Envoy 1.12: Data Plane Innovation Continues

Introduction

Envoy 1.12, released on November 20, 2019, showcases the proxy’s evolving role at the heart of service meshes and edge gateways. This release modernizes extensibility, transport protocols, and configuration workflows.

Extensibility & Efficiency

WebAssembly Sandbox (Preview): Run custom filters safely, enabling per-request logic without recompiling Envoy.
Improved Lua Support: Async HTTP calls and metrics emission expand script-based filters.
Adaptive Concurrency: Dynamically tune max concurrent requests based on downstream latency.

Protocol Roadmap

HTTP/3 & QUIC Foundations: Core plumbing lands, paving the way for future QUIC listeners.
gRPC Enhancements: Better health checking, retry policies, and load reporting.
Incremental xDS: Control planes push targeted updates, reducing config churn and CPU spikes.

Operations Toolkit

Admin v3 API: Structured JSON responses make automation and scraping straightforward.
Stats Prefixing: Consistent naming for clusters, listeners, and routes simplifies Grafana dashboards.
SDS & mTLS: Enhanced secret rotation APIs minimize traffic interruptions.

Getting Started

docker run envoyproxy/envoy:v1.12.0 --version

Adopt incremental xDS:

node:
  id: cluster-control-plane
  cluster: prod
  user_agent_name: xds

Upgrade Istio, Consul, or Kuma installations to pick up the latest Envoy base image for immediate benefits.

Summary

Aspect	Details
Release Date	November 20, 2019
Headline Features	Wasm filters, HTTP/3 groundwork, incremental xDS
Why it Matters	Keeps Envoy ahead as the programmable data plane for modern service meshes and gateways

Envoy 1.12 continues the proxy’s rapid innovation cadence, arming platform teams with future-friendly transport support and safe extensibility.