Overview

Amazon EC2

Stacks48.9K

Followers36.0K

Votes2.5K

Google Compute Engine

Stacks12.4K

Followers9.2K

Votes423

Amazon EC2 vs Google Compute Engine: What are the differences?

Amazon EC2 and Google Compute Engine are two popular cloud computing platforms that allow users to create and manage virtual machines in the cloud. While both offer similar services, there are key differences between them that make each platform suitable for different use cases.

Pricing Model: Amazon EC2 offers both on-demand and reserved instances, allowing users to pay for computing resources on an hourly basis or with a long-term commitment. On the other hand, Google Compute Engine offers sustained use discounts, where users get automatic discounts for long-running workloads, and committed use discounts for sustained usage with one or three-year commitments.
Network Performance: Amazon EC2 provides Enhanced Networking, which uses custom networking interfaces to improve network throughput and reduce latency. It also offers features like Elastic Load Balancers and Virtual Private Clouds. Google Compute Engine uses the Google Cloud Load Balancer for distributing traffic and offers Virtual Private Clouds for secure networking. However, it does not have a specific enhanced networking feature like EC2.
Machine Types: Amazon EC2 offers a wide range of instance types optimized for different workloads, such as compute-optimized, memory-optimized, and storage-optimized instances. Google Compute Engine also offers various machine types, including shared core instances, standard instances, high-memory instances, and high-CPU instances. However, Google does not have a specific storage-optimized instance type like EC2.
Marketplace: Amazon EC2 has a vast marketplace where users can find pre-configured virtual machine images, software, and service offerings contributed by independent software vendors (ISVs), system integrators, and AWS partners. Google Compute Engine also has a marketplace, although it is not as extensive as EC2's marketplace.
Load Balancing: Amazon EC2 offers three types of load balancers, namely the Classic Load Balancer, Application Load Balancer, and Network Load Balancer, which provide layer 4 and layer 7 load balancing capabilities. Google Compute Engine provides the Google Cloud Load Balancer, which offers both global and regional load balancing with SSL termination and content-based routing. However, it does not have the same range of load balancer options as EC2.
Managed Services: Amazon EC2 provides a variety of managed services, including AWS Elastic Beanstalk for deploying web applications and AWS Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) for running Kubernetes clusters. Google Compute Engine has its own managed services, such as Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) for managing Kubernetes clusters and App Engine for deploying web applications. However, it does not have an equivalent service to AWS Elastic Beanstalk.

In Summary, Amazon EC2 and Google Compute Engine differ in pricing models, network performance, available machine types, marketplace offerings, load balancing options, and managed services provided.

Amazon EC2 vs Google Compute Engine: What are the differences?

Introduction

Amazon EC2 and Google Compute Engine are two popular cloud computing platforms that allow users to create and manage virtual machines in the cloud. While both offer similar services, there are key differences between them that make each platform suitable for different use cases.

1. Pricing Model: Amazon EC2 offers both on-demand and reserved instances, allowing users to pay for computing resources on an hourly basis or with a long-term commitment. On the other hand, Google Compute Engine offers sustained use discounts, where users get automatic discounts for long-running workloads, and committed use discounts for sustained usage with one or three-year commitments.

2. Network Performance: Amazon EC2 provides Enhanced Networking, which uses custom networking interfaces to improve network throughput and reduce latency. It also offers features like Elastic Load Balancers and Virtual Private Clouds. Google Compute Engine uses the Google Cloud Load Balancer for distributing traffic and offers Virtual Private Clouds for secure networking. However, it does not have a specific enhanced networking feature like EC2.

3. Machine Types: Amazon EC2 offers a wide range of instance types optimized for different workloads, such as compute-optimized, memory-optimized, and storage-optimized instances. Google Compute Engine also offers various machine types, including shared core instances, standard instances, high-memory instances, and high-CPU instances. However, Google does not have a specific storage-optimized instance type like EC2.

4. Marketplace: Amazon EC2 has a vast marketplace where users can find pre-configured virtual machine images, software, and service offerings contributed by independent software vendors (ISVs), system integrators, and AWS partners. Google Compute Engine also has a marketplace, although it is not as extensive as EC2's marketplace.

