Architecture
Review how Solo Enterprise for Istio components work together to extend observability and insights into your Istio environment.
When you install the Solo Enterprise for Istio management plane in your cluster environment, you deploy Solo components and other projects integrated with Solo Enterprise for Istio.
- Solo components: By default, Solo Enterprise for Istio includes the components that Solo develops, such as the management server, agent, and UI.
- Integrated projects: Solo Enterprise for Istio incorporates several other open source projects to extend its capabilities, such as the OpenTelemetry pipeline, Redis, and Prometheus. Although Solo does not develop these projects, the projects are supported as part of regular usage with Solo Enterprise for Istio. Depending on the project, you may or may not be able to bring your own instance instead, but support and setup vary. Check the link in the More info column of the following tables to learn more about BYO support for the project.
Review the components deployed in single or multicluster setups.
Single cluster component architecture
When you install Solo Enterprise for Istio in one cluster, you get the following Solo components and other projects integrated with Solo Enterprise for Istio.
Components
| Component | Pod name | Description | More info |
|---|---|---|---|
| Solo UI | gloo-mesh-ui | With the UI, you can review the health and configuration of your environment, including registered clusters, Istio, certificates, app services, and more. The UI includes an insights engine that generates actionable insights based on your environment details. You can even set up external authentication that is synchronized with Kubernetes role-based access control to manage how your users access the UI. | Explore the UIAdvanced UI settings |
| OTel collector | gloo-telemetry-collector-agent | OpenTelemetry (OTel) collector agents scrape metrics from workloads in the cluster and enrich the data. They also receive other telemetry data, such as traces and analyzer logs. | Telemetry pipeline architecture |
| Prometheus | prometheus-server | The default Prometheus deployment scrapes metrics from the telemetry gateway and collector agents, including custom solo_io_insights. You can also bring your own instance. | Prometheus overview |
Network architecture
The following diagram shows how the components in Solo Enterprise for Istio connect in your cluster network.
Multicluster component architecture
When you install Solo Enterprise for Istio in your multicluster environment, you get the following Solo components and other projects integrated with Solo Enterprise for Istio.
Management plane
The following components are deployed in a cluster that serves as the management plane. Note that this cluster often also runs workloads, such as service mesh.
| Component | Pod name | Description | More info |
|---|---|---|---|
| Management server | gloo-mesh-mgmt-server | The management server receives snapshots of resources from the agents in each registered cluster and stores this information in Redis and in local memory. | Relay architecture |
| Solo UI | gloo-mesh-ui | With the UI, you can review the health and configuration of your environment, including registered clusters, Istio, certificates, app services, and more. The UI includes an insights engine that generates actionable insights based on your environment details. You can even set up external authentication that is synchronized with Kubernetes role-based access control to manage how your users access the UI. | Explore the UIAdvanced UI settings |
| OTel collector | gloo-telemetry-collector-agent | OpenTelemetry (OTel) collector agents scrape metrics from workloads in the cluster and enrich the data. They also receive other telemetry data, such as traces and analyzer logs. | Telemetry pipeline architecture |
| OTel gateway | gloo-telemetry-gateway | Collector agents in each registered cluster send telemetry data to the telemetry gateway’s service endpoint. | Telemetry pipeline architecture |
| Prometheus | prometheus-server | The default Prometheus deployment scrapes metrics from the telemetry gateway and collector agents, including custom solo_io_insights. You can also bring your own instance. | Prometheus overview |
| Redis | gloo-mesh-redis | Redis is used for several Solo components. You can optionally bring your own Redis instance.
| Redis database options |
Data plane
The following components are deployed to each workload cluster that you register with the management plane.
| Component | Pod name | Description | More info |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agent | gloo-mesh-agent | Agents deployed to each registered cluster send snapshots of discovered Kubernetes, Istio, and custom Solo resources from the cluster to the management server. The agent includes an analyzer that runs analyzers from Istio and Solo to gather data on the status of Istio, proxies, certificates, images, and other components. This information is stored as logs in Redis by using the telemetry pipeline, and is used by the UI insights engine to create environment insights. | Relay architecture |
| OTel collector | gloo-telemetry-collector-agent | OpenTelemetry (OTel) collector agents scrape metrics from workloads in the cluster and enrich the data. They also receive other telemetry data, such as traces and analyzer logs. | Telemetry pipeline architecture |
Network architecture
The following diagram shows how the components in Solo Enterprise for Istio connect in your cluster network.
