Kong Mesh 2.7 is here! And with it come a slew of new features to make our simple and powerful enterprise service mesh even easier to use and more powerful for your particular needs.

In this blog post, we'll cover the new features and show how Kong Mesh 2.7 can deliver a superior service mesh experience for your organization.

## MeshMetric policy improvements

In 2.6, we added support for metrics in our policies with MeshMetric. In 2.7, we reinforced this support with improvements to the [OTLP](https://opentelemetry.io/docs/specs/otel/protocol/)OTLP backend. 

We’ve also listened to our users who were asking for a smaller set of metrics to be exposed by default. This is achieved with [profiles](https://docs.konghq.com/mesh/2.7.x/policies/meshmetric/#profiles)profiles, which by default hides some metrics. You can always use targeted policies to get more metrics during troubleshooting. This gives you the best balance between insights and cost management.

Here’s an example of such a policy:

apiVersion: kuma.io/v1alpha1
kind: MeshMetric
metadata:
  name: metrics-default
  namespace: kuma-system
spec:
  targetRef:
    kind: Mesh
  default:
    backends:
      - type: Prometheus
        prometheus:
          port: 5670
          path: "/metrics"

    sidecar:
      includeUnused: true
      profiles:
        appendProfiles:
        - name: Basic

## Policies in shadow mode

Since version 2.6.0, we've recommended users migrate to targetRef policies. Up until now, it was a little hard to understand what impact a policy has before rolling it out. With Kong Mesh 2.7, you can now use [shadow](https://docs.konghq.com/mesh/2.7.x/policies/applying-policies/#applying-policies-in-shadow-mode)shadow policies to see how your proxy configuration may change before taking effect. This is easily done by simply labeling policies with kuma.io/effect: shadow.

## Gateway API GA and using MeshHTTPRoutes

We’ve supported [Gateway API](https://konghq.com/blog/engineering/gateway-api-from-early-years-to-ga)Gateway API for a while now including GAMMA support. We’re happy to announce that with 2.7 it's enabled by default.

We’ve also reworked the internals so that the Gateway API implementation leverages MeshHTTPRoute and MeshTCPRoute, which works well with multi-zone and makes integration between Kong Mesh and Gateway API very straightforward.

## GUI improvements

We keep shipping more improvements to our GUI. Some notable ones include:

• - Now we show namespace, zone, and display name when listing policies and zones. This aims to improve readability for users.
• - The data plane view now shows policies attached to inbounds and outbounds making it much easier to understand how policies work.
• - We now provide a hierarchical view of the routes attached to your built-in gateway. This should help you understand more deeply how you are configuring your gateway.

## Software supply chain management

Software supply chain management is becoming central to enterprise software. With Kong Mesh 2.7, we’re happy to add Software Bill of Materials (SBOM), container and binary build provenance, and image signatures. We’re also looking to perform an SLSA audit to attain an SLSA level.

## Conclusion

Kong Mesh 2.7 offers the usability, flexibility, and security you need to meet your organization’s unique needs. From reliability and cost optimization to compliance and security, Kong Mesh has you covered.

Why not see Kong Mesh in action for yourself? [Request a demo](https://konghq.com/products/kong-mesh/request-demo)Request a demo or [download Kong Mesh](https://docs.konghq.com/mesh/2.5.x/install/)download Kong Mesh today.