What Is Google Anthos and How Is It Modernizing Cloud Infrastructure? | C2C Community

What Is Google Anthos and How Is It Modernizing Cloud Infrastructure?

Categories: Infrastructure
What Is Google Anthos and How Is It Modernizing Cloud Infrastructure?

Many of the applications we interact with every day are supported by hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructure. And while this modernization creates many benefits in security, scalability, and continuous testing processes, effectively managing these sometimes disparate environments can be complicated. Enter: Anthos, Google’s multi-services platform launching CI and applications operations into the future of cloud computing.

Continuous integration (CI) is integral to DevOps and modern hybrid cloud infrastructure. It allows developers and operations teams to orchestrate software packaged and deployed in containers. Instead of manually configuring and deploying software, Anthos empowers DevOps with tools that automate deployments, speed up delivery of applications, and give DevOps access to cloud-native services that save time and money.    

 

What Is Anthos?

 

Anthos is a managed application platform that was first introduced in 2019 when Google combined some of its cloud services with Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) to create a system for unifying and modernizing application operations. Kubernetes is a Google product used to orchestrate application deployment to the cloud. Software deployed in Kubernetes is packaged into a container and any configurations and sent to the Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Using Kubernetes, DevOps can eliminate human errors and automate configurations during deployment. Automation is one of the most significant advantages of using Anthos.

DevOps uses Anthos to automate deployments to cloud-native environments in containers, which is the major component in microservices technology. Microservices break down large monolithic codebases into smaller components so that they can be individually managed and updated. 

The advantage of deploying to the cloud using Anthos is the speed of deployments, but GCP also offers performance improvements over on-premise infrastructure. Applications run on edge servers across Google data centers, so users across the globe will see a significant performance improvement regardless of their location.

 

Anthos Components & Strategies for App Modernization

 

While Kubernetes workload management is still very much at the heart of the platform, many other cloud technologies come together to create Anthos’ different components and build a tech ecosystem that is revolutionizing CI/CD:

 

GKE

One of Anthos’ main components is managing Kubernetes workloads. Kubernetes is an enterprise solution for container deployments. In large enterprise environments, constant monitoring, deployments, and recreation of containers require excessive resources. GKE will manage these resources and ensure that the environment runs smoothly and without performance degradation. 

 

GKE On-Premise

Organizations often work with hybrid solutions in large environments, meaning services run on-premise and in the cloud. GKE can be installed on-premise so that services can be deployed internally and in the cloud. You must have the infrastructure installed to run GKE on-premise, but GKE can manage both on-premise containers and those that run in the cloud.

 

Istio Service Mesh

In addition to supporting Kubernetes architecture, Anthos also gives developers and operators greater connectivity through a federated network. When organizations leverage microservices using containers, they decouple the large codebase into smaller units. These smaller units must “speak” to each other, and the Istio Service Mesh provides pathways to communicate these microservices.

 

Stackdriver

One of the biggest benefits of app modernization is full-stack observability and greater system health management. With Anthos, logging, tracing, and system monitoring are centralized within the platform, creating an opportunity for continuous deployment testing.

 

GCP Marketplace

Should any organization find a pre-made package in the Google Cloud Marketplace that will help with productivity, organization administrators can easily install packages from the marketplace to their cloud. These applications are configured to run on GCP, so no configurations of virtual machines, storage, and network resources are necessary.

 

GCP Cloud Interconnect

Another Anthos component that actively assists in app modernization is GCP Cloud Interconnect. In a hybrid environment, data from the on-premise network must sync with the cloud. Organizations must also upload data to storage devices in the cloud. GCP Cloud Interconnect provides a high-performance virtual private cloud network to transfer data between environments securely.

 

How Can Anthos Multi-Cloud Help Modernize Application Operations?

Such a large component of modern app development takes place in hybrid and public cloud environments. This calls for a need to streamline operational processes and introduce app modernization throughout the development cycle from deployment to testing and system monitoring. Here are just some of the ways Anthos is revolutionizing cloud-native ecosystems:

 

Robust Observability & Shift Left Testing

Anthos multi-cloud is building a more innovative coding environment through the ability for quicker testing, or shift-left testing, and great observability. Observability finds its origins deep within machine diagnostics, but what is the shift-left testing? This phenomenon of placing testing earlier in the development process is known as shift left testing, and it allows developers and operators to improve the quality of their code deployments.

Part of app modernization is shortening the distance between different development steps. With Anthos, system logs and traces are centralized with the Stackdriver technology to place testing power in the hands of developers and operators, not just insights teams.

 

Anthos Enables Greater Flexibility

Instead of working with a monolithic codebase with rigid platform requirements, Google Anthos and microservice technology provide greater flexibility to deploy containers across a hybrid environment. Deploy to the cloud, on-premise infrastructure, and even a developer device without extensive configuration management and time-consuming bug fixes.

 

Building Operational Consistency

Automation keeps deployments consistent and reduces human error from manual code promotions to production. Because configurations and code are packaged within a container and maintained in Kubernetes, every deployment remains the same and keeps code consistent across the cloud and on-premise infrastructure.

 

What Is the Future of Anthos Multi-Cloud & Hybrid CI/CD Environments?

 

Automation in DevOps continually proves to be the future in faster code deployments, reduced human errors, and better consistency and performance in application execution. Continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) can speed up deployments from several weeks to a few minutes in high-performance DevOps. 

As organizations realize that cloud microservices offer better performance and faster code deployments, Anthos will evolve to be a beneficial service to any enterprise with a hybrid or multi-cloud environment. Anthos allows DevOps teams to fully automate their deployments, giving your developers time to innovate and operations people more time to maintain and upgrade infrastructure. It saves time and money across all business units. It gives your organization the ability to maintain flexibility regardless of the software deployed and the platform required to run applications.

 

Extra Credit 

  1. https://cloud.google.com/anthos

  2. https://www.cuelogic.com/blog/what-is-anthos-the-multicloud-platform-by-google

  3. https://www.techzine.eu/blogs/cloud/48197/what-is-google-anthos-is-this-the-modern-cloud-infrastructure-youre-looking-for/

  4. https://www.infoworld.com/article/3541324/what-is-google-cloud-anthos-kubernetes-everywhere.html

  5. https://www.acronis.com/en-us/articles/top-10-benefits-of-multi-cloud/

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