Originally reported by SecurityBrief. Post date: August 31, 2020.
Google Cloud announced a wave of new capabilities for Anthos, its managed application platform, as part of the broader Google Cloud App Modernization Program (Google CAMP). The updates span hybrid AI, cluster management, developer tooling, identity federation, security blueprints, and workload migration tooling.
Hybrid AI for On-Premises and Edge Environments
Google Cloud introduced hybrid AI capabilities for Anthos, enabling organisations to run AI workloads wherever their data lives — whether on-premises, at the edge, or in the cloud. The motivation is twofold: keeping AI inference close to data sources for latency and compliance reasons, and reducing the complexity of building AI-enabled applications across distributed environments.
Speech-to-Text On-Prem reached general availability on Anthos via the Google Cloud Marketplace. It gives organisations full control over speech data subject to data residency and regulatory compliance requirements. At the time of the announcement, five languages were supported, with more planned.
Cluster Management: Attached Clusters and Bare Metal
Two significant infrastructure additions expand where and how Anthos can be deployed:
- Anthos Attached Clusters: This feature allows existing Kubernetes clusters — regardless of where they run — to be managed through the Anthos control plane. It provides centralised configuration management and Anthos Service Mesh capabilities without requiring clusters to be provisioned by Google.
- Anthos for Bare Metal (Beta): Anthos can now run directly on physical hardware on-premises or at edge locations, eliminating the need for a hypervisor layer. Google noted it was itself an early adopter, working toward using Anthos for bare metal as an internal production container platform.
Developer Tooling: Cloud Code and Cloud Run for Anthos
Google unified Cloud Code IDE plugins with Cloud Run for Anthos, enabling developers to build and deploy serverless applications without leaving their editor. Supported IDEs include VS Code and IntelliJ. Supported languages at launch include Java, Node.js, Python, and Go.
Key developer experience improvements include:
- Local Cloud Run Emulator: Developers can validate code changes locally with automated re-deploys triggered on every save, closing the feedback loop without cloud round-trips.
- Local Debugging: The emulator supports local debugging of Cloud Run applications directly from the IDE.
- Remote Push: Once code is ready, changes can be pushed from the IDE directly to a remote development environment in Google Cloud.
- Cluster Provisioning from the IDE: Developers can create Kubernetes clusters with Cloud Run for Anthos enabled from within Cloud Code, with the IDE pre-populating fields such as project ID, zone/region, and node count.
Identity and Security Enhancements
Anthos Identity Service allows organisations to extend their existing identity infrastructure to Anthos workloads rather than maintaining separate authentication systems per environment.
- OpenID Connect (OIDC) support was generally available for on-premises deployments and in beta for Anthos on AWS, with additional protocol support planned.
- Anthos Security Blueprints provide templated best-practice configurations covering auditing and monitoring, policy enforcement, and locality restrictions (for data sovereignty scenarios).
- Blueprints also offer purpose-built compliance automation for regulated industries including financial services, retail, and the public sector.
Workload Migration to Anthos
Migrate for Anthos received new capabilities to ease the transition of existing workloads — even those for which source code is unavailable:
- CRD-based API for build migration automation: Enables integration of the migration pipeline with custom tools and processes.
- On-premises VM conversion: Support for Anthos deployed on-prem to convert VMs running locally to containerised workloads.
- Windows container support (Beta): Broadens Anthos migration coverage beyond Linux workloads.
- Google Cloud Console integration: Migration workflows are accessible through the standard Cloud Console web UI, reducing the need for command-line tooling.
- Cloud Foundry migration via Kf on Anthos: A new migration path for Cloud Foundry applications using Kf, which presents developers with a familiar Cloud Foundry-like interface running on top of Anthos, easing the transition without requiring full application rewrites.
Summary
These announcements collectively push Anthos further toward its goal of being a consistent application platform across any infrastructure — Google Cloud, other clouds, on-premises, and bare-metal edge. For DevOps and platform engineering teams, the most immediately actionable additions are the attached cluster management, the bare-metal beta, the Cloud Code developer workflow improvements, and the CRD-driven migration automation for Migrate for Anthos.
For up-to-date information, consult the official Anthos product page and Google Cloud release notes, as feature availability will have evolved since this August 2020 announcement.