Last but not least

Once the kuma-cp process is started, it waits for data-planes to connect, while at the same time accepting user-defined configuration to start creating Service Meshes and configuring the behavior of those meshes via Kuma Policies.

When we look at a typical Kuma installation, at a higher level it works like this:

xDS APIs: Kuma implements the xDS APIs of Envoy in the kuma-cp application so that the Envoy DPs can connect to it and retrieve their configuration.