Google Cloud Anthos is a hybrid, cloud-agnostic container environment designed to enable enterprises to leverage container clusters instead of traditional cloud virtual machines (VMs). This approach helps bridge the gap between legacy software and modern cloud hardware. Originally introduced as Google Cloud Services Platform, it was rebranded to Google Cloud Anthos in 2019.

The multi-cloud platform allows organizations to use container and Kubernetes cluster technologies on their existing internal hardware. This flexibility is crucial for enterprises that prefer not to fully transition away from their current infrastructure. Some businesses may also choose to keep mission-critical applications in their own data centers rather than relying on shared cloud services. While many public cloud providers offer hybrid cloud solutions, extending their services to on-premises setups, integrating these with legacy systems can be highly complex. Legacy applications are often tightly coupled with specific on-premises servers, making adaptation challenging. While virtualization can address this issue, it often comes at the cost of losing the advantages of cloud-based infrastructure, such as scalability, efficiency, and adaptability.

Google Anthos provides an alternative by enabling the use of cloud technologies on existing internal hardware without compromising the benefits of cloud services. By delivering a consistent design and unified set of services across on-premises and cloud environments, Anthos gives organizations the freedom to deploy applications wherever they choose and to migrate workloads seamlessly between environments.

Targeted at enterprise users, Google Cloud Anthos helps manage and coordinate workloads across on-premises and cloud platforms. It is particularly useful for organizations pursuing cloud-native applications built on containers and microservices.

Given Google’s development of Kubernetes—an open-source container management system—and its strong container-as-a-service foundation, Anthos offers enterprises a smooth migration path for modernizing legacy applications.

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Google Cloud Anthos features

To develop Anthos, Google collaborated with hardware providers such as Cisco, Dell EMC, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, NetApp, and Robin.io to offer prepackaged Anthos systems integrated with the software. However, Google Cloud Anthos can only operate on servers capable of hosting Kubernetes clusters via the Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE).

Google Cloud Anthos is designed to containerize legacy applications, incorporating migration tools that convert VM images into containers before deploying them onto Anthos. The platform is enhanced by a suite of tools for monitoring, security, authorization, and application management. Key features of Anthos include monitoring, service management, a networking environment, Istio Service Mesh, centralized configuration management, and consolidated logging.

Anthos also enables customers to manage workloads on third-party cloud services, including AWS and Azure. This flexibility allows users to deploy, run, and manage cloud applications across multiple platforms, positioning Google as a neutral cloud provider while emphasizing workload portability. Customers are not restricted to using only Google’s infrastructure, and administrators and developers avoid the need to adapt to different environments or APIs.

Since Anthos is based on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), Google’s managed Kubernetes service, users benefit from regular feature updates and security patches.

Components of Google Cloud Anthos

Google Cloud Anthos is built using multiple integrated systems, with its core being a container cluster managed by Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE). To support hybrid environments, Anthos accommodates both the GKE managed container service and GKE On-Premises, which provides the same management and security features for on-site infrastructure.

Key components of Google Cloud Anthos include:

Anthos Config Management: This tool facilitates the setup and administration of multiple Kubernetes clusters. It ensures consistent network and security policies across environments by managing configurations stored in repositories like GitHub or Google Cloud Source Repositories.

Traffic Director: A traffic control plane for a service mesh, offering multi-region load balancing, health checking, and demand-based autoscaling. It uses standard APIs and works with sidecar proxies like Envoy.

Stackdriver: Google Cloud Platform’s monitoring, management, and debugging service. It centralizes network, application, and infrastructure telemetry, offering options such as Legacy Stackdriver and Stackdriver Kubernetes Engine Monitoring.

Migrate for Anthos: Automates the migration of legacy workloads from VMware vSphere, Amazon EC2, and Microsoft Azure VMs into GKE containers.

Cloud Run: A serverless platform for running event-driven workloads and deploying containers to GKE clusters. It eliminates the need for server configuration and automatically adjusts compute resources based on workload demands.

