How does a service mesh add reliability to a Kubernetes application?

Reliability is critical to any Kubernetes application, and a service mesh is pivotal in enhancing it. With a service mesh, operators can implement various mechanisms that contribute to the overall resilience and fault tolerance of their Kubernetes infrastructure. With load balancing, for example, incoming traffic is intelligently distributed across multiple instances, ensuring optimal resource utilization. It prevents a single point of failure, enables automatic failover, and makes implementing circuit breakers easy. These fault tolerance mechanisms, combined with features like health checks and service discovery, contribute to the overall reliability and availability of your application, enabling seamless operation even in the face of unpredictable events or failures.