Andromeda: Google’s Secret Weapon To Keep Amazon And Microsoft On Their Toes

Grazed from ReadWrite. Author: Jodi Mardesich.

Years ago, Google figured out that users prize speed above almost everything when it comes to surfing the Web. They’re now applying that insight to courting developers, too, through a tool named Andromeda. Google Compute Engine, the version of Google’s infrastructure it rents out to developers, is getting access to Andromeda, a set of technologies the company uses to speed up its own networking. Last week, it turned Andromeda on in two of its four Compute Engine zones this week.

Enter Andromeda

Andromeda’s not a product Google’s cloud customers can sign up for, and it doesn’t have APIs developers can write to directly. So, what’s the fuss about? Google Distinguished Engineer Amin Vahdat described it in a post: Andromeda is a Software Defined Networking (SDN)-based substrate for our network virtualization efforts. It is the orchestration point for provisioning, configuring, and managing virtual networks and in-network packet processing…

Let’s unpack that: Increasingly, rather than setting up data centers, storage, and networks by setting up new servers, companies are using software to run existing hardware in new ways. By defining usage in software, you can disaggregate and share expensive physical resources. In the case of software-defined networking, the resources—servers, routers, switches, and so on— are deep in the bowels of Google’s data centers, which provide the underpinnings for its cloud infrastructure…

Read more from the source @ http://readwrite.com/2014/04/07/andromeda-google-software-defined-networking#awesm=~oAL27cuIKruz7B

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