Overview

What is ClusterLink?

ClusterLink simplifies the connection between application services that are located in different domains, networks, and cloud infrastructures.

When should I use it?

ClusterLink is useful when multiple parties are collaborating across administrative boundaries. With ClusterLink, information sharing policies can be defined, customized, and programmatically accessed around the world by the right people for maximum productivity while optimizing network performance and security.

How does it work?

ClusterLink uses a set of unprivileged gateways serving connections to and from K8s services according to policies defined through the management APIs. ClusterLink gateways establish mTLS connections between them and continuously exchange control-plane information, forming a secure distributed control plane. In addition, ClusterLink gateways represent the remotely deployed services to applications running in a local cluster, acting as L4 proxies. On connection establishment, the control plane components in the source and the target ClusterLink gateways validate and establish the connection based on specified policies.

Why is it unique?

The distributed control plane and the fine grained connection establishment control are the main advantages of ClusterLink over some of its competitors. Performance evaluation on clusters deployed in the same Google Cloud zone shows that ClusterLink can outperform some existing solutions by almost 2× while providing fine grained authorization on a per connection basis.

Where should I go next?

• Getting Started: Get started with ClusterLink.
• Tutorials: Check out some examples and step-by-step instructions for different use cases.