5. Load Balancing: Amazon EC2 offers three types of load balancers, namely the Classic Load Balancer, Application Load Balancer, and Network Load Balancer, which provide layer 4 and layer 7 load balancing capabilities. Google Compute Engine provides the Google Cloud Load Balancer, which offers both global and regional load balancing with SSL termination and content-based routing. However, it does not have the same range of load balancer options as EC2.

6. Managed Services: Amazon EC2 provides a variety of managed services, including AWS Elastic Beanstalk for deploying web applications and AWS Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) for running Kubernetes clusters. Google Compute Engine has its own managed services, such as Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) for managing Kubernetes clusters and App Engine for deploying web applications. However, it does not have an equivalent service to AWS Elastic Beanstalk.

In Summary, Amazon EC2 and Google Compute Engine are cloud computing services offering scalable and flexible virtual machine instances. While EC2 by Amazon Web Services (AWS) boasts a longer track record and a vast array of services, Google Compute Engine, part of Google Cloud Platform (GCP), is recognized for its performance efficiency and seamless integration with other Google Cloud services, allowing users to choose based on specific project requirements and preferences.

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Advice on Amazon EC2, Google Compute Engine

Craig

Principal Consultant at Rootwork InfoTech LLC

Jul 16, 2020

Decided

We first selected Google Cloud Platform about five years ago, because HIPAA compliance was significantly cheaper and easier on Google compared to AWS. We have stayed with Google Cloud because it provides an excellent command line tool for managing resources, and every resource has a well-designed, well-documented API. SDKs for most of these APIs are available for many popular languages. I have never worked with a cloud platform that's so amenable to automation. Google is also ahead of its competitors in Kubernetes support.

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Comments

Jerome/Zen

Software Engineer

Aug 2, 2020

Needs advice

DigitalOcean was where I began; its USD5/month is extremely competitive and the overall experience as highly user-friendly.

However, their offerings were lacking and integrating with other resources I had on AWS was getting more costly (due to transfer costs on AWS). Eventually I moved the entire project off DO's Droplets and onto AWS's EC2.

One may initially find the cost (w/o free tier) and interface of AWS daunting however with good planning you can achieve highly cost-efficient systems with savings plans, spot instances, etcetera.

Do not dive into AWS head-first! Seriously, don't. Stand back and read pricing documentation thoroughly. You can, not to the fault of AWS, easily go way overbudget. Your first action upon getting your AWS account should be to set up billing alarms for estimated and current bill totals.

264k views264k

Comments

Rodrigo

SRE

Jul 30, 2021

Decided

Albeit restricted to only a few places worlwide compared to its peers in the cloud segment, I am yet to find another provider capable of delivering a score over 5000 (Geekbench) in a benchmark on a single CPU machine, and each machine costs $6 a month. For homelab and experienced users who don't need DBaaS or IaaC's, it's a pretty straightforward choice. A more comprehensive review of Vultr's HF machines can be found here.

