Buoyant, creator of Linkerd, the CNCF’s only graduated service mesh, has announced the release of Linkerd 2.13. This release, delivered shortly before the first-ever Linkerd Day conference to be held in Amsterdam, introduces dynamic request routing based on the Kubernetes Gateway API, circuit breaking for overloaded services, a FIPS-compatible version for government users, and a set of free security and reliability extensions for all Linkerd users through Buoyant Cloud, Buoyant’s automated Linkerd platform.

Linkerd 2.13 now offers Kubernetes adopters dynamic request routing, providing fine-grained control over the routing of individual HTTP and gRPC requests. With this feature, Linkerd users can route requests based on HTTP headers, gRPC methods, query parameters, or almost any other aspect of the request. This feature unlocks a variety of exciting capabilities including sticky sessions, user-based A/B testing and canary deploys, and dynamic staging environments.

Linkerd’s dynamic request routing is built on Kubernetes’s new Gateway API, which Linkerd became the first service mesh to fully embrace as its core configuration mechanism in the earlier 2.13 release.

Linkerd 2.13 also introduces circuit breaking, the ability to dynamically shut off traffic to failing endpoints in order to give it a chance to recover. With Linkerd 2.13, Kubernetes adopters can now mark delicate services as eligible for circuit breaking and meshed clients will automatically reduce traffic if these services begin to return errors until they recover.

As of the 2.13 release, Buoyant now provides free, fully automated health monitoring, vulnerability reporting, and upgrade assistance for every Linkerd cluster via its Buoyant Cloud SaaS automation platform. Every Kubernetes user in the world can now make use of these features to ensure the reliability and security of their service mesh deployment.

The 2.13 release is also available in a FIPS-compatible form for those who need to comply with US government FIPS-140-2 and FIPS-140-3 standards.

Existing Linkerd users can leverage a brand-new installer designed to simplify the upgrade process. To upgrade Linkerd 2.13 or install it new, start here.