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From YouTube: Ask Us Anything about the Istio Ambient Explained book

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Yay! Istio ambient book is out! Join Lin and Christian discuss their journey of writing the book, their favorite chapters and bring your questions about Istio or Istio ambient or the book!

#istio #ambient #book

A

A

Service match explained today we're going to talk about uh the book we recently published. I think was last week we've been putting a lot of um social media. So if you recall for the past few hoods, we talk about it's still ambient service measures out. What does it mean to you, uh common questions for istio ambient service match? We talk about what is your ambient service mesh means for your wallet. uh We also talk about some of our thoughts on integrate, istio and being mesh with glue mesh So.

A

Today we're going to talk about our book istio ambient service manager explained so we would love to have questions from you guys. So, let's start with the news, um so the first news I want to share is uh istio is officially a cncf project. It's a incubation project, yeah very, very excited about that.

A

um The second news I want to share today is a big day uh for for solo. We actually launched the glue platform, um so the glue platform contains glue, Gateway, glue, mesh, glue, Network and also glue graphql, so I'm really excited about particular about glue network. If you recall, we had a hood episode: 27 where me and Ada and Scotch talk about glue, psyllium and istio, seamlessly together, so glue network is building on that Innovation. We have around automatically discover your cni and then build out in the network policy automatically, for you so very excited.

A

That's ga uh one thing I do want to learn a little bit. Myself is glue, graphql supported in glue mesh. This is the area you know. I have a lot of learning myself uh Christian. Do you want to add anything.

B

No I mean that's uh it's it's pretty exciting um that you know that our vision that we we've we've been pointed toward from the very beginning. You know we've taken incremental steps and um you know, met the market where it is and our customers where they are and help them to you know, get to those next uh next steps in their Journey, but to see the various components that I think for a while. Externally people were always a little bit like what what how does this? How does this work?

B

How does it come together, but to see them actually come together now in the way that we've been thinking about them, and this product is super exciting, so yeah yeah super excited as a big big announcement.

A

Yeah very, very, very exciting. uh The last not the least I do want to talk about uh as next Monday many of us will be at kubecon, so Christian and I both will be at keep calm, I believe we're sending around 30 people from solo to Cube car.

A

So we will have application networking day um by the way I think it's sold out, but you're welcome to um get on the waitlist or even just show up at the events we're going to give out the istio explain uh ambient explained book at the event, so it's like a full agenda which we will recorded and publish on YouTube uh afterwards, so very excited about the application networking day. Also, um oh, the last news.

A

Also one more news I want to talk about is the istio ambient weekly contributing contributor meeting is every Wednesday at 1 pm Eastern. So, if you're excited about contributing to you istio ambient in the Israel Community, this is the right meeting. We definitely recommend you to attend to understand. Well, it's your ambient service machine is and how you can be part of the Israel community and help us shape. Is your ambient.

A

So with that, we're going to turn our Focus to the SEO ambient service mesh book. So first thing I want to talk about, is how do you get the book right? So uh if you go to solo.io, you can click on it's right on our home page. You can click on get the book link and after you fill out your information, you can pretty much get the book uh downloaded. So this is absolutely it's free, it's complements of solo.io.

A

The only thing we ask is your contact information, so we can be in touch with you in case. There's updates related to the book or related to istio ambient service mesh. So now, Christian I want to ask you: uh who is the book for.

B

Yeah good question, so it's still ambient, as as you mentioned, was released um a few weeks ago, actually about a month ago now and um there's a been a lot of interest in it and a lot of questions about it and so for the folks who are looking at istio currently and those are usually platform engineering. Folks um for the folks that may have looked at istio in the past and said: oh no! This is too complicated. This is this. Is uh this won't work for us I?

B

Think the book is written specifically for those groups of people that um you know my might be worth taking a second look now at issue because of the the problems that we focused on and attempted to solve, with the ambient approach and the architecture for the data plane um really opens up the door for more use. Cases, for uh you know less less of a hurdle to get uh istio into your environment and- and you know focusing on that day, two challenge of how do you keep this thing running?

B

How do you patch it, and uh and so for folks that have been interested in service mesh and maybe turned off from it previously, then? You know this. This book is definitely the ambient specifically is, but the book is really oriented around what.

A

B

It why do we have it? How does it work how to get started with it.

A

Absolutely interestingly, I actually just saw this tweet uh this morning. Well, this uh uh engineer Peter. He said if you ignore the istio in the past because of the complexity because of operation cost of psycha, you should check out ambient mesh. So that's really.

