Service Mesh

A service mesh is a dedicated infrastructure layer designed to handle communication between microservices in a distributed application. It provides a way to manage, secure, and monitor the interactions between these services, offering a centralized control plane for governing service-to-service communication.

Key features of a service mesh include service discovery, load balancing, encryption, and observability. Service meshes are often implemented as a set of lightweight, sidecar proxies deployed alongside each microservice instance. These proxies, such as Envoy or Linkerd, handle communication tasks, allowing the application’s microservices to focus on their core functionalities. The service mesh centralizes common networking concerns, promoting consistency and easing the complexity associated with managing microservices in a distributed architecture.

Service meshes play a crucial role in enhancing the reliability, security, and observability of microservices-based applications, making it easier for development and operations teams to manage and scale complex, distributed systems.