How to Set Up a Service Mesh with Linkerd

Setting Up a Service Mesh with Linkerd

Linkerd is a lightweight, security-focused service mesh for Kubernetes. It provides mutual TLS, observability, and traffic management without complex configuration, making it ideal for Breeze-hosted clusters.

Install the Linkerd CLI

curl -fsL https://run.linkerd.io/install | sh
export PATH=$HOME/.linkerd2/bin:$PATH
linkerd version

Pre-Installation Check

linkerd check --pre

This validates that your cluster meets all prerequisites before installation.

Install Linkerd on Your Cluster

linkerd install --crds | kubectl apply -f -
linkerd install | kubectl apply -f -
linkerd check

Install the Viz Extension

The viz extension provides the dashboard and metrics:

linkerd viz install | kubectl apply -f -
linkerd viz check
linkerd viz dashboard &

Mesh Your Applications

Inject the Linkerd proxy into your deployments:

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

Or annotate the namespace for automatic injection:

kubectl annotate namespace my-app linkerd.io/inject=enabled

Key Benefits

• Automatic mTLS -- encrypts all pod-to-pod traffic by default
• Golden Metrics -- success rate, latency, and throughput per service
• Traffic Splitting -- canary deployments with percentage-based routing
• Retries and Timeouts -- configurable per-route reliability policies

Linkerd's minimal resource footprint makes it suitable for clusters of any size running on your Breeze infrastructure.