Site Reliability Engineering con Anthos

How to create a new project in Anthos?

To start using Anthos effectively, it is essential to create a new project from the Google Cloud platform. This step is crucial to be able to run our Anthos "sample". I will describe the process below:

1. Project Creation: Log into your Google Cloud account and create a new project. It's as simple as giving it a name and confirming the creation.

2. API Activation: Once the project is created, the next step is to activate the Anthos API. This is a necessary step to deploy the platform and take advantage of all the features that Google Cloud offers.

3. Sample Deployment: Google Cloud provides a "sample" of Anthos that you can deploy with a simple click. You just need to choose the appropriate environment variables. Once deployed, you will be able to visualize your Google Kubernetes Engine cluster with all Anthos components.

What can we visualize in the deployed Anthos platform?

With Anthos deployed, the platform provides an interface rich in information about the cluster and its components. This is what we can observe:

• Nodes and workloads: it allows you to identify each node and the associated workloads in the cluster.
• Microservices applications: Google provides a sample application deployed in microservices, allowing you to visualize the services and associated namespaces.
• Services and Endpoints: For example, you can view the ISTIO Ingress Gateway, as well as the available ingress services.

How does Anthos Service Mesh work?

Anthos Service Mesh is one of the key functionalities, in charge of managing communications between services. Its visualization as a topology offers significant benefits:

• Latency between services: You can monitor the latency reported to the ISTIO pilot directly from the dashboard.
• Service levels: allows you to set service levels by monitoring their compliance.
• Communication encryption: Evaluates whether connections between services are encrypted, thanks to services such as Citadel that manage SSL certificates within the cluster.

How are encryption policies managed in ACM?

Anthos Config Manager (ACM) makes it easy to enforce policies such as encryption. Here's how to do it:

1. Policy Modification: Use Cloud Shell to edit ACM configuration files, for example, the mesh policy file.

2. Encryption Enforcement: To force the application to encrypt communication between services, change the configuration from permissive mode to one that requires mutual certification.

3. Commit and Push Changes: Commit the changes and push them to your Git repository. This step will allow the security team to manage the repository while developers deploy services.

4. Verify changes: Once propagated, verify that the padlocks in the interface turn green, indicating that the communication is encrypted.

Anthos is a powerful tool to facilitate the management and monitoring of deployed clusters and services. We invite you to continue exploring and experimenting with its options to ensure secure and efficient applications.