In a Service Mesh, which plane handles policy and configuration?

In a Service Mesh, which plane handles policy and configuration?

• A. Data Plane
• B. Ingest Plane
• C. Control Plane
• D. Policy Plane

Answer: (C)

In a Service Mesh, policy and configuration are centralized in the control plane. The control plane holds the desired state for how services should be routed, who can access what, and what policies (like mTLS, retries, quotas) should apply. It then distributes these settings to the data planes, which are the sidecar proxies that actually handle and forward traffic. The data plane enforces the rules that the control plane defines, not create or manage policy on its own. For context, in typical meshes like Istio, the control plane (for example, Istiod) manages the configuration and policy, while the data plane consists of Envoy proxies that implement those rules at runtime. Terms like Ingest Plane or Policy Plane aren’t standard components for service meshes, and the data plane’s job is traffic processing, not policy distribution. So the best fit is that the control plane handles policy and configuration.

In a Service Mesh, policy and configuration are centralized in the control plane. The control plane holds the desired state for how services should be routed, who can access what, and what policies (like mTLS, retries, quotas) should apply. It then distributes these settings to the data planes, which are the sidecar proxies that actually handle and forward traffic. The data plane enforces the rules that the control plane defines, not create or manage policy on its own.

For context, in typical meshes like Istio, the control plane (for example, Istiod) manages the configuration and policy, while the data plane consists of Envoy proxies that implement those rules at runtime. Terms like Ingest Plane or Policy Plane aren’t standard components for service meshes, and the data plane’s job is traffic processing, not policy distribution.

So the best fit is that the control plane handles policy and configuration.