In a service mesh, which component is responsible for configuring proxies and policies?

In a service mesh, which component is responsible for configuring proxies and policies?

• A. Data plane
• B. Control plane
• C. Ingress controller
• D. Node agent

Answer: (B)

In a service mesh, the control plane handles centralized management of how the mesh behaves. It makes decisions about routing rules, retries, security policies (like mTLS and access control), and other traffic-management policies, then pushes this configuration to the proxies that actually handle the traffic. The data plane, comprised of the sidecar proxies, enforces the guidance it receives from the control plane and collects telemetry. Ingress controllers deal with external entry points, and a generic node agent isn’t the central configuration authority in a typical mesh. So the component that configures proxies and policies is the control plane.

In a service mesh, the control plane handles centralized management of how the mesh behaves. It makes decisions about routing rules, retries, security policies (like mTLS and access control), and other traffic-management policies, then pushes this configuration to the proxies that actually handle the traffic. The data plane, comprised of the sidecar proxies, enforces the guidance it receives from the control plane and collects telemetry. Ingress controllers deal with external entry points, and a generic node agent isn’t the central configuration authority in a typical mesh. So the component that configures proxies and policies is the control plane.