# Ambient Mesh

> Ambient mesh is a lightweight, sidecar-less service mesh solution that enhances cloud-native application security, observability, and connectivity with minimal operational overhead. Perfect for enterprise Kubernetes environments.

This is the root documentation index. For detailed page listings, follow the section links below.



## Blogs
- [Reducing the costs and complexity of your cloud native architecture with Ambient Mesh](https://ambientmesh.io/blog/reducing-the-costs-and-complexity-of-your-cloud-native-architecture-with-ambient-mesh/): Organizations have the need to connect, secure and observe the services running in their … - Published 2025-10-25
- [Ambient mesh deployments made easy with Gloo Operator](https://ambientmesh.io/blog/ambient-mesh-deployments-made-easy-with-gloo-operator/): Installation methods Istio has traditionally supported installation either with the Istio CLI or … - Published 2025-10-08
- [How ambient mesh challenges the security gaps in sidecar workloads](https://ambientmesh.io/blog/how-ambient-mesh-challenges-the-security-gaps-in-sidecar-workloads/): One of the main reasons for the popularity and adoption of service meshes is that they bring a much … - Published 2025-09-26
- [Migrating from sidecars to ambient with zero downtime](https://ambientmesh.io/blog/migrating-from-sidecars-to-ambient-with-zero-downtime/): Istio is not only a very popular open source project but has been one of the most widely adopted … - Published 2025-09-18
- [kgateway as Ingress for Ambient Service Mesh](https://ambientmesh.io/blog/kgateway-as-ingress-for-ambient-service-mesh/): The Kubernetes ecosystem continues its rapid evolution, introducing innovations that fundamentally … - Published 2025-08-27
- [Fortifying Your Cloud Native Connectivity Security Posture with Solo and Ambient Mesh](https://ambientmesh.io/blog/fortifying-your-cloud-native-connectivity-security-posture-with-solo-and-ambient-mesh/): It wasn’t long ago when the systems we built were a far cry from the ideal in terms of their … - Published 2025-07-18
- [Building the Optimal Service Mesh Experience](https://ambientmesh.io/blog/optimal-mesh-experience-1/): Microservices and distributed application architectures have been proven to have many benefits over … - Published 2025-07-17
- [Migrating from Sidecars to Ambient Mesh - Risks, Challenges, and Benefits](https://ambientmesh.io/blog/migrating-from-sidecars-to-ambient-mesh-risks-challenges-and-benefits/): If your enterprise has been running Istio, it is very likely that you have looked at ambient mesh, … - Published 2025-07-17
- [How Ambient Mesh Delivers Advanced Resource and Cost Savings](https://ambientmesh.io/blog/advanced-cost-savings/): Introduction A service mesh is an infrastructure layer that controls and secures network traffic … - Published 2025-07-10
- [Getting Started with Ambient Mesh: From 0 to 100 mph](https://ambientmesh.io/blog/getting-started-with-ambient/): In the dynamic world of cloud-native applications, managing the intricate dance between … - Published 2025-07-09
- [Observing the ambient mesh](https://ambientmesh.io/blog/sidecar-migration-part-5/): Every component in a service mesh generates telemetry data that can be used for the observability of … - Published 2025-07-08
- [Traffic management in ambient mode](https://ambientmesh.io/blog/sidecar-migration-part-4/): Once you have services enrolled in a mesh, you can use Istio’s traffic management features to … - Published 2025-07-01
- [Security and policy when migrating to ambient mesh](https://ambientmesh.io/blog/sidecar-migration-part-3/): Istio’s security features are its primary value proposition for many users. Key amongst them is the … - Published 2025-06-18
- [Operational differences between sidecar and ambient mode](https://ambientmesh.io/blog/sidecar-migration-part-2/): If you’re used to running Istio in sidecar mode, here are a few things you need to know about how … - Published 2025-06-11
- [Migrating from sidecars to ambient mesh: everything you need to know](https://ambientmesh.io/blog/sidecar-migration-part-1/): Istio’s 2017 announcement invited you to imagine that you could “transparently inject a layer of … - Published 2025-06-09


## Introduction


### About
- [Overview](https://ambientmesh.io/docs/about/overview/): What is ambient mesh? Engineers from Solo.io collaborated with Google to develop ambient mesh, a new …
- [Architecture](https://ambientmesh.io/docs/about/architecture/): An ambient mesh is logically split into a data plane and a control plane.
The data plane is composed …
- [Key concepts](https://ambientmesh.io/docs/about/key-concepts/): Configuration Gateway API The Gateway API is a collection of APIs that are part of Kubernetes, …


### Set up an ambient mesh
- [System and app requirements](https://ambientmesh.io/docs/setup/requirements/): Ambient mesh, as of Istio 1.25, runs in, and supports workloads in, a single Kubernetes cluster. …
- [Install with Helm](https://ambientmesh.io/docs/setup/install/): The community method for a production-ready ambient mesh installation is Helm. Other methods, like …
- [Add workloads to the mesh](https://ambientmesh.io/docs/setup/add-workloads/): With your ambient mesh installed, you can now go ahead and add your workloads to it. This process is …
- [Prepare for production usage](https://ambientmesh.io/docs/setup/advanced/): When you’re ready to take ambient mesh to production, there are a few things we recommend you …
- [Run a multicluster mesh](https://ambientmesh.io/docs/setup/multicluster/): An ambient mesh can be expanded to form a single mesh across multiple Kubernetes clusters.
Solo …
- [Migrating to ambient mesh from Istio in sidecar mode](https://ambientmesh.io/docs/setup/sidecar-migration/): The Solo ambient mesh migration tool provides a prescriptive path for migrating from Istio’s …


