With the rise of hybrid cloud and multi-cloud, handling applications has become a challenging task for many organizations. Organizations are striving to modernize their workloads faster and efficiently, but the management of these applications is a challenge and complex. Google Cloud is addressing these challenges with Anthos. Anthos is an application that provides application modernization and hybrid cloud environments with the support of all the existing cloud-native tools such as Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and other open-source technologies.
What is Anthos?
Anthos is Google Cloud’s new managed application platform that enables you to run Kubernetes across on-premises, as well as on multiple public clouds, with a Google Cloud-backed control plane for stable operations. This solution provides a single control plane to manage all your Kubernetes as well as other workloads.
Anthos is to Kubernetes what Kubernetes is to containers.
Features of Anthos:
Let us discuss some of the major features of Anthos:
- Anthos works well with on-premises and other popular cloud service providers like AWS and Azure
- Anthos is built on GKE that provides container orchestration
- Anthos provides the benefit of auto-scaling, which means you only pay as per your usage. No extra added costs to your billing
- One of the main advantages is that you do not get locked on any particular cloud vendor because of the underlying open-source technology
Anthos Architecture (Components of Anthos)
Kubernetes is the heart of Anthos and acts as a central point of handling all the technology. Many tools make the Anthos powerful in terms of speed and security. Some of these tools are listed below:
- Google Kubernetes Engine
- GKE On-Prem
- Anthos Config Management
- GKE Hub
- Istio
- Migrate for Anthos
Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE):
Anthos is built on GKE, making it flexible and scalable. Customers can manage on-premise data, Google Cloud data, or any other platform data using the single control pane.
GKE On-Prem:
With GKE On-Prem, you can run your Kubernetes cluster in your data center from the Google Cloud console, allowing you to take advantage of Managed GKE to make handling and monitoring easier.
Anthos Config Management:
When working with multi-cloud or hybrid cloud deployments across different clusters is complex. Anthos solves these problems by utilizing Anthos Config Management. This tool aims to solve the problem of maintaining configuration, adding policies, and securing the network using a central Git repository. Anthos Config Management also keeps track of all the activities and caches them for better administration tasks.
Istio:
Istio is a service mesh that makes communication between on-premise and cloud possible. The application can connect to Istio and take the advantage of all the features such as adding policies, load balancing, traffic management, or enforcing security between two different networks. Istio can secure and run your container in different microservices architecture, regardless of any vendor. This tool also provides timeouts, retries, health checks, and recovery from failure. Istio’s features make Anthos so powerful in terms of handling multi-cloud or hybrid clouds.
Migrate for Anthos:
This tool helps in moving your existing workload to the GKE container. Migrate for Anthos also supports workloads from VMware, Amazon EC2, or Azure VMs.
Why should Anthos Service Mesh be utilized? What are the challenges of Microservices Architecture?
In a traditional microservices architecture, each server will have its logic. When we create a new service in Kubernetes, it establishes a DNS hostname for the service so that other services in the clusters can communicate with the service seamlessly. Communication inside the clusters is not secured as services talk, via HTTP or some insecure protocol, allowing every service inside the clusters to talk to any other service. Once the request reaches the clusters, it is no longer secure.
These problems are addressed in the following section.
Anthos Availability
Anthos can be directly used on Google Cloud by enabling Anthos API. By registering your cluster, you can utilize all the features of Anthos. Currently, Anthos is available on these three modes:
- Anthos on Google Cloud
- Anthos on-premises (VMware)
- Anthos on other public clouds like AWS and Azure
Anthos deployment can also combine on-premise with Anthos clusters to create a hybrid deployment. You can have Anthos clusters manage other clusters across multiple public clouds such as Google Cloud, Azure, and AWS.
Conclusion
Hybrid cloud or Multi-cloud will soon be the future of cloud computing. Anthos is the one-stop solution for all cloud needs. Anthos enables easy setup at reduced costs. Here is a glimpse of all the achievable features addressed by Anthos:
- Utilizing Anthos dashboard for managing all the clusters using a “single pane of glass”
- Implementing Anthos Config Management for all kinds of administration tasks
- Deploying GKE on-prem as managed services
- Enabling Anthos Service Mesh to connect on-premises and public cloud using a secure network
- Using Migrate for Anthos to modernize applications
