linkerd2/doc/adding-your-service.md

+++ title = "Adding your service to the mesh" docpage = true [menu.docs] parent = "adding-your-service" +++

In order for your service to take advantage of Linkerd, it needs to be added to the service mesh. This is done by using the Linkerd CLI to add the Linkerd proxy sidecar to each pod. By doing this as a rolling update, the availability of your application will not be affected.

Prerequisites

• Applications that use protocols where the server sends data before the client sends data may require additional configuration. See the Protocol support section below.
• gRPC applications that use grpc-go must use grpc-go version 1.3 or later due to a bug in earlier versions.

Adding your service

To add your service to the service mesh, run:

linkerd inject deployment.yml | kubectl apply -f -

deployment.yml is the Kubernetes config file containing your application. This will trigger a rolling update of your deployment, replacing each pod with a new one that additionally contains the Linkerd sidecar proxy.

You will know that your service has been successfully added to the service mesh if its proxy status is green in the Linkerd dashboard.

You can always get to the Linkerd dashboard by running

linkerd dashboard

Protocol support

Linkerd is capable of proxying all TCP traffic, including WebSockets and HTTP tunneling, and reporting top-line metrics (success rates, latencies, etc) for all HTTP, HTTP/2, and gRPC traffic.

Server-speaks-first protocols

For protocols where the server sends data before the client sends data over connections that aren't protected by TLS, Linkerd cannot automatically recognize the protocol used on the connection. Two common examples of this type of protocol are MySQL and SMTP. If you are using Linkerd to proxy plaintext MySQL or SMTP requests on their default ports (3306 and 25, respectively), then Linkerd is able to successfully identify these protocols based on the port. If you're using non-default ports, or if you're using a different server-speaks-first protocol, then you'll need to manually configure Linkerd to recognize these protocols.

If you're working with a protocol that can't be automatically recognized by Linkerd, use the --skip-inbound-ports and --skip-outbound-ports flags when running linkerd inject.

For example, if your application makes requests to a MySQL database running on port 4406, use the command:

linkerd inject deployment.yml --skip-outbound-ports=4406 | kubectl apply -f -

Likewise if your application runs an SMTP server that accepts incoming requests on port 35, use the command:

linkerd inject deployment.yml --skip-inbound-ports=35 | kubectl apply -f -