Linkerd’s proxies do not integrate with Kubernetes directly, but rely on the control plane for service discovery information. The proxies are designed to continue operating even if they can’t reach the control plane. If the control plane dies, existing proxies will continue to operate with the latest service discovery information. Additionally, they will fall back to DNS if asked to route to a service they don’t have information for. (Thus, if the control plane is down, but new services are created, you may notice different load balancing behavior until the control plane resumes.) Once the control plane is functional, the Linkerd proxies will resume communication as normal. If new proxies are deployed when the control plane is unreachable, these new proxies will not be able to operate. They will timeout all new requests until such time as they can reach the control plane.