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Amazon Web Services (AWS) can now use Google Cloud Anthos; Azure to follow!

Billy Yann
Deep learning and machine learning specialist, well-versed with experience in Cloud infrastructure, Block-chain technologies and Big Data solutions.
June 09, 2020


Anthos

Workloads that are run on the cloud platform of Amazon Web Services (AWS) are now supported by Google Cloud Software of Anthos. A deployment software of Anthos efficiently manages the Kubernetes workload across various cloud and on-premise (on-prem) environments. The container-based applications on-premises can be run on a single platform with assistance from Anthos. An attractive feature that gets noticed instantly is that the multi-cloud & hybrid application platform, Anthos, helps organizations of all sizes in developing, managing, and deploying various applications more quickly & flexibly. Anthos Config Management uses a declarative & programmatic approach, for VMs, towards the management of policies.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

The first major multi-cloud offering of Google Cloud's Anthos platform is now live in the form of Amazon Web Services (AWS). This platform allows, the building of applications that runs in multiple cloud environments. Few popular or major firms have cited using Anthos: Japanese Tech Company of Plaid, and regional US Bank-KeyBank. SADA, an infamous & renowned Google-centric cloud technology services provider, suggested that running Anthos on AWS allows customers for designing a platform for their needs & requirements.

Regardless of where the workloads are run: be it be in on-prem, Google Cloud, or any other third-party cloud service provider, the software of Anthos offers consistent platforms for its clients. Software development teams to design & develop great and complex applications, which thrive in an environment that varies: this is done with the aid of Anthos.

Server-less and microservices are added to its Anthos platform by Google Cloud: clever use of server virtualization software of vSphere. The Google Cloud has also announced Anthos for telecom by bringing the software to a network edge. With its latest release of Migrate for Anthos, Google Cloud is simplifying application modernization and hence letting customers improve performance by cutting their costs without having to manually re-platform or re-architect their workloads.

Migrate for Anthos

Nowadays, an easy migration & modernization of existing workloads is achieved by using secure containers. A managed Kubernetes service is possible using the, "Migrate for Anthos". Using the same methodologies, services, and policies of a modern platform, it is now possible to maintain, deploy, and operate various existing applications. Software companies can run a virtual machine in the cloud while leaving storage in on-premises, via "Migrate for Anthos".

Independence from the server virtualization software of vSphere: Simplification at a cost!

For simplifying the delivery of hybrid cloud functionality, Google Cloud has announced that the software of Anthos can now be run without any help from a third-party hypervisor. However, the functioning of Anthos with a VMware vSphere hypervisor created an additional operational consideration burden for the application team. Moreover, it also came with an additional cost to customers.

Configuration & Policy Management for Virtual Machines (VMs)

As mentioned before, a reduction in configuration errors is achieved via an effective configuration & policy management system. Through the Config Management console, Anthos is now able to support the same configuration management for both containers as well as VMs on Google Cloud. The Google Cloud is working towards bringing support for applications, and software running on VMs into the Service Mesh of Anthos. This whole process will surely allow the workloads in Google Cloud, along with the on-premises to have a consistent policy and security management.

Main Focus: Facilitating operators to set automated identity

As the heading ensures the prime focus falls on all those developments that facilitate operators for setting an automated identity along with security policies as well as numerous dynamic configurations, which are linked to certain workloads & namespaces. This process would be done regardless of which platforms these workloads and namespaces are running. Proper management of diverse environments along with deeper support for virtual machines allows the further extension of Antho's management framework to more workloads.

Benefits of Google's Anthos Platform

Google's Anthos platform promises efficient and unified security, administration & policies across hybrid Kubernetes deployments with the support of the Anthos Config Management console, GKE on-prem along with the Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE). Meanwhile, the "Migrate for Anthos" helps the direct conversion of workloads from virtual machines (VMs) and physical servers. Google Cloud has already started the testing and analysis of Anthos on Microsoft Azure.