B

A

He made that comment because he was reading over a book, so I was just so happy to see that.

B

Yeah, that's fantastic yeah, that's that's and then timely. Also.

A

Yeah I've been getting pretty good uh response on social media about our book, either on Twitter and Linkedin. It's just so exciting. You know people are excited about istio ambient match and I'm also super excited at kubecon next week. We're going to hand you a paper of the book uh with our name signage so that you can take the book and read it, maybe on your plane back home. So that's super exciting too.

B

That's right uh and and just it's it's about what was it 40 pages or so.

A

B

Very you know big, uh but it it. It would be perfect to. uh You know, as a quick read just to get the Highlights and quick understanding of how it works. That's right.

A

Yeah one thing I find really interesting when writing the book. It's um that we kind of abstract ourselves as authors try to make the book you know to a wider audience instead of going too deep into the steps, the actual steps of how to get started on istio ambient service mesh, so I think that really helped position the book on not only for people who wants to learn how to get started, but also to understand the business value, understand the architecture of istio and be amazing, so I'm really excited about the wider audience.

A

The book can potentially reach you.

B

Yeah absolutely I I agree. That was a big motivation for for writing the book, um because there's especially since Ambien is new.

B

You know the the actual steps and keyboard Strokes that you have to take to get it up and running, that's going to continue to evolve and to change, but the problem domain, the architecture for the most part. That's that's it's very foundational to understanding it. uh We felt like that was a good, a good level to write about in in the book. So hopefully we'll stand some amount of time. You know things in the software world, move move quickly.

A

Yeah totally so I guess that covers our motivation of writing. The book. um Can we to switch to talk about how long was the writing process? Honestly I was fascinated about the the lens um I mean, not that we don't put a lot of effort into writing the book but I'm fascinated of how long you know from the idea of writing the book to actually finish writing and have it production ready.

A

So um I think we started this idea of writing a book, maybe somewhere in Middle August, and then we started to contact it with O'reilly and then talk about like why we are writing a new istio book right, there's like five or maybe even more than five. Is your book out there right?

A

Why are we writing a new one and how do we differentiate with any of the existing book out there and what's the focus of the book is- and uh you know so once we determine the outline I think it took us maybe a month to write it. Maybe.

B

Yeah yeah, it was about a month, and uh there was a very comp. It wasn't like a month of leisurely riding I would say, because we have we. We had extremely tight deadlines that we had to.

A

B

For us to be able.

A

B

Get it in for in book production um and then eventually into print to be ready for kubecon, so it was definitely a you know. It was a very you know, focused and uh urgent writing, uh and we worked with uh with the O'reilly with Gary and other folks there at O'reilly who were top-notch. They were fantastic uh able to turn things around quickly and give us feedback and um yeah it was uh we it was. It was definitely a challenge um to go from hey.

B

Let's write a book to okay, good, you only have a couple weeks to do it um yeah that was that was interesting.

A

Yeah I am super great for that I didn't write it by myself and I asked you to help because you've done like tremendous work, I think you actually write more content than me for the book, so I'm just so thankful, I reach out to you for help to co-author the book and, like you said, the O'reilly team they've been really really amazing and be able to understand technical detail uh so fast and then be able to pick it up and point out different issues uh as part of our writing.

A

That's not clear to average users out there so that really make the book so much easier to understand. So I'm really really pleased with the the output of the book. Like you said, it's definitely a lot of challenging because I remember, I was traveling to I think it was open source Summit in Europe, and uh you know uh for that weekend. I have to kind of make sure you know the book is on top of the schedule, uh so I'm sure you have to do the same too.

A

So it's a lot of weekend, work for sure, but I'm just so happy to see. You know where the book is now and I'm super excited about. You know handing each of you the book next week.

B

Yeah, absolutely I mean exactly the schedule is compressed and there was urgency and we had everything else to do still. Right, I mean you've traveled to Europe.

A

B

Traveled to Australia we've, it still ambient was actually released. You know September 7th, so it was actually a lot of the blog and all the other stuff that needed to go uh ahead into the actual release of the the project was uh was on top so yeah that was, it was. It was chaotic, but uh you know again kudos to to O'reilly. You know the experience riding with with you. I mean it's.

B

It's uh it's easier to work together as a team uh with people who who have experience doing this um than it is to just you know, whatever the alternative would.

