How to use Istio Virtual Service in-between front and back services - kubernetes

Question

I am totally new to Istio, and the pitch looks very exciting. However, I can't make it work, which probably means I don't use it properly.
My goal is to implement session affinity between 2 services, this is why originally I end up using Istio. However, I do a very basic test, and it does not seem to work:
I have an kubernetes demo app which as a front service, a stateful-service, and a stateless service. From a browser, I access the front-service which dispatches the request either on the stateful or stateless services, using K8s service names as url: http://api-stateful or http://api-stateless.
I want to declare a virtual service to intercept requests sent from the front-service to the stateful-service.I don't declare it as a gateway, as I understood gateway was at the external border of the K8s cluster.
I use Docker on Windows with Istio 1.6.
I copy my yaml file below. the basic test I want to do: reroute traffic for api-stateful to api-stateless, to validate that the Virtual Service is taken into account. And it does not work. Do you see what is wrong? Is it a wrong usage of Virtual Service ? My Kiali console does not detect any problem in setup.
####################################################################
######################### STATEFUL BACKEND #########################
# Deployment for pocbackend containers, listening on port 3000
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
name: stateful-deployment
spec:
replicas: 3
selector:
matchLabels:
app: stateful-backend
tier: backend
template:
metadata:
labels:
app: stateful-backend
tier: backend
spec:
containers:
- name: pocbackend
image: pocbackend:2.0
ports:
- name: http
containerPort: 3000
---
# Service for Stateful containers, listening on port 3000
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
name: api-stateful
spec:
selector:
app: stateful-backend
tier: backend
ports:
- protocol: TCP
port: 3002
targetPort: http
---
#####################################################################
######################### STATELESS BACKEND #########################
# Deployment for pocbackend containers, listening on port 3000
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
name: stateless-backend
spec:
replicas: 3
selector:
matchLabels:
app: stateless-backend
tier: backend
template:
metadata:
labels:
app: stateless-backend
tier: backend
spec:
containers:
- name: pocbackend
image: pocbackend:2.0
ports:
- name: http
containerPort: 3000
---
# Service for Stateless containers, listening on port 3000
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
name: api-stateless
spec:
selector:
app: stateless-backend
tier: backend
ports:
- protocol: TCP
port: 3001
targetPort: http
---
#############################################################
######################### FRONT END #########################
# deployment of the container pocfrontend listening to port 3500
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
name: front-deployment
spec:
replicas: 2
selector:
matchLabels:
app: frontend
tier: frontend
template:
metadata:
labels:
app: frontend
tier: frontend
spec:
containers:
- name: pocfrontend
image: pocfrontend:2.0
ports:
- name: http
containerPort: 3500
---
# Service exposing frontend on node port 85
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
name: frontend-service
spec:
type: NodePort
selector:
app: frontend
tier: frontend
ports:
- protocol: TCP
port: 3500
targetPort: http
nodePort: 30000
---
##############################################################
############ ISTIO PROXY FOR API-STATEFUL SERVIC E############
##############################################################
apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3
kind: VirtualService
metadata:
name: api-stateful-proxy
spec:
hosts:
- api-stateful
http:
- route:
- destination:
host: api-stateless

Answer 1

As mentioned in comments this can be fixed with DestinationRule with sticky session configuration.
Example of that can be found in istio documentation:
LoadBalancerSettings
Load balancing policies to apply for a specific destination. See Envoy’s load balancing documentation for more details.
For example, the following rule uses a round robin load balancing policy for all traffic going to the ratings service.
apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3
kind: DestinationRule
metadata:
name: bookinfo-ratings
spec:
host: ratings.prod.svc.cluster.local
trafficPolicy:
loadBalancer:
simple: ROUND_ROBIN
The following example sets up sticky sessions for the ratings service hashing-based load balancer for the same ratings service using the the User cookie as the hash key.
apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3
kind: DestinationRule
metadata:
name: bookinfo-ratings
spec:
host: ratings.prod.svc.cluster.local
trafficPolicy:
loadBalancer:
consistentHash:
httpCookie:
name: user
ttl: 0s