Categories

Architecture

Linkerd: The Pragmatic Service Mesh Alternative

Linkerd is the pragmatic service mesh for Kubernetes, prioritizing simplicity over feature catalogues. Its Rust proxy uses ~10 MB RAM per sidecar versus 50-100 MB for Envoy under Istio. This comparison explains when adopting it pays off, what it costs to operate, and when Istio makes more sense.

Methodologies

Contract Testing with Pact for Microservices

With 30 or more microservices, end-to-end tests become slow, fragile and impractical. Pact implements consumer-driven contract testing: the consumer defines what it expects, the provider verifies it in its own CI pipeline, with no shared environment needed. The result is integration proof in seconds, not minutes.

Architecture

Modules vs. Microservices: The Architecture Battle

Choose modular architecture when your team has fewer than ten people and ships the system as a single unit; choose microservices when separate teams need to deploy independently or when specific components require very different scaling, in exchange for higher operational complexity.