Anthos clusters on bare metal supports three deployment models – Standalone, Multi-Cluster and Hybrid deployment model. Based on the deployment model, Kubernetes clusters are installed for running and managing workloads.
The Kubernetes clusters are of 2 types –
- User Cluster – The user cluster runs your workloads. It consist of control plane nodes (for managing the cluster and its state) and worker nodes which executes the workload.
- Admin Clusters – Admin cluster manages user clusters (i.e. create, update, delete User clusters). It consist of control plane nodes only where the Anthos management components are deployed. Admin clusters also holds service account key to access required google services and ssh keys for remote cluster management.
The standalone deployment model is a single cluster that serves as both, admin cluster as well as user cluster. The standalone deployment model lets you manage every cluster independently and preferred when you need strict isolation with other clusters (i.e. due to compliance etc.) .
The Multi-Cluster deployment consist of one admin cluster and multiple user clusters. Multi-Cluster deployment lets you manage multiple user clusters across workloads. This model is preferred where you have multiple projects/teams with different workload requirements that needs be executed independently, but centrally managed securely through admin cluster.
The Hybrid cluster deployment is similar to a Multi-Cluster deployment, with the ability to run user workloads on admin cluster also. This deployment model gives the flexibility to reuse your admin cluster environment, to run additional workloads based on your infrastructure usages.