Kuma

Abstract

1. Introduction

Kuma is a modern Envoy-based service mesh that can run on every cloud, in a single or multi-zone capacity, across both Kubernetes and VMs. Thanks to its broad universal workload support, combined with native support for Envoy as its data plane proxy technology (but with no Envoy expertise required), Kuma provides modern L4-L7 service connectivity, discovery, security, observability, routing and more across any service on any platform, databases included.

Easy to use, with built-in service mesh policies for security, traffic control, discovery, observability and more, Kuma ships with an advanced multi-zone and multi-mesh support that automatically enables cross-zone communication across different clusters and clouds, and automatically propagates service mesh policies across the infrastructure. Kuma is currently being adopted by enterprise organizations around the world to support distributed service meshes across the application teams, on both Kubernetes and VMs.

Originally created and donated by Kong, Kuma is today CNCF (Cloud Native Computing Foundation) Sandbox project and therefore available with the same openness and neutrality as every other CNCF project. Kuma has been engineered to be both powerful yet simple to use, reducing the complexity of running a service mesh across every organization with very unique capabilities like multi-zone support, multi-mesh support, and a gradual and intuitive learning curve.

2. Objective

🐻 The multi-zone service mesh for containers, Kubernetes and VMs. Built with Envoy. CNCF Sandbox Project.

This project demonstrates how Go, Kubernetes can be applied to a real-world Blockchain & Cloud Computing problem.

3. Key Features / Modules

• Universal Control Plane: Easy to use, distributed, runs anywhere on both Kubernetes and VM/Bare Metal.
• Lightweight Data Plane: Powered by Envoy to process any L4/L7 traffic, with automatic Envoy bootstrapping.
• Automatic DP Injection: No code changes required in K8s. Easy YAML specification for VM and Bare Metal deployments.
• Multi-Mesh: To setup multiple isolated Meshes in one cluster and one Control Plane, lowering OPs cost.
• Single and Multi Zone: To deploy a service mesh that is cross-platform, cross-cloud and cross-cluster.
• Automatic Discovery & Ingress: With built-in service discovery and connectivity across single and multi-zones.
• Global & Remote CPs: For scalability across deployments with multiple zones, including hybrid VMs + K8s meshes.
• mTLS: Automatic mTLS issuing, identity and encryption with optional support for third-party CA.
• TLS Rotation: Automatic certificate rotation for all the data planes, with configurable settings.
• Internal & External Services: Aggregation of internal services and support for services outside the mesh.

4. Technology Stack

5. System Requirements

General requirements for this technology stack — check the README for exact versions.

• Go 1.20 or later
• Git (to clone the repository)

6. Installation & Setup

git clone https://github.com/kumahq/kuma.git
cd kuma

Full setup instructions are in the project README.

7. Future Enhancements

Suggested extensions you can add to make this your own project.

• Add a CI/CD pipeline with GitHub Actions
• Deploy to a public test network or cloud free tier
• Add monitoring and cost alerts

8. Viva / Review Questions

Common questions examiners ask for projects in this domain.

1. Why does this problem need a blockchain or cloud-native design?
2. Explain the smart contract / infrastructure components and how they interact.
3. How are gas costs or cloud costs kept under control?
4. How is the system secured (keys, IAM, access control)?
5. How would the solution scale to many more users?

9. Source Code & License

This project is developed by kumahq and published on GitHub under the Apache License 2.0. Please follow the license terms and credit the original author when you use or modify this code.