Technology · Ebook

Linkerd: The Lightweight Service Mesh

by Shriira Press

Linkerd is the lightweight service mesh for Kubernetes, built around simplicity: it adds security, reliability, and observability to service-to-service communication with a famously small, fast, easy-to-operate footprint, using a purpose-built Rust micro-proxy instead of a general-purpose one. This free book teaches it from the ground up: the service-mesh model and Linkerd's minimalist philosophy, its architecture (control plane and the Rust micro-proxy), proxy injection, automatic mutual TLS and security (zero-config zero-trust), observability with golden metrics and live tap, reliability with smart latency-aware load balancing and retries, traffic management and progressive delivery (with Flagger), multi-cluster and the extension model, and operating Linkerd in production (including the trust-anchor and certificate lifecycle). Ten focused chapters with clear diagrams that show how to get a service mesh's core value without the mesh tax.

Contents

1. 1Preface
2. 2Chapter 1 — What Linkerd Is
3. 3Chapter 2 — The Service Mesh Model and Linkerd's Philosophy
4. 4Chapter 3 — Architecture
5. 5Chapter 4 — The Data Plane and Proxy Injection
6. 6Chapter 5 — Automatic mTLS and Security
7. 7Chapter 6 — Observability
8. 8Chapter 7 — Reliability
9. 9Chapter 8 — Traffic Management and Progressive Delivery
10. 10Chapter 9 — Multi-Cluster and Extensions
11. 11Chapter 10 — Operating Linkerd and Putting It Together