Google Cloud vs. Azure vs. AWS: Which is a better enterprise platform? (A Comparison)

Businesses today adopt cloud computing as one of their key driving forces. Moving the applications out of various on-premise data centers helps to increase agility and thereby reducing costs. Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure address the concerns regarding data sovereignty as well as security. Naturally, all these three vendors have strong roots in machine learning, which allows them to excel in development expertise along with internal research. All three typically avails excellent connectivity to on-premise systems and also networking capabilities with the assistance of automated server load balancing.

amazon

Now let's look at some key features, and strengths of these cloud vendors:

Key features and strengths

The needs of each customer as well as workloads they are running highly influences the selection of a required cloud vendor. Many organizations follow a multi-cloud approach, where they use multiple providers: different use cases or various parts of their operations.

One of the key strengths of AWS includes the breadth of its services across analytics, mobile, database, developer tools, networking, IoT, management tools, storage, enterprise, and security applications.

On the other hand, Microsoft continues to be a popular choice among C-level executives who desire to maintain long-standing relationships with the vendor. Microsoft combines Azure, Office 365, as well as Teams to provide excellent services to its clients.

Google had a central role in the development process of Kubernetes for Istio service mesh as well as orchestration. With its deep expertise in open source technologies, Google stands out from other vendors. Google Cloud heavily embraces its culture of innovation and open source. The organizations that prefer translate, security, search, AI and machine learning capabilities tend to gravitate towards the Google Cloud Platform.

Networking and databases

Relational databases are supported by all three providers. For instance, Azure has SQL Database, Google supports Cloud SQL and Amazon Relational Database Service. They also support NoSQL databases- Google Bigtable, Amazon DynamoDB, and Azure Document DB.

AWS avails services such as the EC2 Container Service, AWS Auto-scaling and Lambda, ECS for Kubernetes (EKS), and Elastic Beanstalk for app deployment.

For computing, Azure's main offering is centred around or focused on its Virtual Machines (VMs). VMs can be delivered in Google's data centers with the help of Google's scalable Compute Engine. They promise consistent performance and are quick to boot, are highly customizable, as well as promise a consistent performance.

The storage of AWS includes Elastic File System (EFS), Elastic Block Storage (EBS), and also Simple Storage (S3). Whereas the offerings of Microsoft include Azure Blob block storage, Azure Storage service, Queue, Table, as well as File storage. Further Microsoft promises Import Export, Site Recovery, and Azure Backup.

The Trend of Hybrid and Multi-cloud Options

When customers have to maintain particular applications in on-premise and need to deploy across multiple vendors' infrastructure, they choose hybrid options. The well-established Azure Stack of Microsoft provides the software and hardware necessary for the deployment of Azure public cloud services from a local data centre. This process is done with a shared code, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), and a management portal for a simple inter-operability.

Support for Hadoop Clusters

In the case of Amazon Web Services (AWS), the creation and management of fully-configured elastic clusters are supported by Amazon EMR (Elastic Map Reduce). This helps in running Hadoop as well as other applications in the ecosystem of Hadoop effectively. Moreover, there is a reduction in the EMRFS, which is a connector that facilitates the usage of Amazon S3 as a storage layer by the Hadoop.

Azure provides HDInsight, which is a fully managed, open-source, full-spectrum analytics service in the cloud for enterprises. HDInsight can easily and effectively run popular open-source frameworks namely Spark, Apache Hadoop, and Kafka.

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) includes Cloud Dataproc. Cloud Dataproc is a well-managed Spark and Hadoop environment. A developer often uses the Cloud Dataproc to run the majority of the existing tasks or jobs with minimal alteration.

Conclusion

The discussion concludes on the benefits of Google cloud Anthos, which is now available for Amazon Web Services (AWS) with Azure waiting in the wings to follow. The cloud software provided by Google for AWS is better for its working with Virtual Machines (VMs). The comparison is drawn between Google Cloud, Azure, and AWS details the highlights of Anthos, Azure & AWS that helps in determining the positives, and negatives according to various needs & requirements of clients along with customers. Hybrid and multi-cloud options are becoming a trend nowadays and Google cloud Anthos & Azure will surely fulfill the requirements of AWS very effectively.