ure><p>With the new deployment model in Istio 1.7, it&rsquo;s possible to run Istiod on an external cluster, separate from the mesh services as shown in the diagram below. The external control plane cluster is owned by the mesh operator while the mesh admin owns the cluster running services deployed in the mesh. The mesh admin has no access to the external control plane cluster. Mesh operators can follow the <a href=https://github.com/istio/istio/wiki/External-Istiod-single-cluster-steps>external istiod sin