Istio 1.5 introduces the Istiod binary, which significantly simplifies Istio’s architecture, improving operational experience. One thing we’ve heard from the mesh administrators and operators who use Istio is that its complexity makes it hard to adopt and integrate with their current stack. I’ve been involved with the development of Istio since Istio 0.6, and I’ve seen it become increasingly complex over time.
Enter Istio 1.5. This release has many new features, but those features are dwarfed by a major improvement. The improvement I’m most excited about is an architectural simplification of Istio that consolidates the control panel into a single binary called istiod.
Essentially, istiod dramatically simplifies Istio’s architecture, which we think will improve the feasibility of making improvements to the project.
Source: ibm.com