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Google open-sources its Seesaw load-balancing software
Google is giving up yet another of its internal projects to the open-source world. Its latest contribution is called Seesaw, and it’s described as a load-balancing platform based on Linux built using Google’s Go programming language. It’s now available for anyone to download over at GitHub under an Apache 2.0 license.
It’s fair to say that load balancing isn’t the most romantic of IT technicalities, but it’s still essential to modern software-defined networking (SDN) setups. For those unfamiliar with the concept, load-balancing systems help servers to exchange data more efficiently while making optimal use of the available data pipelines. In addition, the software also helps to prevent overloading of the network and other potential nuisances.
As Google’s engineer Joel Sing explained in a blog post, the company built Seesaw after coming to the conclusion that there was no decent, existing solution for its own load-balancing needs. It had tried two alternative load-balancing systems before, but both of them had stability issues and caused problems with overall infrastructure management.
Sing said Seesaw is designed to offer both easy management and also the ability to automate configuration changes. In other words, it should prove ideal for enterprises that require a more flexible solution for their load-balancing requirements.
“We are pleased to be able to make this platform available to the rest of the world and hope that other enterprises will be able to benefit,” Sing wrote.
Seesaw performs load-balancing with NAT and direct routing, handles traffic for anycast and unicast virtual IP addresses and also helps to monitor the health of the network, Sing said. He added that Seesaw was built using Go because it provides a modular multi-process architecture and offers the ability to abort and terminate processes if they enter an unknown state.
Seesaw is the first enterprise-grade load-balancing platform on the market that isn’t linked to any particular vendor’s hardware. As such, Google’s latest networking and data center tool could well see significant adoption among enterprises that remain wary of vendor lock-in.
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