Linkerd 2.14 Improves Support on Flat Networks and Gateway API Conformance

Write for InfoQ

Version 2.14 of Linkerd, a service mesh and graduated CNCF project, has been released, with improved enterprise multi-cluster support, full Kubernetes Gateway API conformance, and many other changes.

Following the recent 2.13 release, which brought circuit breaking and dynamic request routing, the latest release brings many enhancements and improvements, including enhanced support for multi-cluster deployments on shared flat networks and full Gateway API conformance.

This new release improves support for multi-cluster deployments on shared flat networks. This allows pods in different clusters to establish TCP connections with each other without the need for a multi-cluster gateway. This improves performance and security, and reduces latency and cloud spending by minimizing traffic routed through the gateway. This also maintains a critical aspect of Linkerd's design: each cluster still has its own Linkerd control plane, and is independent of other clusters for security and failure isolation. A blog post from Linkerd goes into many more details on how this works.

Linkerd now fully conforms with the new Kubernetes Gateway API. This enables standardized configuration for complex resources, such as HTTP requests, and offers a uniform API across ingress and service meshes. This means that features such as retries, timeouts and progressive delivery are fully configurable using Gateway API types, simplifying configuration and enhancing compatibility with contemporary Kubernetes service mesh definitions.

Underlining the significance of this, on X (formerly Twitter), Saim Safdar (host of the Cloud Native Podcast) comments that:

Gateway API represents the future of load balancing, routing, and service mesh APIs in Kubernetes

In addition to these new core features, Linkerd 2.14 includes numerous performance enhancements, bug fixes, and new capabilities, such as leader-election capabilities, high-availability mode for multicluster service mirroring, and improved diagnostics.

Linkerd has seen a significant surge in adoption by enterprise-level organizations such as Adidas, Microsoft, Plaid, and DB Schenker in the past 18 months. These companies have deployed Linkerd to enhance their mission-critical production infrastructure's security, compliance, and reliability.

The article highlights Linkerd's success, for example, in doubling the number of stable Kubernetes clusters running the technology in 2022. It also hints at exciting features and developments planned for later in 2023, building upon the achievements of releases 2.13 and 2.14, maintaining Linkerd's commitment to blending enterprise-level capabilities, operational ease, and cost-effectiveness in the service mesh.

Related Topics:

• Development
• Architecture & Design
• DevOps
• Kubernetes
• Linkerd
• Service Mesh

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