June 13, 2022 1 min read

Service Mesh Comparison: Istio vs Linkerd vs Open Service Mesh

Service meshes handle service-to-service communication in Kubernetes. Each option has different tradeoffs in complexity, performance, and features.

Feature Comparison

Feature	Istio	Linkerd	OSM
mTLS	Yes	Yes	Yes
Traffic Management	Advanced	Basic	Moderate
Observability	Extensive	Good	Good
Resource Usage	High	Low	Moderate
Complexity	High	Low	Moderate

Istio

apiVersion: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3
kind: VirtualService
metadata:
  name: reviews-route
spec:
  hosts:
  - reviews
  http:
  - match:
    - headers:
        user:
          exact: jason
    route:
    - destination:
        host: reviews
        subset: v2
  - route:
    - destination:
        host: reviews
        subset: v1

Linkerd

apiVersion: policy.linkerd.io/v1beta1
kind: Server
metadata:
  name: api-server
spec:
  podSelector:
    matchLabels:
      app: api
  port: 8080

Open Service Mesh

apiVersion: specs.smi-spec.io/v1alpha4
kind: TrafficSplit
metadata:
  name: canary-split
spec:
  service: api
  backends:
  - service: api-v1
    weight: 90
  - service: api-v2
    weight: 10

Summary

Choose based on your needs: Linkerd for simplicity, Istio for features, OSM for Azure integration.

References: