What is a service mesh and why is it used?
A service mesh is an architectural layer that facilitates communication between microservices in a distributed application. It manages service-to-service interactions, ensuring secure, reliable, and observable communication. Key features include load balancing, traffic management, and service discovery, which simplifies the complexities of inter-service connectivity. By offloading these concerns from individual services, a service mesh enhances development efficiency and allows teams to focus on feature development. It also provides crucial security measures like encryption and access control between services. Overall, it contributes to improved resilience and operational visibility in microservices architectures.