70.2k views70.2k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Amazon EC2	Google Compute Engine
It is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers.	Google Compute Engine is a service that provides virtual machines that run on Google infrastructure. Google Compute Engine offers scale, performance, and value that allows you to easily launch large compute clusters on Google's infrastructure. There are no upfront investments and you can run up to thousands of virtual CPUs on a system that has been designed from the ground up to be fast, and to offer strong consistency of performance.
Elastic – Amazon EC2 enables you to increase or decrease capacity within minutes, not hours or days. You can commission one, hundreds or even thousands of server instances simultaneously.;Completely Controlled – You have complete control of your instances. You have root access to each one, and you can interact with them as you would any machine.;Flexible – You have the choice of multiple instance types, operating systems, and software packages. Amazon EC2 allows you to select a configuration of memory, CPU, instance storage, and the boot partition size that is optimal for your choice of operating system and application.;Designed for use with other Amazon Web Services – Amazon EC2 works in conjunction with Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), Amazon SimpleDB and Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) to provide a complete solution for computing, query processing and storage across a wide range of applications.;Reliable – Amazon EC2 offers a highly reliable environment where replacement instances can be rapidly and predictably commissioned. The Amazon EC2 Service Level Agreement commitment is 99.95% availability for each Amazon EC2 Region.;Secure – Amazon EC2 works in conjunction with Amazon VPC to provide security and robust networking functionality for your compute resources.;Inexpensive – Amazon EC2 passes on to you the financial benefits of Amazon’s scale. You pay a very low rate for the compute capacity you actually consume.;Easy to Start – Quickly get started with Amazon EC2 by visiting AWS Marketplace to choose preconfigured software on Amazon Machine Images (AMIs). You can quickly deploy this software to EC2 via 1-Click launch or with the EC2 console.	High-performance virtual machines- Compute Engine’s Linux VMs are consistently performant, scalable, highly secure and reliable. Supported distros include Debian and CentOS. You can choose from micro-VMs to large instances.;Powered by Google’s global network- Create large compute clusters that benefit from strong and consistent cross-machine bandwidth. Connect to machines in other data centers and to other Google services using Google’s private global fiber network.;(Really) Pay for what you use- Google bills in minute-level increments (with a 10-minute minimum charge), so you don’t pay for unused computing time.;Load balancing- Native load-balancing technology helps you spread incoming network traffic across a pool of instances, so you can achieve maximum performance, throughput and availability at low cost.;Fast and easy provisioning- Quickly deploy large clusters of virtual machines with intuitive tools including a RESTful API, command-line interface and web-based Console. You can also use tools such as RightScale and Scalr to automatically manage your deployment.;Compliance and security- All data written to disk in Compute Engine is encrypted at rest using the AES-128-CBC algorithm. Compute Engine has completed ISO 27001, SSAE-16, SOC 1, SOC 2, and SOC 3 certifications, demonstrating our commitment to information security.
Statistics
Stacks 48.9K	Stacks 12.4K
Followers 36.0K	Followers 9.2K
Votes 2.5K	Votes 423
Pros & Cons
Pros 647 Quick and reliable cloud servers 515 Scalability 393 Easy management 277 Low cost 271 Auto-scaling Cons 14 Ui could use a lot of work 6 High learning curve when compared to PaaS 3 Extremely poor CPU performance	Pros 87 Backed by google 79 Easy to scale 75 High-performance virtual machines 57 Performance 52 Fast and easy provisioning
Integrations
No integrations available	RightScale Qubole Scalr Boundary Red Hat Codeready Workspaces Kinvey New Relic Twilio SendGrid Zencoder

What are some alternatives to Amazon EC2, Google Compute Engine?

DigitalOcean

We take the complexities out of cloud hosting by offering blazing fast, on-demand SSD cloud servers, straightforward pricing, a simple API, and an easy-to-use control panel.

Microsoft Azure

Azure is an open and flexible cloud platform that enables you to quickly build, deploy and manage applications across a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters. You can build applications using any language, tool or framework. And you can integrate your public cloud applications with your existing IT environment.

Linode

Get a server running in minutes with your choice of Linux distro, resources, and node location.

Scaleway

European cloud computing company proposing a complete & simple public cloud ecosystem, bare-metal servers & private datacenter infrastructures.

Rackspace Cloud Servers

Cloud Servers is based on OpenStack, the open and scalable operating system for building public and private clouds. With the open cloud, you get reliable cloud hosting, without locking your data into one proprietary platform.

Google Cloud Platform

It helps you build what's next with secure infrastructure, developer tools, APIs, data analytics and machine learning. It is a suite of cloud computing services that runs on the same infrastructure that Google uses internally for its end-user products, such as Google Search and YouTube.

Gandi

Gandi VPS Cloud Hosting offers you a flexible server with dedicated resources. The VPS virtualization is made possible by Xen technology.

WebFaction

No need to spend hours installing and configuring the software, database and other tools. We have over 50 one-click installers in our control panel.

Joyent Cloud

Joyent is the high-performance cloud infrastructure company, offering the only solution specifically built to power real-time web and mobile applications.

Vultr

Strategically located in 16 datacenters around the globe and provides frictionless provisioning of public cloud, storage and single-tenant bare metal.