Anthos

Anthos. A hybrid and multi-cloud application platform developed by Google that enables organizations to build, deploy, and manage applications consistently across on-premises data centers and multiple public clouds, including Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft Azure. It is based on open-source technologies, primarily Kubernetes and the service mesh Istio, providing a unified management experience for modern, containerized workloads. Announced at Google Cloud Next 2019, it represents a core component of Google's strategy to extend its cloud services beyond its own infrastructure.

Overview

Anthos is designed to address the complexities of modern enterprise IT environments, which often span a mix of on-premises infrastructure and multiple public cloud providers. It provides a consistent layer of abstraction built on Kubernetes, allowing development and operations teams to use the same tools and processes regardless of where an application is hosted. This platform is central to Google Cloud's vision for an open ecosystem, enabling workload portability and reducing vendor lock-in. Its architecture facilitates the management of both legacy applications and new, cloud-native microservices through a centralized console.

History and development

The platform was formally announced by Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian at the Google Cloud Next 2019 conference in San Francisco, building upon the earlier Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and the GKE On-Prem offering. Its development was influenced by Google's internal experience running massive containerized services and the industry-wide adoption of Kubernetes, which was originally created at Google. Key milestones include expanding support to Amazon Web Services in 2020 and Microsoft Azure in 2021, solidifying its multi-cloud positioning. The evolution of Anthos reflects a strategic response to enterprise demand for flexible, hybrid cloud solutions that can integrate with existing investments in VMware vSphere and other data center technologies.

Architecture and components

The core of Anthos is a managed control plane hosted on Google Cloud Platform that orchestrates distributed Kubernetes clusters, known as Anthos clusters, which can run in customer data centers or other clouds. Essential components include the Anthos Config Management tool for enforcing consistent policy and security configurations across all environments using a Git-based workflow. The platform integrates the Istio service mesh for advanced traffic management, security, and observability between microservices. For modernizing existing applications, it offers Anthos Migrate for automated workload migration and Anthos Service Mesh for connecting services across hybrid deployments.

Features and capabilities

Anthos provides a suite of features for managing the full application lifecycle, including automated policy and compliance enforcement through Anthos Config Management and centralized multi-cluster management via the Google Cloud Console. Its security model incorporates BeyondCorp principles for zero-trust network access and offers integrated vulnerability scanning and binary authorization. The platform includes robust monitoring, logging, and tracing capabilities by leveraging Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver). It supports both stateless and stateful workloads, with features for service discovery, load balancing, and canary deployments managed through Istio.

Use cases and deployment

Common use cases for Anthos include modernizing legacy applications by containerizing and migrating them from VMware environments to Kubernetes, enabling consistent development and deployment pipelines across hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructures. It is deployed by enterprises in regulated industries like financial services and healthcare to maintain data sovereignty by running workloads on-premises while leveraging cloud services. Retail companies use it to ensure application resilience by distributing workloads across clouds, and global organizations utilize it to run applications closer to end-users in different geographic regions for low-latency performance.

Relationship with other Google Cloud services

Anthos is deeply integrated with the broader Google Cloud ecosystem, relying on foundational services like Google Kubernetes Engine for its managed Kubernetes offering. It uses Cloud Build for continuous integration and delivery pipelines and Artifact Registry for secure container image storage. Security and identity management are enhanced through integration with Cloud Identity and Access Management and Cloud Key Management Service. For data and analytics, Anthos clusters can connect to managed services like BigQuery, Cloud Spanner, and Cloud Memorystore, allowing hybrid applications to leverage Google's data cloud capabilities seamlessly. Category:Google Cloud Platform Category:Cloud computing Category:2019 software