We had a blast connecting with the Linkerd community in beautiful Paris at KubeCon, and recordings of all talks are now live. The Linkerd crew was out in full force, spreading the word about how the CNCF-graduated service mesh provides critical security, reliability, and observability to Kubernetes clusters everywhere.

Whether you're curious about advanced deployment strategies with Argo or Flux, diving into Kubernetes controllers in Rust, or exploring SPIFFE and mesh expansion, there's plenty of Linkerd content to keep you busy.

Missed a session? No worries!

Check out the videos below to (re)watch them at your convenience.

Argo vs Flagger: Progressive Delivery with Linkerd

Interested in navigating the world of cloud native progressive delivery? Watch this session on "Argo Vs Flagger: Progressive Delivery with Linkerd" by Flux maintainer Scott Rigby, Argo maintainer Kostis Kapelonis, and BT Group SRE Anastasiia Gubska — the very first signing speaker of a technical session at KubeCon + CloudNative Con! Both Argo Rollouts and Flagger are popular tools for progressive delivery, and this session unpacked their strengths, areas of overlap, how they work with GitOps tools, and even the possibility of combining them (spoiler alert: it's possible, but with some caveats).  

The Rustvolution: How Rust Is the Future of Cloud Native

Packed house for Flynn's KubeCon talk, "The Rustvolution: How Rust Is the Future of Cloud Native"! Catch the recording and dive into why Rust, with its memory safety and lightning-fast concurrency, is becoming the future of cloud native. 

Kubernetes Controllers in Rust: Fast, Safe, Sane

Another KubeCon crowd-pleaser was Matei's "Kubernetes Controllers in Rust: Fast, Safe, Sane." Learn why Linkerd, after using Rust for its data plane since 2018, is now embracing it for controllers, too. The talk explores the challenges, lessons, and advantages of Rust for controllers, explaining why it's gaining traction in the Kubernetes world.

Tutorial: Configuring Your Service Mesh with Gateway API

Gateway API know-how, unlocked! Buoyant's Flynn and Microsoft's Mike Morris tag-teamed a KubeCon workshop on using Gateway API with service meshes. The hands-on session covered everything from setting up a Linkerd demo to leveraging Gateway API for routing, resilience, and more. Watch the recording, grab the code from the GitHub repo, and get your hands dirty with Gateway API and Linkerd. 

Linkerd Project Update: VM Support, Ingress, Security on the Edge, and Rust

Watch the Linkerd Project Update, where Buoyant Founder William Morgan unveils the latest on Linkerd: from our Rust adoption to the game-changing "mesh expansion" feature. He also dives into edge deployments (security included!) and hints at future plans for handling ingress traffic. 

Rust-Based Magic: Streamlined and Secure

Linkerd Ambassador Christian Hüning unveiled the "Rust-Based Magic" behind Linkerd's speed and security at Kubecon Paris.  His talk explores Linkerd's journey with Rust, from the initial 2018 data plane win to the 2021 control plane leap.  Learn how Linkerd leveraged maturing Rust projects (kube-rs, kubert) to bring the benefits of memory safety and null pointer freedom to controllers.  

Bringing SPIFFE to Linkerd for Mesh Expansion

Zahari's talk, "Bringing SPIFFE to Linkerd for Mesh Expansion," tackles how to securely bring non-Kubernetes workloads into the service mesh. Identity is the key here, and Zahari explores how Linkerd uses SPIFFE/SPIRE to seamlessly integrate these external workloads. He dives into how the mesh identifies these newcomers, the role Kubernetes itself plays, and alternative approaches for environments outside of Kubernetes.

Sidecar Containers in Kubernetes: Past, Present, and Future 

Linkerd maintainer Matei David and Kong's Mike Beaumont explored the past, present, and future of sidecar containers in Kubernetes.  They delve into the surprisingly long wait for native sidecar support in Kubernetes, tracing the KEP-753 (a proposal for a sidecar mode) from its 2019 inception to its 2023 arrival. The talk breaks down how the new sidecar functionality works, how it compares to previous workarounds, and the differences between Kubernetes versions 1.28 and 1.29. 

Try Linkerd today!

We hope you enjoyed these talks. New to Linkerd or Buoyant Enterprise for Linkerd (BEL)? Why not give it a try? BEL, the enterprise distribution of Linkerd, is completely free to try and takes only minutes to get started, brought to you by the creators and maintainers of Linkerd. It's the distribution that we run ourselves. Anyone can download and try BEL — just start here. Happy meshing!

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