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Linkerd

Ultralight, security-first service mesh for Kubernetes

Reverse Proxy & Gateways ★ 11.5k stars Medium setup Apache-2.0

Linkerd is an open-source service mesh that adds observability, reliability, and mTLS security to Kubernetes services. Its lightweight Rust-based data plane proxy is designed for low latency and minimal resource use.

Key features

  • Automatic mTLS
  • Golden-metrics observability
  • Lightweight proxy
  • Traffic splitting

Pros & cons

Strengths

  • Very low overhead
  • Simple to operate

Trade-offs

  • Kubernetes only
  • Fewer features than Istio

Linkerd replaces

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