Linkerd
also: service mesh, Linkerd2
Linkerd is a lightweight service mesh that adds observability, reliability, and security capabilities to Kubernetes applications without requiring code changes.
Linkerd is an open-source service mesh—a dedicated infrastructure layer that manages service-to-service communication in microservices architectures. It automatically injects itself between your application containers to monitor, route, and secure traffic.
Unlike heavier alternatives, Linkerd is designed to be minimal and fast, written primarily in Rust for the data plane. It provides automatic mutual TLS encryption between services, automatic retries and timeouts, and built-in observability including request latency and success rates without requiring instrumentation in your application code.
Example: deploying Linkerd on a Kubernetes cluster automatically encrypts communication between your backend services, tracks request metrics, and can automatically retry failed requests—all transparently managed by the mesh without modifying your service code.