[agracey]

https://linkerd.io/ is a much lighter-weight alternative but you do still get some of the fancy things like mtls without needing any manual configuration. Install it, label your namespaces, and let it do it's thing!

[vbezhenar]

I don't think that I need mtls and extra CPU load for useless (to me) encryption does not sound so good. Can I opt-out of this specific feature?

Also I'm worried about its pervasiveness. Is it possible to enable those side-cars only on selected pods?

[vbezhenar]

So to answer my own question:

It's not possible to disable mtls with meshed services, no configuration option for this particular feature.

There's no pervasiveness with linkerd, one need to add `linkerd.io/inject: enabled` annotation to the target service and restart deployment.

[__warlord__]

At least in Istio yes, you can annotate pods or namespaces to be part of your service mesh.