Performance and Scalability

Questions about Kiali Performance measurements and improvements.

What performance and scalability measurements are done?

Performance tests are conducted on setups with 10, 50, 200, 300, 500, and 800 namespaces. Each namespace contains:

  • 1 Service
  • 2 Workloads
  • 2 Istio configurations

What improvements have been made to Kiali’s performance in recent versions?

Performance data is collected using automated performance tests on various setups, ensuring a comprehensive evaluation of improvements. Since the release of Kiali v1.80, significant performance enhancements have been implemented, resulting in up to a 5x improvement in page load times. The performance improvements were achieved by reducing the number of requests made from the Kiali UI to the services. Instead of multiple requests, the process was streamlined to unify these into a single request per cluster. The enhanced performance significantly reduces the time users spend waiting for pages to load, leading to a more efficient and smooth user experience.

Performance Improvements Matrix Per Kiali Version And Section

Kiali
Section
Improvements
1.80 Graph Page Validations
1.81 Overview Page mTLS, Metrics, Health
1.82 Applications List Overall loading
1.83 Workloads List, Services List Overall loading

These improvements make Kiali more responsive and efficient, particularly in environments with a large number of namespaces, services, and workloads, enhancing usability and productivity.

For a graphical representation of the performance improvements between Kiali v1.79 (before improvements) and v1.85 (after improvements) of the Overview page load times, refer to the chart below:

Kiali Overview Page