Linkerd 2.13: Service Mesh Performance and Observability Excellence

Introduction

Linkerd 2.13, released on September 14, 2023, is most relevant if you’re managing service-to-service traffic and want less operational overhead. The improvements tend to matter in production traffic management: simpler operations, stronger defaults, and better visibility without extra moving parts.

Performance Improvements

• Proxy performance optimizations reduce latency and CPU overhead for service-to-service communication.
• Connection pooling improvements reduce resource usage and improve throughput.
• Load balancing enhancements deliver better distribution algorithms with lower overhead.
• Memory efficiency optimizations reduce resource footprint in large deployments.

Enhanced Observability

1. Metrics expansion exposes detailed service, pod, and deployment metrics for Prometheus.
2. Distributed tracing improvements provide better correlation of requests across service boundaries.
3. Tap enhancements enable real-time request inspection and debugging.
4. Dashboard improvements provide better visualization of service topology and health.

Policy Enhancements

• Server authorization improvements provide fine-grained access control for service-to-service communication.
• Client authorization enhancements enable per-client policy enforcement.
• Network policy integration provides seamless compatibility with Kubernetes NetworkPolicies.
• Policy updates enable dynamic policy changes without service restart.

Security Features

• Automatic mTLS ensures all service-to-service communication is encrypted by default.
• Certificate rotation improvements provide seamless key rotation without service interruption.
• Identity enhancements enable better integration with Kubernetes service accounts.
• Authorization policies provide flexible access control based on service labels and metadata.

Developer Experience

• CLI improvements simplify installation, upgrade, and troubleshooting workflows.
• Documentation enhancements provide better guides and examples for common use cases.
• Integration improvements enable easier adoption with popular tools and platforms.
• Debugging tools provide better visibility into service mesh behavior and issues.

Getting Started

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSfL https://run.linkerd.io/install | sh
linkerd install | kubectl apply -f -
linkerd check

Inject Linkerd into a deployment:

kubectl get deployment my-app -o yaml | linkerd inject - | kubectl apply -f -

View service metrics:

linkerd viz dashboard

Summary

Linkerd 2.13 continues to set the standard for lightweight service mesh deployments, providing teams with performance, observability, and security without complexity.