Anthos attached clusters lets you register, or attach, Kubernetes clusters that you've created yourself to the Anthos management environment. Anthos attached clusters supports attaching Amazon EKS clusters and Azure AKS clusters.
Attaching a cluster gives you Anthos management and control over it, along with access to a suite of additional Anthos configuration and control tools such as Connect Gateway, Anthos Fleets, Anthos Configuration Management and Anthos Service Mesh.
By leveraging Anthos management and control capabilities, you can:
- Automate policy and security across all clusters within your fleet through Anthos Configuration Management.
- Monitor and manage a reliable fleet-wide service mesh through Anthos Service Mesh.
- Authenticate and access all your clusters through a single interface, regardless of where they are, through Anthos Connect Gateway.
You can control and monitor an attached cluster through the Anthos gcloud command-line tool or the Google Cloud console.
Anthos Attached Clusters architecture
Anthos attached clusters represents your external Kubernetes cluster in the Google Cloud resource hierarchy as an AttachedCluster resource within the Anthos Multi-Cloud API.
This resource lets you centrally operate the Anthos configuration and control tools stack, including the Anthos Configuration Management and Anthos Service Mesh products.
When you install Anthos attached clusters, a new attached cluster resource is created within your Google project as a regional resource. All metadata associated with the cluster is stored in the Google Cloud region associated with your attached cluster resource. This permits compliance with data residency requirements.
Anthos attached clusters deploys a workload called the Connect Agent in your cluster. This agent connects back to the connect API service on the Google Cloud to create a secure link to the Google Cloud. Anthos attached clusters uses this secure tunnel to manage additional Anthos software such as Anthos Service Mesh and Anthos Configuration Management.