Istio provides traffic management, security, and observability for microservices. This guide covers production deployment patterns.

Istio Installation

Deploy Istio control plane:

```bash

Install Istio

istioctl install --set profile=production

Enable sidecar injection for namespace

kubectl label namespace default istio-injection=enabled

Verify installation

kubectl get pods -n istio-system ```

Mutual TLS Configuration

Enforce encrypted communication:

```yaml

peer-authentication.yaml - Enforce mTLS

apiVersion: security.istio.io/v1beta1 kind: PeerAuthentication metadata: name: default namespace: istio-system spec: mtls: mode: STRICT # Require mTLS for all traffic