Service Mesh

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A Service Mesh is a configurable, low‑latency infrastructure layer designed to handle a high volume of network‑based interprocess communication among application infrastructure services using Application Programming Interface (API). A Service Mesh ensures that communication among containerized and often ephemeral application infrastructure services is fast, reliable, and secure. The mesh provides critical capabilities including service discovery, load balancing, encryption, observability, traceability, authentication and authorization, and support for the circuit breaker pattern.

The Service Mesh is usually implemented by providing a proxy instance, called a sidecar, for each service instance. Sidecars handle interservice communications, monitoring, and security‑related concerns – indeed, anything that can be abstracted away from the individual services. This way, developers can handle development, support, and maintenance for the application code in the services; operations teams can maintain the Service Mesh and run the app.

Source: https://www.nginx.com/blog/what-is-a-service-mesh/