Google’s “Andromeda” network virtualization stack is now powering two of its Google Compute Engine zones: us-central1-b and europe-west1-a. The company will be migrating its other data centers to Andromeda in the coming months.
Google describes Andromeda as a Software Defined Networking (SDN)-based substrate that serves as the orchestration point for provisioning, configuring, and managing virtual networks and in-network packet processing. The goal is to expose the raw performance of the underlying network while simultaneously exposing network function virtualization (NFV), including distributed denial of service (DDoS) protection, transparent service load balancing, access control lists, and firewalls.
Google reports a significant performance gain in throughput for customers in the data centers running Andromeda, with TCP throughput for 200 streams soaring from under 2 Gbps (baseline) to 5 Gbps (powered by Andromeda).
http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com/2014/04/enter-andromeda-zone-google-cloud-platforms-latest-networking-stack.html
