Google Offers Andromeda Networking Stack to Compute Engine Customers

Google (GOOG) this week said the networking stack it uses for its Cloud Platform is now available to Compute Engine customers.

Dubbed Andromeda, the network virtualization stack focuses on providing a higher level of performance, availability, isolation and security.

Andromeda does this by becoming the central point for provisioning, configuring, and managing virtual networks and in-network packet processing.

The network virtualization stack is now available in two Compute Engine zones: us-central1-b and europe-west1-a.

Google first unveiled its network virtualization stack earlier this month at the Open Network Summit. The presentation focused on what the company is doing to alleviate some of the pain points associated with network virtualization. 

Google Engineer Amin Vahdat in a company blog post this week recognized that the tech giant is “uniquely positioned to leverage Google’s control and expertise over the entire hardware, software, LAN, and WAN to deliver a seamless experience for Cloud Platform customers.”

“At Google, we benefit from having programmable access to the entire network stack, from the lowest-level hardware to the highest-level software elements,” he said.

Vahdat also noted other areas of opportunity for the network virtualization stack: high-speed access to low-latency, durable storage, APIs for network function virtualization (NFV), and VM migration.

Google said it plans to fully transition Andromeda to all of its zones in the upcoming months.

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