We're happy to announce the release of Buoyant Enterprise for Linkerd 2.15.4. This latest stable release includes several backported bug fixes, especially around HTTPRoutes, as well as usability improvements and new diagnostic and configuration features.

BEL 2.15.4 is our fourth stable release in the Linkerd 2.15 line. Like every BEL release, it has undergone rigorous production testing across a variety of platforms including EKS, AKS, GKE, and OpenShift, as well as running in production at Buoyant itself.

You can read the full 2.15.4 release notes on our docs site, or just download BEL 2.15.4 today and give it a try!

Fixes to HTTPRoute handling

The 2.15.4 release contains several Linkerd bugfixes related to the HTTPRoute resource type. This type, a part of the Kubernetes Gateway API, is a core configuration primitive for several advanced Linkerd features, including zero-trust network policies and dynamic request routing. 

BEL 2.15.4 backports several fixes around HTTPRoute handling that can manifest in rare situations.

Linkerd was the first service mesh to achieve confirmance with the Gateway API, and HTTPRoute and the rest of the Gateway API continue to be the foundation of Linkerd's goal to provide a consistent and principled configuration language for service mesh users everywhere.

Other bugfixes and CVE remediations

In addition HTTPRoute-related fixes, the 2.15.4 release also backports several other recent Linkerd bugfixes, including a vestigial concurrency limit in the control plane that was hampering Linkerd's ability to scale in certain situations.

This release also remediates two non-critical CVEs in the underlying BusyBox image, CVE-2023-42364 and CVE-2023-42365. (Neither of these CVEs represent a realistic security issue for Linkerd users, so these updates are for hygiene and compliance.)

Tested platforms

As always, BEL 2.15.4 has undergone a rigorous set of production testing across a variety of Kubernetes versions, including:

• EKS 1.27, 1.28, and 1.29, including ARM
• GKE 1.27, and 1.28
• AKS 1.27, 1.28.3, 1.28.5
• Red Hat OpenShift (OKD 4.13.0)

See the current list of tested platforms for more details.

Try Linkerd today!

A recent evaluation by cloud native consulting company LiveWyre showed that Linkerd outperformed both Istio and Cilium. This is the latest in a long line of benchmarks that consistently show Linkerd is fastest, lightest service mesh on the market.

BEL is our production-ready distribution of the Linkerd service mesh, and the distribution of Linkerd that we run ourselves in production. Anyone can download and try BEL. Just start here and get meshing!

What’s next for Linkerd?

As the creators and maintainers of Linkerd, we're happy to report that the pace of Linkerd development is faster than ever. Over the next few months, we'll be shipping improvements to mesh expansion ergonomics, adding support for IPv6, bringing parity to our Gateway API and pre-Gateway API featureset, and tackling big features like egress metrics and control. Stay tuned for lots, lots more great features from team Linkerd, coming soon to a Buoyant Enterprise for Linkerd release near you.