Traffic Director is Google’s fully managed service for traffic control in service mesh architectures. The service automatically configures Envoy proxies for intelligent load balancing and traffic splitting.
What is Google Cloud Traffic Director?
Traffic Director is the managed control plane for service mesh traffic management on Google Cloud. The service automatically configures Envoy-based proxies via xDS APIs (Envoy Discovery Service) without manual proxy management. Traffic Director acts as a central control plane that manages service discovery, health checking, load balancing, and traffic routing policies across all services.
Unlike self-managed service mesh solutions like Istio, Google Cloud fully manages the control plane. Traffic Director integrates natively with Google Cloud Load Balancers for global load balancing and multi-region deployments. The solution scales automatically and provides high availability without additional operational overhead.
The service supports advanced traffic management patterns such as traffic splitting for canary deployments and A/B testing, circuit breaking for resilience, outlier detection for automatically removing faulty backends, and locality-based routing for latency optimization. Health checks continuously monitor backend status, and unhealthy endpoints are automatically removed from load balancing.
Traffic Director works with GKE services, Compute Engine VMs, and hybrid/multi-cloud deployments. xDS API compatibility enables integration with Envoy, gRPC, and other xDS-capable proxies. Observability via Cloud Logging and Cloud Monitoring provides insight into traffic patterns and service health.
Pay-per-use billing based on the number of configured proxies. EU regions available.
Common Use Cases
Canary Deployments for Microservices
An e-commerce company uses Traffic Director for canary deployments of new service versions. 5% of traffic is routed to the new version while 95% remains on the stable version. Traffic Director monitors error rates and automatically rolls back on issues. Progressive rollouts reduce deployment risks.
Multi-Region Service Mesh
A SaaS platform operates services across multiple GCP regions with Traffic Director. Locality-based routing directs requests to the nearest region, cross-region failover activates automatically during region outages. Global load balancing optimizes latency for worldwide users.
gRPC Load Balancing
A FinTech startup uses Traffic Director for gRPC services in GKE. Client-side load balancing via xDS distributes requests directly to pod IPs without additional proxies. Connection pooling and health checks optimize performance, reducing latency by 40% compared to Kubernetes Services.
A/B Testing for Feature Rollouts
A mobile app platform tests new features with Traffic Director traffic splitting. 50% of users receive Feature A, 50% Feature B. Header-based routing enables targeting of specific user groups, metrics show which feature performs better.
Hybrid Cloud Service Mesh
A company connects on-premises services with GKE via Traffic Director. Envoy proxies in both environments use the same control plane for service discovery. Traffic policies ensure consistent load balancing logic across hybrid deployments.
Integration with innFactory
As a Google Cloud partner, innFactory supports you with Traffic Director: service mesh architecture, Envoy integration, traffic policy design, GKE integration, and multi-region setup.
Contact us for a consultation on Traffic Director and Google Cloud.
Available Tiers & Options
Standard
- Fully managed control plane
- Global load balancing
- Advanced traffic management
- Requires Envoy proxies
Typical Use Cases
Technical Specifications
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Google Cloud Traffic Director?
Traffic Director is a fully managed service mesh traffic control plane for Google Cloud. The service automatically configures Envoy proxies for load balancing, traffic splitting, and service discovery without manual proxy management.
Is Traffic Director available in EU regions?
Yes, Traffic Director is available in EU regions and provides global control for service meshes with data residency options for GDPR compliance.
How does Traffic Director differ from Istio?
Traffic Director is Google Cloud's managed control plane, while Istio must be self-managed. Traffic Director integrates natively with GCP Load Balancers and offers global load balancing without additional components.
Which proxies does Traffic Director support?
Traffic Director uses Envoy-based proxies as the data plane. You can use Envoy directly, gRPC with xDS, or Google-managed proxies (like Envoy on GKE). The service configures proxies via xDS APIs.
Can I use Traffic Director with GKE?
Yes, Traffic Director integrates seamlessly with GKE for service mesh architectures. GKE services can be automatically registered as Traffic Director backends, with load balancing across pod IPs.
What traffic management features does the service offer?
Traffic Director supports traffic splitting for canary deployments, circuit breaking for resilience, outlier detection for automatic removal of faulty backends, health checks, and locality-based load balancing.
How is Traffic Director billed?
Traffic Director uses pay-per-use based on the number of configured proxies and forwarding rules. No costs for control plane operations. Details can be found in the Google Cloud pricing list.
