Linkerd gets a makeover with a fancy new UI in version 2.1

It’s been almost two months after its last update but Linkerd is back with the first stable update to 2.0 and it is stuffed with major updates and new features.

Most notably, the new release features massive improvements for the dashboard UI. But let’s take a closer look at all the highlights.

All the goodies

Linkerd 2.1 brings a couple exciting experimental features including proxy auto-injection, single namespace installs, and a high-availability mode for the control plane. But let’s check out the three major updates that come with this release.

Per-route metrics – Now provides metrics not just at the service level but at the route level. This means that Linkerd can reveal failures, slowdowns, or changes in traffic levels to a particular API call in a service. Per-route metrics are built on another significant addition to Linkerd 2.1: service profiles.

Service Profiles – Introducing the concept of the service profile, a lightweight way of providing information about a service to Linkerd. This information includes the service’s routes, i.e. the API calls that it is expected to respond to, and the way that Linkerd should treat these routes. They provide a fundamental building block for the project: the ability to configure Linkerd’s behavior on a per-service basis. As a side note, service profiles are implemented as a Kubernetes CRD, bringing the grand total of Linkerd-created Kubernetes CRDs to 1.

Fancy new UI – Improved web dashboard in many ways, including a switch over to Material UI. This new look should feel like home to anyone familiar with the Kubernetes dashboard. Here’s how it looks like: