Thread by @danielepolencic

THREAD

Nginx has a service mesh too. Is it any good?

Let's find out.

1/

Most service meshes use Envoy as a proxy and for good reasons:

1. It's fully open-source
2. It can be customised on-the-fly via an API
3. It can be extended

2/

Is there a service mesh without Envoy? Of course!

The best example is @Linkerd that uses a custom proxy written in Rust.

Linkerd is smaller and more focussed but it is also slower to add features.

And now there's a new entry: @nginx

3/

But isn't Nginx one of those products not fully open-source proxies?

Yes it is, but they made an exception.

When you run the Nginx Service Mesh you can use Nginx Plus (the paid product) as a proxy for free.

Great isn't it?

4/

How does the meshwork?

There are four main components:

- The API
- SPIRE (cert authority)
- NATS (message broker)
- Nginx Plus as a proxy

Grafana, Prometheus and Zipkin are automatically installed too.

5/

Ok, but how do you run it?

You can find my step-by-step instructions on how to get the mesh running locally on minikube.

gist.github.com/danielepolenci…

If you install the bookshop demo apps, you can inspect the mesh metrics in grafana, Prometheus, and jaeger.

6/

Now the real question, is it good?

Short answer: I don't know. More testing is required.

However, I collected some pros and cons.

Let's start with the "not so good" parts.

7/

And now the PROs.

8/

Here are some links that might be useful:

- nginx.com/blog/introduci…
- docs.nginx.com/nginx-service-…
- gist.github.com/danielepolenci…

9/

How does Nginx Service Mesh compare with the other meshes?

F5 reached us @Learnk8s to help you answer that question.

You can find the comparison here docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…

10/

That's it!

Did you like this thread?

You might want to check out my mega thread on Kubernetes →

https://twitter.com/danielepolencic/status/1298543151901155330