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Ameen Abozaid
SRB-009

Service mesh

  • 8 Lessons
  • 3 h practice (estimate)
On this page 9 topics

Overview

Topics

  • mTLS
  • traffic management
  • policy enforcement
  • trade-offs

Learn first

3 h of practice (estimate)

Learning outcomes

  1. Explain what a service mesh provides (mTLS, traffic management, telemetry, policy) and how sidecar and sidecar-less meshes differ.
  2. Configure mTLS and traffic splitting for a canary.
  3. Decide whether a mesh is worth its operational cost compared with library-based alternatives.

Lessons

  1. 01What a mesh does
  2. 02Mesh architectures
  3. 03mTLS and workload identity
  4. 04Traffic management
  5. 05Policy enforcement
  6. 06The cost of a mesh
  7. 07Demo: canary traffic split and mTLS with a mesh
  8. 08Demo: measuring a mesh's latency and operational overhead

Lab and exercises

Lab

SRB-009-LAB1 · Mesh decision

Outcomes: 1, 2, 3 · Time: ~3 h

  1. Define the problems the mesh should solve for Shop and FulfillCo services.
  2. Trial a mesh on a subset of services with mTLS and a canary.
  3. Measure latency overhead, resource use, and operational effort.
  4. Write the adopt or reject ADR with alternatives.

Acceptance: decision supported by measurements.

Exercises

IDOutcomeTask
SRB-009-EX011List what FulfillCo would gain from a mesh and what it can get without one.
SRB-009-EX021Compare sidecar and sidecar-less for 200 small services.
SRB-009-EX032Write the policy for mTLS and who may call payments.
SRB-009-EX042Design a canary split 95/5 with rollback conditions.
SRB-009-EX053A team wants a mesh to fix unclear service ownership. Respond.
SRB-009-EX063Spot the problem: mesh retries 3 times and the client retries 3 times.
Show solutions
  • EX01 mTLS, canary, uniform telemetry versus libraries, gateway, cert manager.
  • EX02 Sidecar costs 200 proxies of resources; sidecar-less reduces overhead but verify maturity and isolation.
  • EX03 Strict mTLS; allow only checkout identity; deny others.
  • EX04 Route weights, success-rate and latency thresholds, automatic rollback.
  • EX05 A mesh cannot fix ownership; address process; revisit when technical need is proven.
  • EX06 Up to 9 attempts; amplification; pick one owner of retries and budget them.

Workplace evidence: a platform technology adoption or rejection you led with evidence.

Quiz

Outcomes: O1 mesh capabilities · O2 mTLS and canary · O3 adopt or reject.

A self-check for you: nothing is graded, saved or sent anywhere. Choose an answer, then check it. You can try again as often as you like.

  1. 1A service mesh primarily moves which concerns?O1
  2. 2The control plane:O1
  3. 3Sidecar-less meshes aim to:O1
  4. 4mTLS authenticates:O2
  5. 5Workload identity is preferred over IPs because:O2
  6. 6A canary split sends:O2
  7. 7Duplicate retries in mesh and code cause:O3
  8. 8A mesh is a poor fix for:O3
  9. 9Evidence for adoption should come from:O3
  10. 10Policies should be:O1

Practical part

ADR defense: present the lab ADR and defend its measurements. Pass: 70% on the quiz and an ADR citing measured latency and effort.

Common mistakes

Adopting a mesh to fix problems of process; duplicate retries in mesh and code.

Assessment

ADR defense.

Workplace evidence

A platform technology adoption or rejection you led with evidence.

Career relevance

Security architecture (SRB-016) and platform strategy (STF-004).

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