Introducing the CAKES Stack
The way applications are connected to networks is critical for their performance, dependability, and security. The tools and platforms you use play a crucial role in making sure your applications run smoothly.
Whether managing containerized workloads, simplifying communication between services, assigning identities to services, or establishing connections between them, your organization will likely rely on open-source technologies in some way. Solutions like Kubernetes, Istio, Envoy, CNIs, SPIFFE/SPIRE, and others offer a wide range of capabilities that form the foundation of modern application networking.
Best-of-breed technologies that integrate well with each other are based on modern cloud principles, and have been proven at scale are likely better equipped to handle the challenges we see.
CAKES is built on the following open-source technologies:
- CNI (Cilium, Calico)
- Ambient mode (Istio)
- Kubernetes
- Envoy Proxy (API Gateway)
- SPIFFE (SPIRE)
This stack is intended to be coupled with modern practices like GitOps, declarative configuration, and platform engineering.
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CAKES gives platform owners and engineers modern tools to improve developer experience, improve the speed of delivery, and improve compliance posture. CAKES is well-suited for platform engineering approaches and fits natively within GitOps workflows.
Solo.io is at the forefront of driving the respective OSS projects that make up the CAKES stack and is the only one to provide commercial support for this stack.
CAKES Stack Component | CAKES Stack Component | OSI Layer | Gloo Gateway | Gloo Mesh | Gloo Network
for Cilium |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
CNI via Cilium, Calico | Container
connectivity/policy | L3/L4 |  |  | |
Ambient mode
Istio Service Mesh | East-west
connectivity/policy | L4/L7 | | | |
Kubernetes | Container
runtime/orchestration | L7 | | | |
Envoy Proxy | Ingress/Egress,
API Gateway | L7 | | | |
SPIFFE via SPIRE | Workload
identity framework | L$ | | | |
