Istio makes all that much easier - traffic splits, percentage traffic splits, doing some sort of chaos testing to see how it works.
Istio is a valuable tool offering features like load balancing, authentication, and service monitoring. It enhances secure service communication with mutual TLS and Sidecar injection. Noted for being cost-free, Istio supports traffic management and JWT token authentication. However, users may face challenges with basic documentation, performance issues, and scalability. Without Kubernetes knowledge, using Istio may be difficult. Paid support akin to AWS would improve user experience and troubleshoot production issues efficiently.