Announced at KubeCon NA 2022 is the v0.6.0 release of Meshery, the CNCF’s cloud native manager. In this latest release, three new feature areas entered beta, and GitOps enablement, with new CLI commands and more are now available to users as previewed at KubeCon NA 2022 this week.

Feature Highlights

  • Manage Applications in Meshery [beta]
  • Manage WebAssembly filters in Meshery [beta]
  • Manage cloud native Patterns in Meshery [beta]
  • Meshery on Apple Silicon
  • Improved Kubernetes support
  • CLI commands to check environment readiness and system health
  • Pipelining cloud native specifications
  • Kanvas: Visual Designer [beta program]

Thank you to the wonderful community of open source contributors in making this significant release possible.

Meshery Applications [beta]

Users can now manage their Kubernetes applications directly through Meshery. Meshery offers an all-in-one place to store and onboard/offboard your applications from Docker Compose, Helm Chart or Kubernetes Manifest into your Kubernetes clusters.

Meshery also comes with a set of sample applications that you can use to quickly test your clusters’ capabilities. Users can also bring in their own applications importing from local filesystem, URL or even a GitHub repository.

Learn more about application management.

WASM Filters [beta]

WebAssembly is a low-level language with a compact binary format that runs almost anywhere at near-native speed including Envoy’s Application Binary Interface to extend Envoy with new capabilities.

With this new feature, Meshery works with any Envoy-based service mesh, like Istio, Consul, Open Service Mesh, and Kuma to dynamically load, configure and unload filter(s) in the running of Envoy proxies.

Learn more about Envoy WASM filter management.

Cloud Native Designs [beta]

Cloud Native Designs capture cloud native behaviour in a single or a combination of files in a concise and readable fashion. Designs are infrastructure specific: Kubernetes and anything that runs on Kubernetes. Designs are exportable as Kubernetes manifests. Meshery comes with a set of design patterns out-of-the-box which the users can try out in their deployment.

Learn more about managing Kubernetes clusters with Meshery Designs.

You can share designs with others who run Meshery and they can import, customize and deploy to their clusters. Build and share best practices using the Meshery Catalog.

Run Meshery anywhere

Meshery’s CLI, mesheryctl now supports macOS with Apple Silicon (ARM/M1) chips along with the previously supported Windows, Linux and macOS (x86).

mesheryctl can be installed by using a single command as shown in the quick start guide.

Meshery on k8s

With this release, Meshery by default deploys on your Kubernetes cluster.

Whether you are running a test environment locally using minikube or KinD, or if you are using a managed Kubernetes service like EKS or GKE, you can run Meshery with a one-liner command.

curl -L https://git.io/meshery | PLATFORM=kubernetes bash -

See the list for more supported platforms.

Checking environment readiness and post deployment checks

Users can now run environment readiness checks with Meshery’s CLI, mesheryctl, to verify if their environment is configured correctly before deploying Meshery.

This ensures that the deployment process is smooth and would help the users troubleshoot and fix any errors in their environment.

mesheryctl now also has the system check command which will run checks on a running instance of Meshery and report back any issues.

Pipelining cloud native specifications

The Service Mesh Interface specification provides a standard interface for cloud nativees on Kubernetes. It has a basic common denominator feature set to support most common cloud native use cases and a flexibility to support new service mesh capabilities over time.

The Cloud Native Performance specification standardizes capturing and characterizing the details of infrastructure capacity, Kubernetes configuration and workload metadata.

As a cloud native agnostic tool that provides lifecycle and performance management of a large number (10+) adapters, sample applications, cloud native patterns and WebAssembly filters, Meshery is the ideal tool for the job when it comes to implementing these specifications.

Meshery also comes with 2 new GitHub Actions that do exactly this. The Meshery SMI Conformance Action which validates SMI conformance in your pipeline and the Meshery SMP Action which runs SMP compatible performance benchmarks.

Kanvas Beta Program

We saved the best for last! Meshery’s latest feature, Kanvas, which lets users visualise their cloud native deployments is now in beta.

Users can sign up for the beta to try out this feature early on.

On to v0.7

To learn more about the new features and a comprehensive list of bug fixes, see the Meshery Documentation.

Checkout Meshery’s roadmap to peek into what’s yet to come.

If these topics excite you and you want to explore the wonderful world of cloud nativees, come and say “Hi” on the community Slack and you are sure to be warmly welcomed. 😀