AWS to Google Cloud Platform
Service Mapping
UPDATE 9/1/2016: We now have a very comprehensive mapping that goes far beyond this post. You can read it here.
As a Developer Advocate on the Google Cloud Platform team, I am frequently asked what services we provide. If the person I’m talking to is familiar with Amazon Web Services (AWS), the quickest way to jump start an explanation of Google Cloud Platform is to start with a comparison to AWS’s similar services, then cover the differences.
Below is a simple map between some of the major services in AWS and Google Cloud Platform. This is not intended to be a complete mapping. It would be unfair to both platforms to list every service because Google and Amazon are taking different approaches in many areas, making direct comparisons practically impossible. I’m only listing the services where the comparison is helpful.
Compute:
EC2→ Compute Engine
EC2 Container Service → Container Engine
Elastic Beanstalk → App Engine **
Storage:
S3 → Cloud Storage
Glacier → Cloud Storage Nearline
CloudFront → Cloud Storage (edge caching is provided for public buckets)
Database:
RDS → Cloud SQL
DynamoDB → Cloud Datastore and Cloud Bigtable
Big Data:
Redshift → BigQuery
SQS/Kinesis → Cloud Pub/Sub
EMR → Cloud Dataflow
Monitoring:
CloudWatch → Cloud Monitoring and Cloud Logging
Networking:
Route53 → Cloud DNS and Google Domains
Direct Connect → Cloud Interconnect
Other:
CloudFormation → Cloud Deployment Manager
SES → SendGrid (partner)
WorkMail → Gmail (also see Google for Work)
WorkDocs → Google Docs (also see Google for Work)
** AWS Elastic Beanstalk and Google App Engine are often described as similar offerings, but there are significant differences in their approaches. Both offer auto-scaling, load balancing, monitoring, etc., but unlike App Engine, Elastic Beanstalk requires the typical system administration that raw VMs require (OS updates, etc.). Google App Engine is a PaaS, meaning that it’s fully managed, so all of these administrative tasks are handled by Google. The basic App Engine setup includes built-in services such as Task Queues, Memcache, Users API, and more.
If you require unmanaged VMs, Google also has auto-scaling, load balancing, and monitoring of unmanaged VMs as features of Google Compute Engine. There is also an alternative hosting model now available as part of Google App Engine called Managed VMs.
My advice is to do your homework and understand these models thoroughly before diving in on either platform. Each has unique advantages.
I’ll have more posts in the near future with more specifics on several of the offerings. Stay tuned!
Originally published at gregsramblings.com on May 12, 2015.
