Programming Challenge: Enterprise Service Mesh Implementation (Jan 27, 2025)

Challenge:

Design and implement a basic Service Mesh that manages microservices communication within an enterprise architecture. The system should ensure secure, observable, and resilient service-to-service interactions.

Basic Requirements:

✅ Implement service-to-service communication using an API gateway or service proxy.
✅ Enable basic request routing between multiple microservices.
✅ Implement health checks to monitor service availability.

Bonus Features for Enterprise-Grade Implementation:

🔹 Traffic Control & Load Balancing: Distribute requests intelligently between services.
🔹 Security & Encryption: Implement mutual TLS (mTLS) for secure service-to-service communication.
🔹 Observability: Use Prometheus + Grafana for real-time monitoring.
🔹 Rate Limiting & Throttling: Prevent API abuse with request quotas.
🔹 Retries & Circuit Breaking: Handle failures gracefully using automatic retries.
🔹 Centralized Authentication: Integrate OAuth2/JWT for secure API calls.
🔹 Deploy on Kubernetes: Implement with Istio or Linkerd for full-scale service mesh.

Example Implementation (Using Envoy Proxy for Service Mesh)

static_resources:
  listeners:
    - name: listener_0
      address:
        socket_address: { address: 0.0.0.0, port_value: 10000 }
      filter_chains:
        - filters:
            - name: envoy.http_connection_manager
              typed_config:
                "@type": type.googleapis.com/envoy.config.filter.network.http_connection_manager.v2.HttpConnectionManager
                codec_type: AUTO
                stat_prefix: ingress_http
                route_config:
                  name: local_route
                  virtual_hosts:
                    - name: backend
                      domains: ["*"]
                      routes:
                        - match: { prefix: "/" }
                          route: { cluster: backend_service }
                http_filters:
                  - name: envoy.router
  clusters:
    - name: backend_service
      connect_timeout: 0.25s
      type: STRICT_DNS
      lb_policy: ROUND_ROBIN
      load_assignment:
        cluster_name: backend_service
        endpoints:
          - lb_endpoints:
              - endpoint:
                  address:
                    socket_address: { address: backend, port_value: 8080 }

This example uses Envoy Proxy to route traffic between services.