Best Container Networking Software for Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)

Secure and observability SaaS platform that charges per-use for containers, Kubernetes and the cloud. Live view of dependencies and how services communicate with each other in multi-cluster, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments. You can eliminate the setup and onboarding steps, and you can troubleshoot any Kubernetes security or observability issues in minutes. Calico Cloud is a next generation security and observability SaaS platform that supports containers, Kubernetes and cloud. It allows organizations of all sizes and budgets to protect their cloud workloads, containers, detect threats, maintain compliance, and troubleshoot issues in real time across multi-cluster, hybrid, and multi-cloud deployments. Calico Cloud is built upon Calico Open Source, which is the most widely used container networking and security solution. Instead of managing a platform that provides Kubernetes security or observability, teams can use it as a managed service to speed up analysis, relevant actions, and so on.

Streamline and simplify Kubernetes' (north/south) network traffic management. This will deliver consistent, predictable performance at scale without slowing your apps. Advanced app-centric configuration – Use role-based access control and self-service to set security guardrails (not gate) so that your teams can manage their apps securely. Multi-tenancy, reusability and simpler configurations are all possible. Native, type-safe, indented configuration style that simplifies capabilities such as circuit breaking, sophisticated routing and header manipulation, mTLS authentication and WAF. NGINX Ingress resources allow you to easily adapt configurations from other environments if you already use NGINX.

Calico is an open source networking and security solution for containers, virtual machines and native host-based workloads. Calico supports many platforms, including Kubernetes and OpenShift, Mirantis Kubernetes Engine, (MKE), OpenStack and bare metal. Calico delivers lightning-fast performance and true cloud-native scalability, regardless of whether you use Calico's eBPF or Linux's standard network pipeline. Calico offers developers and cluster operators a consistent experience and set capabilities, whether they are running on-prem or in the public cloud, on a single node or in a multi-thousand-node cluster. Calico offers a variety of data planes. These include a pure Linux-based eBPF data plan, a standard Linux networking data data plane and a Windows HNS information plane. Calico has the right data plane for you, whether you prefer the cutting-edge features offered by eBPF or the familiarity provided by the standard primitives that system administrators already know.

Cilium is an open-source software that provides, secures and monitors network connectivity between container workloads. It is powered by the revolutionary Kernel technology eBPF. Kubernetes does not include Load Balancing. This is typically left to your cloud provider, or in private cloud environments, an exercise for you and your networking team. Cilium can draw this traffic using BGP and accelerate leveraging XDP or eBPF. These technologies combine to provide load balancing that is robust and secure. Cilium and eBPF work at the kernel layer. This level of context allows us to make intelligent decisions about how to connect different workloads, whether they are on the same node or between clusters. eBPF and XDP Cilium enable significant improvements in performance and latency, and eliminate the need for Kube proxy entirely.