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RWS Architecture article

Service Mesh

Service Mesh is the product-neutral architecture building block for service-to-service traffic control, identity, and observability. It states what DC 3.0 needs from this capabilit

  1. Typeabb
  2. Statuscandidate
  3. Domainplatform
On this page
  1. ABB Service Mesh
  2. Summary
  3. Capabilities
  4. Constraints
  5. Service Description
  6. Roadmaps
  7. Landing Zones
  8. Interfaces
  9. Dependencies
  10. EIRA Alignment
  11. Available SBB's

ABB Service Mesh

Summary

Service Mesh is the product-neutral architecture building block for service-to-service traffic control, identity, and observability. It states what DC 3.0 needs from this capability before a concrete SBB, product, or operating model is selected.

Capabilities

  • Provides service-to-service traffic control, identity, and observability.
  • Defines the functional, technical, security, and quality expectations that SBBs must satisfy.
  • Keeps service ownership, interfaces, and consumption boundaries visible before product selection.
  • Enables traceability from architecture intent to implementation, operational evidence, and consuming services.

Constraints

  • The resulting SBB must fit the platforms ownership model and document the support, lifecycle, and service-management boundary.
  • Security, privacy, logging, evidence, and compliance controls must be explicit enough to assess BIO2-aligned implementation where applicable.
  • Mesh adoption must define sidecar or ambient mode boundaries, operational ownership, and exception handling.
  • SBBs must not degrade platform supportability or obscure application responsibility.

Service Description

This ABB offers a service mesh service that provides controlled east-west traffic, workload identity, mTLS, telemetry, and policy enforcement for platform workloads. It is consumed by solution architects, platform teams, and service owners as the capability contract for selecting and shaping SBBs.

The service description remains implementation-neutral: product selection, hosting pattern, detailed runbooks, and service levels belong in the mapped SBB and related ADRs.

Roadmaps

  • Baseline: confirm scope, service ownership, constraints, and acceptance criteria for Service Mesh.
  • MVP: validate the mapped SBB implementation and record the selected support and lifecycle model.
  • Next: add measurable service levels, evidence requirements, and roadmap dependencies once the SBB is selected.

Landing Zones

  • Private cloud landing zone in ODC-Amsterdam, following the RWS ICT Strategy 2025-2030 private-cloud direction.
  • Government cloud or external cloud landing zones only when the SBB documents the required control set, connectivity model, and data classification fit.

Interfaces

  • mTLS, HTTP, gRPC, TCP, and service-discovery interfaces.
  • Policy, telemetry, certificate, and ingress integrations.
  • Platform APIs for mesh membership and configuration.

Dependencies

  • Depends on clusters-as-a-service for a supporting capability or integration boundary.
  • Depends on public-key-infrastructure for a supporting capability or integration boundary.
  • Depends on federated-authentication for a supporting capability or integration boundary.
  • Implemented by openshift-service-mesh as currently mapped SBB traceability.
  • Consuming ABB and SBB dependencies must be recorded as links when solution design identifies concrete upstream or downstream use.

EIRA Alignment

Available SBB's

  • openshift-service-mesh - OpenShift Service Mesh is a candidate solution building block for the translated DC 3.0 ABB model. It remains candidate until the responsible architects confirm service ownership, support model, and acceptance criteria.