Advanced Observability with Istio
Observe the real TaskFlow backend through Istio's built-in telemetry - Jaeger distributed traces, Prometheus metrics, the Kiali service graph, custom access logs, and Grafana dashboards - all with zero application instrumentation.
Lab Overview
🛠Lab from the Platform Engineering Bootcamp. Used in Week 19. Bootcamp landing page: https://academy.tekanaid.com/bootcamps/platform-engineering-bootcamp Parent course(s):
- Week 19: Service Mesh with Istio (slug: service-mesh-istio)
This lab runs the real TaskFlow backend (the project that grows across all 21 weeks of the bootcamp) inside the Istio mesh and observes it purely through the sidecar's auto-generated telemetry.
Deploy the real TaskFlow backend into the Istio mesh and observe it without touching a line of app code: inspect Envoy-generated distributed traces in Jaeger, query sidecar metrics in Prometheus, view the live service graph in Kiali, customize sidecar output with the Telemetry API, and dashboard latency and error rates in Grafana.
What You'll Learn
Generate traffic to the real TaskFlow backend and inspect the distributed traces Istio's Envoy sidecars produce automatically, with no OpenTelemetry SDK in the app
Query Istio's Prometheus sidecar metrics (istio_requests_total, request duration histograms) and confirm they reflect the backend's real request counts, rates, and response codes
Use Kiali's service graph and API to see the real backend as a live node with real traffic edges
Use the Istio Telemetry API to switch the backend's sidecar to a custom JSON access-log format and verify it in the sidecar's output
Query latency percentiles and error rates for the real backend and view them in Istio's pre-built Grafana workload dashboard
Technologies Covered
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