Google opens Anthos to VMs, streamlines Azure, AWS container management

At its Google Cloud Next ’21 virtual event this week, Google announced the preview launch of Anthos for Virtual Machines (VMs). It also introduced the Anthos Multi-Cloud API to help its customers manage Kubernetes clusters on AWS and Azure cloud environments.

Anthos for VMs

Anthos, the company’s hybrid cloud platform, uses Google’s own Kubernetes container system. This now enables Google customers to standardize on Kubernetes, while continuing to run some VM workloads which can’t be easily containerized. 

“While we have seen many customers make the leap to containerization, some are not quite ready to move completely off of virtual machines (VMs). They want a unified development platform where developers can build, modify, and deploy applications residing in both containers and VMs in a common, shared environment,” said Google VPs Jeff Reed and Chen Goldberg in a blog post.

“Anthos for VMs will help platform developers standardize on an operation model, process and tooling; enable incremental modernization efforts; and support traditional workloads like Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) or stateful monolithic workloads,” they added.

Google provides a migration path for users of VMware’s VSphere cloud computing virtualization platform, or for shifting VMs in their current state. 

“For customers with active VMware environments, the Anthos control plane can now connect to your vSphere environment and attach your vSphere VMs, allowing you to apply consistent security and policies across clusters, gain visibility into the health and performance of your services and manage traffic for both VMs and containers,” said Google.

Anthos for VMs also works with the open-source virtualization API KubeVirt.

“Now you can build, modify and deploy applications residing in both application containers as well as VMs on a common, shared Anthos environment,” said Google.

Anthos Multi-Cloud API

Google introduced the Anthos Multi-Cloud API for customers looking to simplify the management of resources between different cloud service providers through a centralized Google-Cloud-backed control plane. Google plans to make it “generally available” in the fourth calendar quarter of 2021. 

“With Anthos Multi-Cloud, you can create Anthos clusters in both AWS and Azure cloud environments. Anthos clusters integrates with cloud provider specific resources such as load balancers and persistent storage,” said Google.

The API enables users to the Google Cloud Console to manage Kubernetes clusters hosted on AWS and Azure, in the Cloud Console interface and using a command line interface tool.

Google’s edge play

Also at Google Cloud Next, Google took the wraps off Google Distributed Cloud, a new product portfolio that extends Google infrastructure to the edge and on-premise using qualified hardware. The products can operate on any of Google’s 140 global network edge locations and can also be set up at customer locations, depending on the need.

The portfolio comprises Google Distributed Cloud Edge and Google Distributed Cloud Hosted. Google Distributed Cloud Edge is available now in “Preview” form, while Google Distributed Cloud Hosted is coming in 2022, according to the company.