Google Anthos
Google Anthos is a hybrid and multi-cloud application management platform built on Kubernetes and Google's open-source Config Sync and Service Mesh technologies, letting organizations deploy, manage, and secure applications consistently…
Definition
Google Anthos is a hybrid and multi-cloud application management platform built on Kubernetes and Google's open-source Config Sync and Service Mesh technologies, letting organizations deploy, manage, and secure applications consistently across on-premises data centers, Google Cloud, and other public clouds.
Overview
Anthos was Google Cloud's answer to enterprises that could not or would not move every workload entirely into a single public cloud, whether due to latency, regulatory, or existing capital investment constraints. At its core is Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) extended to run consistently in multiple places: GKE on Google Cloud, GKE on-premises (running on VMware or bare metal), and Anthos clusters attached from AWS, Azure, or any conformant Kubernetes distribution. Anthos layers several capabilities on top of these distributed clusters. Anthos Config Management (built on the open-source Config Sync project) lets teams define desired cluster configuration and policy as code in a Git repository and have it automatically synced and enforced across every registered cluster, regardless of where it runs. Anthos Service Mesh, based on Istio, provides consistent traffic management, mutual TLS, and observability across services spanning multiple clusters and clouds. Anthos also includes centralized dashboards for fleet-wide visibility, policy compliance, and security posture across the entire registered cluster fleet. A key design decision is that Anthos treats Kubernetes as the common abstraction layer across environments: rather than trying to make every cloud's native services look identical, it standardizes on Kubernetes APIs and GitOps-based configuration as the portable interface, so a workload packaged for Anthos behaves consistently whether the underlying cluster is on-premises hardware, Google Cloud, or another public cloud's Kubernetes service registered into the fleet. This positions Anthos as Google's competitor to Azure Arc and AWS Outposts in the hybrid/multi-cloud governance space, though its Kubernetes-and-Istio foundation makes it comparatively opinionated about container-based architectures, whereas Arc's server and data-service management extends more broadly to non-containerized workloads.
Key Features
- Extends Google Kubernetes Engine consistently across on-premises, Google Cloud, and other clouds
- Anthos Config Management applies GitOps-based policy and configuration fleet-wide
- Anthos Service Mesh (Istio-based) provides cross-cluster traffic management and mTLS
- Centralized fleet dashboard for visibility across all registered clusters
- Attaches and registers non-GKE, conformant Kubernetes clusters from other clouds
- Standardizes on Kubernetes APIs as the portable abstraction across environments
- Built-in policy enforcement and security posture management across the fleet
- Supports running on VMware and bare-metal on-premises infrastructure