UPDATED 09:00 EDT / JUNE 30 2021

CLOUD

Buoyant announces new cloud service for Linkerd service mesh users

Linkerd service mesh creator Buoyant Inc. is looking to make some money with the public beta launch of its Buoyant Cloud service today.

Buoyant is trying to commercialize the open-source Linkerd service mesh platform, which was created in 2016 and is hosted by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. That’s the same organization that also houses the popular Kubernetes container orchestration software project.

Service meshes are software layers that help enterprises connect, manage and secure large deployments of microservices, which are the components of containerized applications. Containers are popular with developers because they can be used to build apps that can run on any kind of computer or infrastructure platform without changes.

Linkerd works by creating an abstraction layer across networking environments that makes it easier to deploy distributed applications within them. It automatically routes application traffic across multiple network underlays, doing away with the need to configure each application service for a specific network.

Linkerd is one of several well known service mesh offerings, competing with the likes of Google LLC’s Istio, the Open Service Mesh created by Microsoft Corp., and Kuma, which was built by the startup Kong Inc.

The service mesh landscape is competitive, but there may be room for more than one winner in the market. In a 2019 interview with SiliconANGLE, Buoyant Chief Executive William Morgan explained that Linkerd is quite different from Istio, which he sees as its main rival, since it’s built to serve different kinds of users. Istio is a feature-heavy service mesh that’s complex to use, whereas Linkerd is all about simplicity.

With the beta launch of the Buoyant Cloud, Linkerd has now become even easier for companies to run in their mission-critical environments, the company said. Buoyant Cloud is a software-as-a-service application that makes it easy to deploy Linkerd and throws in proactive diagnostics and performance management features.

In addition, it comes with a suite of service reliability engineering tools such as service level objectives, workload golden metric tracking and change tracking. These help Kubernetes adopters easily build a secure, reliable and observable platform for developers, the company said. In other words, Buoyant Cloud provides a fully automated version of Linkerd.

Morgan told SiliconANGLE there will be several tiers available in Buoyant Cloud that customers can choose from, including a free option. Each tier will have exactly the same feature set, he said, with the difference between plans relating to the number of clusters and workloads supported, and the amount of data retention customers need.

“It was important to us to have a free tier that was meaningful and significant that any Linkerd adopter can use,” Morgan said.

Holger Mueller, an analyst with Constellation Research Inc., told SiliconANGLE that Buoyant Cloud looks to be an interesting proposition because, in his view, service meshes have made a lot of promises but have up until now not really delivered on their potential. He noted that, in his view, to date there is only a limited number of service meshes up and running at enterprises in production environments.

“One of the main challenges has been the work that’s involved in keeping a running service mesh operational,” he said. “With Linkerd now finding a home in Buoyant Cloud, two synergetic efforts have found each other. We have a cloud infrastructure with Buoyant and the service mesh with Linkerd, so those promises may potentially be delivered on. The proof of its attractiveness will be in user adoption, so we’ll need to check in after a few months.”

Morgan countered Mueller’s suggestion that service meshes haven’t seen much widespread adoption, saying that he has seen “tons of Linkerd production deployments,” pointing to the open-source project’s Adopters Page as evidence of this. He added that installs of Linkerd grew by 300% in the last year, and he said the company is expecting big interest in its Buoyant Cloud too since it will make life even easier for new adopters.

“We’ve seen a number of new Linkerd adopters coming over from Istio, due to Istio’s extreme complexity,” Morgan added. “We’re in the final stages of graduating Linkerd in the CNCF and momentum is through the roof. I do think the market will see some consolidation in future, especially with some of the smaller projects. It’s easy and fun to make a bad service mesh, and incredibly difficult to make a good one.”

Buoyant is planning to host a virtual launch event on July 1, where it will demonstrate the capabilities of Buoyant Cloud to interested parties.

Image: Buoyant

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