GCP Marketplace: Provides access to prebuilt Kubernetes development stacks and applications, automating container development processes with tools like CodeBuild.

Apigee: Google Cloud’s API management service, simplifying the exposure of APIs for services running on GKE.

Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE): A container management and orchestration system based on Kubernetes. GKE facilitates creating and managing container clusters, pods, replication controllers, and load balancers, along with debugging, updates, and upgrades.

GKE On-Prem: Also known as Google Kubernetes Engine-Premises, this brings Kubernetes-based software to an organization’s on-site hardware, managed by Google.

Istio on GKE: A service mesh for securely connecting clients to containerized applications and services. It manages traffic flows, enforces security and usage policies, and supports distributed microservices across containers and VMs.

Velostrata: A cloud migration technology acquired by Google in 2018, used to stream on-premises physical and virtual machines to create replicas in GCE instances. Velostrata converts VMs into Kubernetes Pods as part of Anthos Migrate.

GCP Cloud Interconnect: Provides high-speed connectivity between enterprise data centers and cloud infrastructure, offering speeds of up to 100 Gbps and support for extending data centers using third-party networks.

Anthos Platform

The Anthos Platform provides a framework to determine which Google Cloud Anthos services can be utilized in specific environments. It is divided into three key segments: Application Operation, Network and Security Operation, and Platform Operation, all of which are accessible on-premises or in the public cloud.

Application Operation

Primarily used in hybrid environments, Application Operation includes:

• Continuous integration and continuous delivery tools
• Serverless tools
• Cloud Run for Anthos
• Apigee

Network and Security Operation

This segment focuses on implementing policies, security controls, and compliance for both on-premises and public cloud environments. It includes:

• Anthos Config Management for policy and configuration management
• Istio for policy management and zero-trust network security
• Service discovery and management using Anthos Service Mesh
• A secure software supply chain
• Multi-tenancy support via GKE Sandbox

Platform Operation

Designed to centralize and standardize cluster management, Platform Operation ensures consistent services across environments. It includes:

• Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) for managing Kubernetes and centralizing operations
• Networking tools like Traffic Director
• GKE storage options and on-premises storage solutions
• Migrate for Anthos, enabling direct workload migration into containers on GKE
• Monitoring capabilities via Stackdriver Kubernetes Engine Monitoring

Future

The future of Google Cloud Anthos appears promising due to its flexibility, allowing customers to choose where to deploy, manage, and run their applications—whether on their own hardware or within a cloud service. This adaptability frees organizations from being tied to a single cloud provider, enabling them to shift workloads between different cloud services as needed.

A major competitor to Google Cloud Anthos is Microsoft Azure, a well-established public cloud computing platform. Azure offers a range of cloud services, including compute, analytics, storage, and networking, allowing users to run existing applications or develop new ones in the cloud. Both platforms offer distinct advantages, so organizations should carefully evaluate their options before making a decision. However, Google Cloud Anthos' reliability and flexibility position it as a strong contender with significant staying power in the cloud computing space.

Pricing

Anthos pricing operates on a monthly subscription model with a minimum one-year commitment, clearly targeting larger enterprises. The base cost for Anthos is $10,000 per month for every 100 virtual CPUs (vCPUs), covering only the managed software layer. This price does not include the underlying infrastructure on Google’s cloud. Anthos is sold in increments of 100-vCPU blocks.

The cost of Google’s cloud infrastructure varies depending on instance types and geographic regions, adding complexity to pricing. For instance, in 2019, the monthly cost for a low-end n1-standard-1 instance (with one vCPU and 3.7 GB of memory) was $24.27 in Google’s Iowa region but increased to $33.98 in the Hong Kong region.

Support is not included in the Anthos subscription, despite being a requirement. Google recommends an enterprise-level support contract, which costs $15,000 or a percentage of the customer’s total spending.