Sumo Logic was one of the first in the industry to release a comprehensive set of applications to monitor and secure the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) stack. We are now expanding our support for Anthos. Anthos is Google Cloud’s open source based platform that lets enterprises run apps anywhere on-prem or in the cloud -- simply, flexibly, securely, and consistently. Anthos leverages Kubernetes and Istio, an open service mesh that reduces the complexity of managing Kubernetes deployments by providing a uniform way to connect, manage, and secure microservices.

In addition to our new and comprehensive Kubernetes monitoring solution, with support for monitoring the Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) control plane, we’re now adding support for Istio via the Sumo Logic Istio app. This gives our customers the following abilities:

• Monitor Kubernetes clusters; on-prem or in the cloud via a single-pane-of-glass
• Quickly troubleshoot Istio components and services
• Gain deep visibility from infrastructure to application

In this post, we will look at how we integrate with Istio and show examples of how our app dashboards help you achieve the above goals.

How does it work?

Istio is deployed on a Kubernetes cluster and has a number of components--Envoy, Mixer, Pilot, Citadel, and Galley. In this section, we first talk about how to integrate Istio logs and metrics data into Sumo Logic and then understand how to best make use of the data via our app dashboards.

Integrating Istio data into Sumo Logic

As part of our Kubernetes and GKE monitoring solution, Sumo Logic integrates metrics and logs for Kubernetes clusters via FluentD, FluentBit, Prometheus, Falco and StackDriver for GKE control plane logs. This process automatically brings in logs for Istio components via our FluentBit plugin and Istio metrics via Prometheus.

Once this has been configured, you can install the Istio app to monitor Istio and application microservices. For additional details, please see this page on how to integrate, and install the app.

App Dashboards

Let’s now take a look at a few examples of how to make use the dashboards in the application. Each Istio dashboard is automatically linked to its relevant Kubernetes cluster via the Sumo Logic Data Explorer; so you just need to install the app once to monitor Istio across multiple clusters.

Monitoring Applications and Services

To monitor how apps and services in Istio are communicating with each other, select the Istio - Apps and Services dashboard in the explorer view for the relevant cluster.

Here, you begin with quickly identify the slowest app communication links with the Top 10 Slowest App Communications panel as shown below:

In this case you see the product page app and service communicating with the reviews app and service reviews is taking much longer than the others, which can now help you understand where to focus your performance optimization on.

The Latency Trend by Workloads panel will also help you understand trends around application latency, to help you determine if a slowdown is recurring or intermittent.

You can use the server and client errors panels in this dashboard to monitor which apps and microservices have the most client and server errors as shown below:

Monitoring Istio

Now that you’ve understood how to monitor the applications and services running within Istio, let’s investigate how to monitor Istio itself:

To begin with, once you select the Istio Health dashboard in the explorer view for the cluster in question, you will get an overview of the health of various Istio components and insight into the top sources and destinations for requests coming into and going out of various application services as shown below:

In this dashboard, you can also monitor how each Istio component is doing in terms of number of errors and most recent log messages.

To monitor, how Istio is using resources on the whole and by component across your Kubernetes cluster, use the Istio Performance dashboard as shown below:

Key Takeaways

In this blog post, we show you examples of how to use the Sumo Logic Istio app to integrate Istio logs and metrics data for comprehensive monitoring, quick troubleshooting and ensuring your applications running on Istio are in compliance with your SLAs.

Using the Istio app together with our GKE control-plane and Kubernetes apps; our Kubernetes monitoring solution, helps you:

• Monitor Anthos clusters; whether they are on-prem or in the cloud
• Quickly troubleshoot issues around infrastructure components and microservices
• Gain deep visibility from infrastructure to application

Get started

If you don’t have a Sumo Logic account yet, you can sign up for a free trial today. To get started with our Istio app check out the Sumo Logic Istio app help doc.