RCA1034 – Introduction to Service Mesh with Linkerd

COURSE DESCRIPTION

The service mesh is an increasingly critical component of the cloud native ecosystem, with the Kubernetes ecosystem especially using service mesh projects to add reliability, security, and observability to applications.

In this course, students will learn the basics of the service mesh and the benefits that it provides, and gain concrete, hands-on skills using Linkerd, the open source, ultralight CNCF service mesh for Kubernetes. Students will walk away with practical knowledge of an important cloud native technology which can be applied directly to any cloud native environment.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Describe what a service mesh is and contrast it to related technologies
• Install a service mesh on Kubernetes using Linkerd
• Use a service mesh to transparently add mutual TLS (mTLS), golden metrics, and blue-green deploys to any Kubernetes application
• Understand the considerations when deploying a service mesh to production.

Syllabus

• Welcome
• Chapter 1. What Is a Service Mesh?
• Chapter 2. Linkerd and the Service Mesh Ecosystem
• Chapter 3. Linkerd Architecture
• Chapter 4. The Data Plane Starring Linkerd2-proxy
• Chapter 5. The Linkerd Control Plane
• Chapter 6. Linkerd Extensions
• Chapter 7. Deploying Linkerd to a Kubernetes Cluster
• Chapter 8. Getting “Golden Metrics” for Your Applications
• Chapter 9. Using Service Profiles for Per-Route Metrics
• Chapter 10. Retries and Timeouts
• Chapter 11. Securing your Application Communication with mTLS
• Chapter 12. Canary and Blue-Green Deployments
• Chapter 13. Using Linkerd in Production
• Chapter 14. Course Summary and Next Steps
• Final Exam