[Zope] ANNOUNCE: Pound - reverse proxy and load balancer - v0.11

[Robert Segall]

This is to announce the release of Pound v0.11.

New in this release:

- added the ability to track sessions by cookie value or URL parameter value, 
in addition to IP address.
- sockets are opened with REUSE_ADDR to allow for quick restart (the socket 
is first checked to make sure no other program is really using them).
- added code for early pruning of sessions to "dead" back-end servers.
- fixed a minor problem with content-less responses.

The software is at version 0.11 (pre-production quality). Further testing 
(especially under heavy loads), improvements and suggestions are welcome.

This will probably be the last pre-1.0 release, which will only include bug 
fixes (not that there are any). The feature set seems to be pretty much 
frozen - unless someone comes up with a really good, must-have, idea.

What is Pound (from the Web page)

- a reverse-proxy: it passes requests from client browsers to one or more 
back-end servers.
- a load balancer: it will distribute the requests from the client browsers 
among several back-end servers, while keeping session information.
- an SSL wrapper: Pound will decrypt HTTPS requests from client browsers and 
pass them as plain HTTP to the back-end browsers.
- an HTTP/HTTPS sanitizer: Pound will verify requests for correctness and 
accept only well-formed ones.
- an HTTP/1.1 to 1.0 proxy.
- a fail-over-server: should a back-end server fail, Pound will take note of 
the fact and stop passing requests to it until it recovers.
- a request redirector - it will pass client requests to separate groups of 
servers, based on required URL and the presence or absence of headers 
(pattern matching)

Pound was specifically developed to serve as a front-end for multiple 
instances of Zope running on top of a common ZEO storage, but can be used 
with any other web server. A patch for the Python source of z2.py is 
available as part of the distribution to allow using Pound's SSL capabilities.

Pound is currently in use in several medium to large volume sites and seems 
to be holding up quite well. The speed is well superior to other, equivalent 
solutions, the configuration is much simpler and the necessary resources 
(CPU, RAM, disk) are much, much lower.

For further information, download, etc. please see http://www.apsis.ch/pound

Pound is distributed under the GPL.

Enjoy and let me know how it works for you.
-- 
Robert Segall
Apsis GmbH
Postfach, Uetikon am See, CH-8707
Tel: +41-1-920 4904