Calico Enterprise vs Isovalent Enterprise for Cilium

Calico Enterprise is a self-managed platform for network security and observability in Kubernetes clusters. It provides pod-to-pod networking within single clusters and across multiple clusters, with data-plane options including eBPF, nftables, iptables, Windows, and VPP. Cluster mesh connects clusters for pod communication and service discovery, while supporting policy enforcement and traffic visibility. Security controls include network- and application-layer policies, DNS policies, egress controls, and workload microsegmentation. It also provides workload-level IDS/IPS, a workload-focused WAF, and DDoS detection and prevention. For observability, Calico combines flow logs with Kubernetes context and offers network topology views, dashboards, alerts, and workload packet capture. Tigera lists support for PCI DSS, HIPAA, GDPR, SOC 2, NIST, CCPA, and custom compliance frameworks, along with continuous monitoring and audit-ready reports. Policy deployment can integrate with CI/CD tools such as ArgoCD and Jenkins. The product supports hybrid deployment and centralized control, with BGP, IP-in-IP, VXLAN, WireGuard, TCP, UDP, SCTP, ICMP, ICMPv6, and HTTP listed as supported protocols.

Isovalent Enterprise for Cilium is a paid, hardened distribution of Cilium, Hubble, and Tetragon, built and supported by Cilium’s creators. Cilium supplies network-layer connectivity and security across multi-cloud and on-premises environments. Enterprise policies include DNS-aware, Layer 7, and deny rules for fine-grained traffic control and micro-segmentation. Hubble provides real-time network-flow visibility, policy visualization, and an interface for troubleshooting and network management. Tetragon adds runtime enforcement and security observability, including protocol enforcement, IP and port whitelisting, and automatic application-aware policy generation. Cluster Mesh connects clusters across AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and on-premises environments. The product also offers sidecar-free service communication and advanced load balancing. It runs on Linux in self-hosted environments, with hybrid deployment and a distributed control plane. Deployment guidance covers Azure Marketplace, an Azure Resource Manager template, and Azure CLI. Pricing is on request. Hubble UI, DNS Proxy HA, and Tetragon are not enabled by default for AKS creation or upgrades.