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gRPC xDS API

gRPC xDS is an API specification that allows gRPC servers and clients to dynamically receive configuration (such as listener and cluster configurations) from a central management plane via the xDS protocol.^[400-devops-07-monitoring-and-observability-k8s-istio-samples-grpc-echo-readme.md]

Usage in Service Meshes

This API is a core component enabling proxyless Service mesh architectures, where applications can integrate directly with the mesh control plane without requiring a standard sidecar proxy like Envoy.^[400-devops-07-monitoring-and-observability-k8s-istio-samples-grpc-echo-readme.md]

For example, in Istio, this capability allows a Pod to use a specialized injection template (grpc-agent) that runs only the pilot-agent to fetch xDS configuration, bypassing the full istio-proxy (Envoy) sidecar while still maintaining mesh compatibility.^[400-devops-07-monitoring-and-observability-k8s-istio-samples-grpc-echo-readme.md]

Sources

^[400-devops-07-monitoring-and-observability-k8s-istio-samples-grpc-echo-readme.md]