Google adds VM support to Anthos, admits not everyone is ready for containerised everything

Google has added support for workloads running in virtual machines to its Anthos hybrid Kubernetes platform. "While we have seen many customers make the leap to containerization, some are not quite ready to move completely off of virtual machines," wrote Google Application Modernization Platform vice-presidents Jeff Reed and …

[Anonymous Coward]

Containers dead?

So does this finally mark the end of the ' ...containers are the future - the next computing revolution' debates?

Is this an acceptance that, yes, virtualization really is here to stay for a very long time?

[rjed]

Re: Containers dead?

I don't think the article in any way indicates that containers are dead!

Just that virtual machine based workloads are here to stay. And I would argue that even bare-metal non-virtualized workloads are here to stay.

Some transaction-based workloads could benefit from using bare-metal/VMs directly where the transaction processing speed could be impacted because of containerization layer. But there are lot of workloads where containerization layer adds much more value. Put k8s-like orchestration in the mix and you get lot of high-end features (such as service load-balancing, HA, reliability) readily available.

Also using containers/k8s is not really straight forward today. The development and admin community is still catching up with the k8s/containerization nuances. Orchestration engines such as google auto-pilot and AWS FarGate could help alleviate some of these pain points.

[karlkarl]

Re: Containers dead?

To be fair, I almost always see both being used.

This is the most common setup in my travels.

----> Metal

(running)

--------> VMs (<5)

(running)

------------> Containers (20+)

[Robert Grant]

Re: Containers dead?

Given most K8s clusters run on virtual nodes, I don't think this has been as binary a choice as you've been led to believe.

[Robert Grant]

> Google's also added an Anthos Multi-Cloud API that, once it debuts in Q4 2021, will allow users to "provision and manage GKE clusters running on AWS or Azure infrastructure directly from the command line interface or the Google Cloud Console". A single control plane will drive those GKE clusters, regardless of the cloud on which they reside.

Wowzer.

[Anonymous Coward]

Anything for everybody

Google (and Amazon, Microsoft, and all the other big players) don't care how you want it set up, they only care that they can make your setup run on their software.

If your server is 5 old Windows XP devices linked together, they want to be able to say that they can containerize or virtualize or whatever-else-ize it.

This is not to demean Google's effort. To be a player you have to recognize that one size doesn't fit all and mixed use is the norm within most companies. Their future direction sounds even more interesting if they can pull it off.