Linkerd 2.11 Practical Handbook: Step‑by‑Step Tasks for Service Mesh on Kubernetes

1. Add your service to Linkerd – inject the Linkerd data‑plane proxy into the service pod to enable mesh functionality.

https://linkerd.hacker-linner.com/2.11/tasks/adding-your-service

2. Automated canary releases – combine Linkerd with Flagger to drive canary deployments based on service metrics, reducing deployment risk. https://linkerd.hacker-linner.com/2.11/tasks/canary-release 3. Auto‑rotate control‑plane TLS credentials – use cert‑manager to rotate the control‑plane TLS certificates automatically.

https://linkerd.hacker-linner.com/2.11/tasks/automatically-rotating-control-plane-tls-credentials

4. Auto‑rotate webhook TLS credentials – employ cert‑manager to rotate webhook TLS certificates.

https://linkerd.hacker-linner.com/2.11/tasks/automatically-rotating-webhook-tls-credentials

5. Bring your own Prometheus – integrate an existing Prometheus instance with Linkerd for metrics collection.

https://linkerd.hacker-linner.com/2.11/tasks/external-prometheus

6. Configure proxy concurrency – limit CPU usage of the Linkerd proxy.

https://linkerd.hacker-linner.com/2.11/tasks/configuring-proxy-concurrency

7. Configure retries – set up Linkerd to automatically retry failed requests.

https://linkerd.hacker-linner.com/2.11/tasks/configuring-retries

8. Configure timeouts – make Linkerd fail requests that exceed a configured duration.

https://linkerd.hacker-linner.com/2.11/tasks/configuring-timeouts

9. Control‑plane debug endpoints – use Linkerd’s control‑plane components’ debug endpoints for troubleshooting.

https://linkerd.hacker-linner.com/2.11/tasks/using-debug-endpoints

10. Customize Linkerd with Kustomize – programmatically modify Linkerd configuration using Kustomize.

https://linkerd.hacker-linner.com/2.11/tasks/customize-install

11. Debug 502 errors – determine why Linkerd returns HTTP 502 responses. https://linkerd.hacker-linner.com/2.11/tasks/debugging-502s 12. Debug gRPC applications with request tracing – follow a long‑form example that uses real‑time request tracing to debug failing gRPC services.

https://linkerd.hacker-linner.com/2.11/tasks/debugging-your-service

13. Debug HTTP applications with per‑route metrics – use per‑route metrics to troubleshoot failing HTTP services. https://linkerd.hacker-linner.com/2.11/tasks/books 14. Distributed tracing with Linkerd – employ Linkerd’s tracing capabilities to detect issues across services.

https://linkerd.hacker-linner.com/2.11/tasks/distributed-tracing

15. Export metrics – integrate Linkerd’s Prometheus metrics with an existing monitoring stack.

https://linkerd.hacker-linner.com/2.11/tasks/exporting-metrics

16. Expose dashboards – make Linkerd and Grafana dashboards accessible without a CLI.

https://linkerd.hacker-linner.com/2.11/tasks/exposing-dashboard

17. Generate your own mTLS root certificate – create a custom mTLS root certificate instead of using Linkerd’s default.

https://linkerd.hacker-linner.com/2.11/tasks/generate-certificates

18. Obtain per‑route metrics – configure metrics for each route in your application.

https://linkerd.hacker-linner.com/2.11/tasks/getting-per-route-metrics

19. Get started with Linkerd SMI extensions – manage Service Mesh Interface (SMI) resources using Linkerd’s SMI extension. https://linkerd.hacker-linner.com/2.11/tasks/linkerd-smi 20. Graceful pod shutdown – handle pod termination signals gracefully.

https://linkerd.hacker-linner.com/2.11/tasks/graceful-shutdown

21. Ingress traffic – operate Linkerd with your chosen ingress controller. https://linkerd.hacker-linner.com/2.11/tasks/using-ingress 22. Fault injection – practice chaos engineering by injecting faults via Linkerd. https://linkerd.hacker-linner.com/2.11/tasks/fault-injection 23. Install Linkerd – deploy Linkerd onto your own Kubernetes cluster. https://linkerd.hacker-linner.com/2.11/tasks/install 24. Install Linkerd with Helm – use Helm charts to install Linkerd on Kubernetes. https://linkerd.hacker-linner.com/2.11/tasks/install-helm 25. Install multicluster components – enable Linkerd to manage cross‑cluster communication.

https://linkerd.hacker-linner.com/2.11/tasks/installing-multicluster

26. Linkerd with Pod Security Policies (PSP) – run Linkerd when PSP is enabled. https://linkerd.hacker-linner.com/2.11/tasks/using-psp 27. Manually rotate control‑plane TLS credentials – update Linkerd’s trust anchor and issuer certificates.

https://linkerd.hacker-linner.com/2.11/tasks/manually-rotating-control-plane-tls-credentials

28. Modify proxy log level – dynamically change Linkerd proxy log verbosity for debugging.

https://linkerd.hacker-linner.com/2.11/tasks/modifying-proxy-log-level

29. Multicluster communication – allow Linkerd to manage traffic across clusters. https://linkerd.hacker-linner.com/2.11/tasks/multicluster 30. Multicluster communication with StatefulSets – handle cross‑cluster traffic for headless services.

https://linkerd.hacker-linner.com/2.11/tasks/multicluster-using-statefulsets

31. Replace expired certificates – follow a workflow to renew any expired TLS certificates.

https://linkerd.hacker-linner.com/2.11/tasks/replacing_expired_certificates

32. Restrict access to services – use Linkerd policies to limit which clients can reach a service.

https://linkerd.hacker-linner.com/2.11/tasks/restricting-access

33. Rotate webhook certificates – rotate certificates used by Linkerd webhooks.

https://linkerd.hacker-linner.com/2.11/tasks/rotating_webhooks_certificates

34. Secure your cluster – best‑practice recommendations for hardening a Linkerd installation.

https://linkerd.hacker-linner.com/2.11/tasks/securing-your-cluster

35. Set up service profiles – create service profiles to provide Linkerd with richer routing information.

https://linkerd.hacker-linner.com/2.11/tasks/setting-up-service-profiles

36. Uninstall Linkerd – remove Linkerd cleanly from a Kubernetes cluster. https://linkerd.hacker-linner.com/2.11/tasks/uninstall 37. Uninstall multicluster – detach and uninstall Linkerd multicluster components.

https://linkerd.hacker-linner.com/2.11/tasks/uninstall-multicluster

38. Use a custom cluster domain – configure Linkerd to operate with a custom cluster domain.

https://linkerd.hacker-linner.com/2.11/tasks/using-custom-domain

39. Use a private Docker registry – integrate Linkerd with a private container registry.

https://linkerd.hacker-linner.com/2.11/tasks/using-a-private-docker-repository

40. Use extensions – add optional extensions to augment Linkerd functionality. https://linkerd.hacker-linner.com/2.11/tasks/extensions 41. Combine GitOps with Linkerd and Argo CD – manage Linkerd installation and upgrades via Argo CD. https://linkerd.hacker-linner.com/2.11/tasks/gitops 42. Use a debug sidecar – inject a debug container to capture network packets for troubleshooting.

https://linkerd.hacker-linner.com/2.11/tasks/using-the-debug-container

43. Validate your mTLS traffic – verify that Linkerd is encrypting traffic with mutual TLS.

https://linkerd.hacker-linner.com/2.11/tasks/validating-your-traffic