A while ago we published some benchmarks and sizing about our experience of running Apache Kafka over a service mesh with Koperator and Istio operator, orchestrated by our automated and operationalized service mesh, Backyards (now Cisco Service Mesh Manager). The reasons for such a setup were many, and there are more details in the Running Apache Kafka over Istio - benchmark post, but let me recap some of our initial reasons, and how we evolved from there.