GCP: The Google Cloud Platform Compute Stack Explained.

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) offers a myriad of services, one particular set of services is its compute stack that contains, Google Compute Engine (GCE), Google Kubernetes Engine (formerly Container Engine) (GKE), Google App Engine (GAE)and Google Cloud Functions (GCF). These services all have pretty cool names, but can get somewhat confusing with regards to their function and what makes them unique from each other. This article is somewhat intended for those who are new to cloud concepts, in particular cloud services and GCP.

1. The Compute Stack

The compute stack can be viewed as a layered abstraction over what a computer system can provide. This stack moves up from “bare metal” referring to the actual hardware components of the computer all the way to functions, which represent the smallest unit of computation. What’s important to note about the stack is that services are aggregated as you move up the stack e.g the Apps section shown in Figure 1 below, must contain all the underlying components of Containers, Virtual Machines (VMs) and Bare Metal, similarly the VMs component must contain Bare Metal underneath to work.