Kubernetes: Up and Running, 3rd Edition

Chapter 15. Service Meshes

Perhaps second only to containers, the term service mesh has become synonymous with cloud native development. However, just like containers, service mesh is a broad term that encompasses a variety of open source projects as well as commercial products. Understanding the general role of a service mesh in a cloud native architecture is useful. This chapter will show you what a service mesh is, how different software projects implement them, and finally (and most importantly) when it makes sense to incorporate a service mesh, versus a less complex architecture, into your application.

Note

In many abstract cloud native architecture diagrams, it seems that a service mesh is necessary for a cloud native architecture. This is very much not true. When considering adopting a service mesh, you have to balance the complexity of adding a new component (generally provided by a third party) to your list of dependencies. In many cases, it is easier and more reliable to simply depend on the existing Kubernetes resources, if they meet the needs of your application.

We have previously discussed other networking primitives in Kubernetes like Services and Ingress. Given the presence of these networking capabilities in the core of Kubernetes, why is there a need to inject additional capabilities (and complexities) into the networking layer? Fundamentally it comes down to the needs of the software application that is using these networking primitives.

Networking in the core ...