A

B

I I would also say just generally I, think I think what what we, what we did here with the book is uh it's sort of a microcosm, I I believe how we work at solo. Like the way we work, we're extremely talented colleagues, uh you know the teamwork and the uh you know, let's just let's: let's get it done. Type attitude is, uh is sort of the culture that we built here at solo, but.

A

B

I'm extremely pleased with how it turned out grateful for to be able to work with you on it and uh and we're starting to see some of the initial response from the audience uh about. uh You know the quality and usefulness of it so I'm happy to see that as well.

A

Yeah totally uh it's interesting. You talk about like the culture of working in Solo, uh because I remember when I read my first book, which is actually a similar book as uh as this one, but this book I think I took way much longer to write it, um not that I don't have the expertise back then, but it's probably a lot more like decision points and trying to think through. You know which approaches to take a lot of consideration, which some of them probably should be animated to allow us to iterate faster yeah.

A

So I actually really enjoyed this process to write the book fast, but still be able to write it really well and effectively.

B

A

So um I'd like to talk about well folks, can get the book at kubecon next week uh for folks who are traveling to cubecon, so I believe on Monday. We talk about the application networking Day by solo right. So definitely, if you are registered for this Workshop or the the whole event, uh we will be handing you out the books uh and we would love to meet you there. So that's number one I believe number two is uh service, mesh Kong right. So for folks who are attending service mesh.com, we have a booth.

A

There I believe we actually are doing book signing at service mesh car at 2 30. So we would love to see you there as well and then Christian I think at solo boost uh we will hopefully still have some of the book uh remaining, um but you are also signing it's still in action. At the solo boost too right.

B

Yeah, that's right, I think that's on Wednesday yeah, we'll uh we'll do both the signing of both books at uh at the solo booth.

A

Yeah that's exciting. Now I would like to ask you next about. What's your favorite part of the book of writing the book.

B

My favorite part of writing. The book was.

B

Trying to build the right, visual AIDS, like the architecture diagrams the drawings, to properly explain or more quickly explain. You know some of the more complex parts of the data plane, uh so we we did rely on a lot of uh diagrams to uh to help with that. That was the most interesting bit. What about you.

A

Yeah, that's a great point, I honestly, really like many of the diagram you drew and I think it's actually better than what O'reilly produced it's funny that every single diagram we drew they had to contract their expert to do them, but I like those type of kind of like a sketch type of style, to um to kind of do the architecture drawing.

A

So that's really cool and honestly, you just drew better than anybody else like because I could draw them, but I feel like mine is not as clean or as pretty as yours, even though it was trying to express the same thing uh yeah my favorite. The portion of the book is really um to write out the value of the ambient and also how it differentiates from people who are already familiar with psycha. So throughout the book, as we were, writing uh my favorite part. Is we actually not only?

A

We target the book to people who doesn't know about istio, but we also Target the book to people who are familiar with SEO today. Well, we write um different notes as part of the book kind of highlighting the user. If you are familiar with psycha, this is how it's different than the psycha today right because, for instance, we talk about like some of the routes configuration today, it's in the source cycle implemented there, but with ambience it's on the destinations, uh Waypoint proxy.

A

So throughout the book we try to kind of highlight and point out for you. So if you are familiar with SEO, you can quickly understand the key differences. So so that was pretty cool I thought for people who knows the Israel pretty well.

B

Yeah I think that's that'll, be a good mental. You know a diagram or they'll be comfortable I think with some of these Concepts because they already exist today in the sidecar model.

A

Yeah totally all right um now I'd like to ask our audience uh what questions you have regarding whether it's our book, if you're interested in it's your ambient service mesh, feel free to ask us question there. If you're interested in writing a book feel free to ask us questions.

A

um I saw some of the high from the audience so hi Benja thanks so much for joining us, and thank you so much for the congratulations on the glue platform release. We certainly really appreciate that. So folks, if you guys have any questions, just enter a comment and let us know we would really love to hear from you all right. We have the first question coming uh from nitishi. So how do you get the book yeah?

A

So if you go to solo.io visit our home page and uh somewhere on the page, you can click on get the book link and that's how you can get the book. So the link I'm going to put it in the chat, but essentially you can just enter your name, your company email and then be able to hit the submit and then get the book.

B

If you happen to be at kubecon, you know we'll be giving the books out in person as well.

