Buoyant, creator of the open source, Rust-based Linkerd service mesh, announced that it will expand its partnership with SUSE, the company behind SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE), Rancher and NeuVector and a global leader in enterprise open source solutions, to expand interoperability and security in edge environments. Together with SUSE Edge, Buoyant will implement mesh expansion capabilities to the service mesh that will be available in early 2024. 

As an increasingly important part of the cloud native landscape, the edge computing system processes data at the "edge" of the network, close to where it is generated. This enables increased speed and responsiveness compared to the centralized approach, especially critical at scale. 

"The rapid rise of edge computing is driven by the explosive growth in connected devices, from security cameras to oil rigs to autonomous vehicles," explained William Morgan, Buoyant CEO and one of the creators of Linkerd. "Unfortunately, while edge computing is an increasingly critical use case, building a reliable, secure, and manageable edge architecture today is far from trivial." 

To address the challenge of making edge computing safe, secure, and reliable, Buoyant is extending Linkerd's "data plane," or network backbone, to include non-Kubernetes workloads. This will allow edge computing devices as well as legacy workloads to participate in the mesh and gain its security and reliability benefits-factors that are critical for Industrial IoT verticals. 

"We're excited to expand our partnership with Buoyant on this important initiative next year," said Keith Basil, Edge general manager, of SUSE. "Delivering the world's fastest, lightest and most secure edge computing platform is critical for our customers. Our collaborative work on Linkerd mesh expansion is key to achieving that goal and will help connect both the smallest and oldest systems into the modern Kubernetes-oriented world." 

With both companies focused on providing security and scalability for customers, expanding the partnership between SUSE and Buoyant is natural. Linkerd, and its enterprise-focused cousin, Linkerd Enterprise, provide secure, reliable communication between endpoints, a unique "microproxy" architecture written in Rust, and full support for the ARM64 architectures common in edge deployments. SUSE's powerful suite of edge-capable Kubernetes orchestration and management tools, including K3s, RKE2, and Rancher Prime, solve the challenges of how to deploy and maintain edge workloads at scale.