Leverage integrated telemetry to detect latency or failures in service communication.
- Deploy Kyma on Kubernetes: Kyma installation includes Istio and related components by default.
- Deploy Applications with Sidecar Injection: Enable automatic sidecar injection in target namespaces.
- Define Traffic Policies: Create VirtualService and DestinationRule manifests for traffic routing.
- Secure Services: Enable mTLS and configure authorization policies.
- Monitor: Access dashboards and tracing tools bundled within Kyma.
Integrating Kyma’s service mesh with Kubernetes creates a powerful platform for managing complex microservices communication within SAP’s cloud-native environment. The seamless integration of Istio into Kyma and Kubernetes offers enhanced security, traffic control, and observability — critical for building scalable, resilient SAP extensions and applications.
By leveraging Kyma’s service mesh capabilities, SAP developers and architects can simplify operational complexity while accelerating innovation.