About Telepresence
Telepresence lets you run a service on your laptop while it talks to a remote Kubernetes cluster. It is a CNCF Sandbox project first created by the team at Ambassador.
What it does
Telepresence connects your workstation to a cluster with a two-way tunnel. Once connected, you can reach remote services as if they ran locally. You can also intercept traffic meant for a service in the cluster and send it to your own machine, which lets you test a change against real dependencies. The tool uses a client binary on your workstation and a traffic manager and agent in the cluster.
Key features
- Two-way tunnel to a remote cluster
- Reach cluster services from your local machine
- Intercept traffic for a single service
- Use your own editor, debugger and profiler
- Works with sidecar or node-level agents
Who it's for
Backend developers who need a realistic environment but do not want to build and deploy a container on every change. It also suits teams who want to test a service against real dependencies before it reaches production.
Pricing and good to know
Telepresence is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. It needs a cluster you have access to and permission to install the cluster-side components. Intercepting traffic in a shared cluster can affect other people, so agree on the intercept with your team first.
Highlights
- Two-way tunnel to a remote cluster
- Reach cluster services from your laptop
- Intercept traffic for one service
- Use local editors, debuggers and profilers
- Sidecar or node-level traffic agents
