ar we introduced a <a href=/v1.12/blog/2020/new-deployment-model/>new deployment model for Istio</a> where the control plane for a cluster was managed outside of that cluster. This allows for separation of concerns between a mesh owner, who administers the control plane, and the mesh users, who deploy and configure services in the mesh. An external control plane, running in a separate cluster, can control a single data plane cluster or more than one cluster of a multicluster mesh.</p><p>In 1.11, this featur