Load Balancing

For HTTP, HTTP/2, and gRPC connections, Linkerd automatically load balances requests across all destination endpoints without any configuration required. (For TCP connections, Linkerd will balance connections.)

Linkerd uses an algorithm called EWMA, or exponentially weighted moving average, to automatically send requests to the fastest endpoints. This load balancing can improve end-to-end latencies.

Service discovery

For destinations that are not in Kubernetes, Linkerd will balance across endpoints provided by DNS. For destinations that are in Kubernetes, Linkerd will read service discovery information directly from the Kubernetes API rather than relying on DNS. This means that, regardless of whether the service is exposed as a headless service, Linkerd will balance requests properly.

Load balancing gRPC

Linkerd’s load balancing is particularly useful for gRPC (or HTTP/2) services in Kubernetes, for which Kubernetes’s default load balancing is not effective.