Multi-cluster Kubernetes with Ambassador and Linkerd
BOSTON, June 9, 2020- Datawire, the company behind the fastest growing Kubernetes API gateway, Ambassador, announced a partnership with Buoyant, makers of Linkerd, to support multi-cluster Kubernetes with Ambassador.
As Kubernetes adoption has skyrocketed, we’ve seen organizations increasingly adopt a multi-cluster Kubernetes architecture. Multi-cluster offers a number of key advantages, including global failover, multi-tenant isolation, and reducing compliance scope. Unfortunately, deploying applications that span multiple clusters has been an exercise in configuration complexity and frustration.
Linkerd 2.8 and the Edge Stack
This integration between LinkerD and Ambassador enables any organization to quickly and easily deploy their application in a way that spans multiple clusters. Support for multi-cluster is available today with the Linkerd 2.8 release. Critically, no application-level changes are needed to take advantage of this functionality.
By leveraging the Edge Stack for cross-cluster communication, Linkerd is able to take advantage of a proven, robust ingress solution that meets the resilience, observability, and performance requirements for today’s cloud-native applications.
Under the Hood
Linkerd 2.8’s multi-cluster capability is based on the service mirroring architecture (https://linkerd.io/2020/02/25/multicluster-kubernetes-with-service-mirroring/) developed by Thomas Rampelberg and the Buoyant team. In this design, Linkerd transparently mirrors Kubernetes service definitions between clusters. When a service in a cluster sends a request to a service in another cluster, the request is securely routed over the Internet to the appropriate cluster. This request is processed by the Edge Stack, which will then route the request to the appropriate service. We’ve worked with the Buoyant engineering team to support configuring your existing Ambassador instance so that it can be used by the Linkerd multi-cluster capability.
For more information
For more information about Ambassador, Linkerd, and multi-cluster support, see these resources: