Cilium 1.6: eBPF-Powered Service Security at Scale

Introduction

Cilium 1.6 arrived on July 1, 2019, evolving the eBPF data plane into a platform for multi-cluster networking, encryption, and service observability. The release pushes beyond policy enforcement to deliver zero-trust connectivity.

Major Features

Cluster Mesh: Federate multiple clusters with identity-aware routing over standard networking.
Transparent Encryption: WireGuard and IPsec support encrypt pod-to-pod traffic without sidecars.
Envoy 1.11 Integration: Enables Layer 7 policy and enhanced HTTP metrics through xDS.
Hubble Preview: A new observability layer for tracing flows, DNS lookups, and policy verdicts.

Operational Enhancements

Helm Charts: Opinionated installation for AKS, EKS, GKE, and bare metal.
CRD Stability: CiliumNetworkPolicy hits beta with schema validation and status conditions.
CI/CD Hardening: Nightly eBPF verifier tests and kernel compatibility matrix.

Use Cases

Secure multi-cluster service meshes without overlay complexity.
Encrypt compliance-sensitive traffic directly in the kernel data path.
Provide developers with flow-level visibility without packet capture firefights.

Getting Started

helm repo add cilium https://helm.cilium.io
helm install cilium cilium/cilium --version 1.6.0 \
  --set encryption.enabled=true --set hubble.enabled=true

Upgrade from 1.5 with rolling DaemonSet restarts; Cilium auto-translates identities to the new KV-store layout.

Summary

Aspect	Details
Release Date	July 1, 2019
Headline Features	Cluster mesh, transparent encryption, Hubble
Why it Matters	Positions Cilium as a drop-in secure data plane for service mesh and multi-cluster topologies

Cilium 1.6 brings together security, networking, and visibility, making eBPF approachable for platform teams running complex Kubernetes estates.