### Traffic management, connectivity, and networking


#### Ingress
- [Overview of ingress gateways](https://ambientmesh.io/docs/traffic-management/ingress/overview/): A gateway is a proxy at the edge of an ambient mesh that can be used to allow traffic to ingress or …
- [kgateway ingress gateway](https://ambientmesh.io/docs/traffic-management/ingress/kgateway/): Ambient mode is designed to support alternative Layer 7 implementations. You can use kgateway …
- [Kubernetes Gateway API ingress gateway](https://ambientmesh.io/docs/traffic-management/ingress/k8s-gw-api/): Create an ingress gateway Create a Gateway resource with gatewayClassName: istio so that the Istio …
- [Third-party gateways and ingress controllers](https://ambientmesh.io/docs/traffic-management/ingress/third-party-gateways/): If you already have an in-cluster ingress controller that does not use the Kubernetes Gateway API, …


#### Egress
- [L7 waypoint egress gateway](https://ambientmesh.io/docs/traffic-management/egress/egress/): Set up L7 waypoint egress for your ambient mesh. This approach routes outbound traffic through an …
- [Migrate egress controls from sidecar to ambient](https://ambientmesh.io/docs/traffic-management/egress/migrate-sidecar/): Sidecar and ambient meshes enforce egress controls differently. To migrate without losing coverage, …


### Waypoints
- [Overview](https://ambientmesh.io/docs/waypoints/overview/): The community waypoint proxy is an optional Envoy-based proxy deployment that adds Layer 7 (L7) …
- [Configure waypoints](https://ambientmesh.io/docs/waypoints/configuration/): Deploy a waypoint Waypoint proxies are Kubernetes Gateway API resources. You can deploy them using …


### Resiliency
- [Request timeouts](https://ambientmesh.io/docs/resiliency/timeouts/): When a client encounters latency in an upstream service, the client can wait indefinitely, becoming …
- [Circuit breakers](https://ambientmesh.io/docs/resiliency/circuit-breakers/): Circuit breaking is a resiliency mechanism that temporarily stops requests to a downstream service …
- [Outlier detection](https://ambientmesh.io/docs/resiliency/outlier-detection/): Outlier detection is a form of passive health checking. Unlike health checks that proactively …
- [Fault injection](https://ambientmesh.io/docs/resiliency/fault-injection/): Fault injection lets you actively test resilience behaviors, such as whether circuit breakers, …


### Security
- [Verify mutual TLS is enabled](https://ambientmesh.io/docs/security/verify-mtls/): With ambient mesh, communication between your workloads is automatically secured via mTLS as soon as …
- [Authorization policies with ztunnel](https://ambientmesh.io/docs/security/ztunnel-authz/): The ztunnel proxy can enforce authorization policy. Because these proxies only operate at Layer 4 …
- [Authorization policy with waypoint proxies](https://ambientmesh.io/docs/security/waypoint-authz/): Without a waypoint installed, you can only use Layer 4 security policies. By adding a waypoint, you …
- [Considerations for Kubernetes network policy](https://ambientmesh.io/docs/security/configure-networkpolicies/): Kubernetes NetworkPolicy allows you to control how layer 4 traffic reaches your pods.
NetworkPolicy …


### Observability
- [Configure and view metrics](https://ambientmesh.io/docs/observability/metrics/): Metrics provide a way of monitoring and understanding behavior in aggregate. The two layers of …
- [Access logs](https://ambientmesh.io/docs/observability/logs/): Access logs are generated by ztunnel and waypoint proxies, recording source and destination metadata …
- [Enable tracing](https://ambientmesh.io/docs/observability/tracing/): Distributed tracing enables you to monitor and understand behavior by tracking individual requests …


### Operations
- [Upgrade](https://ambientmesh.io/docs/operations/upgrade/): Upgrading Istio in ambient mode involves upgrading the control plane and data plane separately. …
- [Uninstall](https://ambientmesh.io/docs/operations/uninstall/): Learn how to uninstall the sample applications from the site, or the entire Istio deployment. …
- [Using the untaint controller](https://ambientmesh.io/docs/operations/untaint-controller/): If Kubernetes can start pods on a node before the istio-cni agent has configured node networking, …
- [Using Solo's builds of Istio](https://ambientmesh.io/docs/operations/solo-builds/): Solo.io, the leading contributor to Istio, makes the builds of Istio that underpin the Solo …
- [Troubleshooting](https://ambientmesh.io/docs/operations/troubleshooting/): Install and setup issues Before troubleshooting, verify that your environment meets the following …


## Use-Cases
- [Observability](https://ambientmesh.io/use-cases/observability/): Get Started Use Cases Security Observability Traffic Control Resilience Resources Learning Paths …
- [Resilience](https://ambientmesh.io/use-cases/resilience/): Get Started Use Cases Security Observability Traffic Control Resilience Resources Learning Paths …
- [Security](https://ambientmesh.io/use-cases/security/): Get Started Use Cases Security Observability Traffic Control Resilience Resources Learning Paths …
- [Traffic Control](https://ambientmesh.io/use-cases/traffic-control/): Get Started Use Cases Security Observability Traffic Control Resilience Resources Learning Paths …

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Generated on 2026-07-17 17:55:02 UTC
Site: https://ambientmesh.io