Linkerd Service Mesh: Why I'm Not Deploying It Yet (But Have a Plan Ready)
TL;DR I spent time evaluating Linkerd — the CNCF graduated service mesh — for my homelab k3s cluster. The conclusion: it’s an impressive piece of engineering with genuinely useful features like automatic mTLS, post-quantum cryptography, and per-service observability. But for a cluster with ~20 workloads and a single operator, the operational overhead outweighs the benefits today. I’ve written a complete deployment plan so I can adopt it quickly when the cluster grows to the point where it makes sense. ...