Linkerd
Linkerd is an open-source, lightweight service mesh designed for cloud-native applications, providing observability, reliability, and security features without requiring code changes. It operates as a set of ultra-lightweight proxies deployed alongside application code to handle inter-service communication, traffic management, and telemetry collection. Originally created by Buoyant, it is now a graduated project of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), emphasizing simplicity and performance.
Developers should learn and use Linkerd when building or managing microservices architectures in Kubernetes environments, as it simplifies complex networking tasks like load balancing, retries, timeouts, and mutual TLS encryption. It is particularly valuable for enhancing application reliability through features like automatic retries and circuit breaking, and for improving observability with detailed metrics and traces for debugging and monitoring. Use cases include securing service-to-service communication, reducing latency with efficient proxies, and gaining insights into traffic patterns without invasive instrumentation.