A

Yes, absolutely and we would love to give you the book, so you can read it uh as you. Travel home I believe, probably on our O2 is all you need to read it, and it's really nice to have the physical book with you, because even when I wrote this book A lot of times, I actually go back to my book. uh You know flip through different pages and try to figure out how I was trying to explain something.

A

So that's really cool and you know if you have it digitally on your computer, it's nice, but it's never going to be the same as you physically holding a book and then try to you know find out exactly what you need. uh Thank you so much for that question nitishi. So our next question comes from bonji.

A

um What's your expectation for ambient maturity and production Readiness going forward? That's a great question! Christian! You want to.

B

Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, so there's a couple couple things so: first they're the the gap between so first of all, you have to look at it from what is um what what is what is missing from a feature standpoint or feature parity standpoint with istio's sidecars, and we do have a list of what those gaps are and we're slowly working on on that right from an open source perspective, we've got the community Google and solo will still be leading the uh the efforts around here.

B

uh You know, Lynn Lynn has her uh an entire team of Open Source Engineers that are working on it. This is this is their uh priority there. um So we want to knock down the the the gaps. I think I think Lynn might be pointing out the uh what those were, what those gaps are.

A

Just really quickly, if you go to the label here, you can search all the issues by ambient and what we're working in the community here, like John Howard, started a task to collaborate in the community that tracks to move ambient to Beta right. So, um if you remember in istio future status, beta means you can write in production uh with caution. uh So what we're trying to do is identify the list that Christian was just mentioning right to be able to move to Beta, to be able to move to the master branch of istio.

B

Yep and okay, so so there's there's the well what what are the known gaps uh that we need to address? A second part is: what are the known uh areas of improvement that, because we did it, we did a handful of things when we released ambient that were.

A

B

Done out of expediency, knowing that we would need to go back and revise uh some of it, so I can give you one example is around uh what ends up being the Z tunnel component, that out of the box when we first released, it was based on Envoy proxy, but that's likely not going to be the the right solution there.

B

uh But so there are some of these things that we need to go back and and revise the third that I would say is actually getting uh finding those those use cases actually getting people using it, um and so certainly from open source perspective.

B

Definitely from a solo perspective, we're working with those you know, early adopters that are interested in helping to move this technology along and and to harden it.

B

um And so you know if, if we were to just let this float around in the open source on its own, this could be a year or more proposition right, but I. Think since uh there's a there's a lot of interest on this, and and certainly from the solo side, there are a lot of things that we're doing with our existing customers. Internally, uh sort of dog fooding uh this this technology as well that uh we're hoping to to uh to get this to a level of maturity, much faster than that.

B

um So in my mind, I'm thinking six months, but you know, let's uh we'll we'll, have more information in a bit.

A

Yeah so stay tuned, and certainly we would welcome uh your contribution in Upstream as well.

A

um Thanks for that great question now we have another question from Gray: uh this is physical book or ebook, so we probably confused you a little bit. uh So this is the ebook and a physical book. So when you uh go to solo.io right when you click on this uh link uh get the book. So that's the electronic book. So essentially, when you submit your contact information, we're going to send you. The PDF uh of the book.

A

um Christian also talked about book signing next week at cubecon right because it's also a physical book like this book is so that's what the book signing is for when you physically appear at cubicle, uh either go to your application networking day or Monday, or go to service mesh call on Tuesday or stop by at the solo boss. Before the book ran out, that's when we will be able to give you uh a hot copy of the book.

A

All right, thank you for that great questions.

A

All right, I think. That's all the questions. We have we're getting a little spam in the chat after looking how to fix that.

A

um All right so Christian is there anything else uh you want to summarize or highlight for our audience as we wrap up this.

B

Yeah, just for any any chance that the folks in the audience will be in person and kubecon definitely come, say: hi, um looking forward to meeting meeting people there and then, if you're interested in this technology either you want to use it. Maybe you do want to be part of the early adopter group.

B

um Maybe you want to contribute to it. You know reach out to us and there's as many different avenues that we believe we can. uh We can help.

A

Yeah, thank you so much Christian to get on the show with me today and I look forward to see some of you at kubecon next week.

A

um So folks, if you enjoyed this episode, uh let us know by giving us a thumbs up and uh I am super grateful for everyone who liked our past good, live stream. And subscribe to our Channel, we actually reached uh over 2 000 subscribers last month. So that's huge! Thank you yeah! Thank you, everyone to be part of it and we'll see you either at cubecon next week or the next episode thanks. So much thank.

B