### Overview

- [istio-cni Helm chart](../manifests/charts/istio-cni/templates)
    - `install-cni` daemonset - main function is to install and help the node CNI, but it is also a proper server and interacts with K8S, watching Pods for recovery.
    - `istio-cni-config` configmap with CNI plugin config to add to CNI plugin chained config

## Introduction

The operator uses the [IstioOperator API](https://github.com/istio/api/blob/master/operator/v1alpha1/operator.proto), which has
three main components:

- [MeshConfig](https://github.com/istio/api/blob/master/mesh/v1alpha1/config.proto) for runtime config consumed directly by Istio
control plane components.