Components · Traffic and compute

Service mesh

Sidecar proxy: retries, mTLS and tracing between services.

Lesson
Coming soon
Zone
app
Place it
4 cr on the blank canvas, free inside a problem

At a glance

Did you know
A mesh runs a sidecar proxy beside each service to handle mTLS, retries and telemetry.
Rule of thumb
Retries in the mesh and in the app multiply: configure them in one place.
Watch out
Sidecar latency on every hop; retry storms.

Its settings in ScaleMySystems

What you can change on it in the lab, and what each number does.

Concurrency (slots)
Calls it can work on at once (per instance when autoscaling). Needed slots ≈ calls per second × seconds each takes. Extra calls wait in the queue, then are rejected.
Queue capacity
Calls allowed to wait for a free slot. A bigger queue absorbs bursts but adds waiting time; 0 rejects straight away.
vCPU
CPU cores available. Needed ≈ calls per second × CPU per request ÷ 1000. Above about 90% busy it slows down and may crash.
CPU per request (ms)
CPU time each call burns. Part of what the component is; make the code cheaper to lower it.
Latency (p50) (ms)
Typical time one call takes here, before any calls it makes itself. Slots are held for this long.
Latency (p99) (ms)
The slowest 1% of calls. Callers must set their timeout above this or they cut off healthy calls.

Full lesson coming soon

Lessons are being added one component at a time: how it works, its settings, a live exercise to break and fix it, interview questions and a short check. See the Circuit breaker lesson for what one looks like.