Ambient Mesh Lab: Introduction to ztunnel in Ambient Mesh

In this free hands-on lab, you’ll explore how ztunnel - Istio Ambient’s Layer 4 data plane, secures and observes traffic between workloads without sidecars using Istio. By the end of this lab, you'll understand how to:

• Join workloads to the ambient mesh using namespace labels
• Observe ztunnel proxy behavior and real-time logs
• Verify mTLS encryption and SPIFFE identities
• Enforce Layer 4 authorization with Istio policies

Start the lab now and see how ztunnel simplifies service mesh operations with secure, lightweight traffic handling.