linkerd-patterns

Linkerd Patterns

Production patterns for Linkerd service mesh - the lightweight, security-first service mesh for Kubernetes.

When to Use This Skill

• Setting up a lightweight service mesh
• Implementing automatic mTLS
• Configuring traffic splits for canary deployments
• Setting up service profiles for per-route metrics
• Implementing retries and timeouts
• Multi-cluster service mesh

Core Concepts

1. Linkerd Architecture

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                Control Plane                 │
│  ┌─────────┐ ┌──────────┐ ┌──────────────┐ │
│  │ destiny │ │ identity │ │ proxy-inject │ │
│  └─────────┘ └──────────┘ └──────────────┘ │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────┘
                      │
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                 Data Plane                   │
│  ┌─────┐    ┌─────┐    ┌─────┐             │
│  │proxy│────│proxy│────│proxy│             │
│  └─────┘    └─────┘    └─────┘             │
│     │           │           │               │
│  ┌──┴──┐    ┌──┴──┐    ┌──┴──┐            │
│  │ app │    │ app │    │ app │            │
│  └─────┘    └─────┘    └─────┘            │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────┘

2. Key Resources

Resource	Purpose
ServiceProfile	Per-route metrics, retries, timeouts
TrafficSplit	Canary deployments, A/B testing
Server	Define server-side policies
ServerAuthorization	Access control policies

Templates

Template 1: Mesh Installation

# Install CLI
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSfL https://run.linkerd.io/install | sh

# Validate cluster
linkerd check --pre

# Install CRDs
linkerd install --crds | kubectl apply -f -

# Install control plane
linkerd install | kubectl apply -f -

# Verify installation
linkerd check

# Install viz extension (optional)
linkerd viz install | kubectl apply -f -

Template 2: Inject Namespace

# Automatic injection for namespace
apiVersion: v1
kind: Namespace
metadata:
  name: my-app
  annotations:
    linkerd.io/inject: enabled
---
# Or inject specific deployment
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: my-app
  annotations:
    linkerd.io/inject: enabled
spec:
  template:
    metadata:
      annotations:
        linkerd.io/inject: enabled