Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) vs. Azure NetApp Files vs. Google Compute Engine

While the idea is to utilize it enterprise wide; it sometimes doesn't work well in smaller applications and that causes slowdowns and impacts productivity. Also when evaluating EFS versus EBS - one needs to look at cost as EFS is a lot more expensive to implement and run so you need to weigh cost benefits of both systems and choose the best for you.

Incentivized

In my opinion, I would say it is more suitable to huge workloads, where you really needs the reliability and performance that a Netapp storage provides to you, larger share sizes, etc. Use cases where you really needs to store large amounts of non-structured data. It is not a cheap solution, I mean, you can find other options to store your data on the Cloud at smaller prices. So, for small companies, or companies that depends mostly on web-applications, or don't have such a specific requirements, I would not go with Azure Netapp Files.

Incentivized

You can use Google Cloud Compute Engine as an option to configure your Gitlab, GitHub, and Azure DevOps self-hosted runners. This allows full control and management of your runners rather than using the default runners, which you cannot manage. Additionally, they can be used as a workspace, which you can provide to the employees, where they can test their workloads or use them as a local host and then deploy to the actual production-grade instance.

Incentivized

• This is very easy to setup and has a great performance.
• As per the name, Elastic grows as your data grows.
• We can run multiple EC2 instances.

Incentivized

• We have found that it scales very well. In some cases we had a large existing storage infrastructure and were able to migrate it while other times we started from scratch with low storage demands and Azure NetApp Files fit the bill each time.
• We have been impressed with the replication capabailities.
• The read and write speed when interacting with files is a major asset.

Incentivized

• Scaling - whether it's traffic spikes or just steady growth, Google Compute Engine's auto-scaling makes sure we've got the compute power we need without any manual juggling acts
• Load balancing - Keeping things smooth with that load balancing across multiple VMs, so our users don't have to deal with slow load times or downtime even when things get crazy busy
• Customizability - Mix and match configs for CPU, RAM, storage and whatnot to suit our specific app needs

Incentivized

• For early age start it would be costly
• Not necessary for small scale system, but very beneficial for system which have high TPS and huge user base

Incentivized

• It does not support file locking although its available as an add-on
• Design is far from native and has a learning curve
• We would like to have backup functionality built in so that we don't run into the issue where the replication process makes a copy of the corrupted data.

Incentivized

• Built-in monitoring via Stackdriver is quite expensive for what it provides.
• Initially provided quotas (ie. max compute units one can use) are very low and it took several requests to get an appropriate amount.
• Support on GCE is limited to their knowledge base and forums. For more hands-on support provided by Google, you must pay for their Premium services.

Incentivized

Its pretty good, easy and good performance. Also, interface is very good for starters compared to competitors. Infra as Code (IaC) using Terraform even added easiness for creation, management and deletion of compute Virtual Machines (VM). Overall, very good and very easy cloud based compute platform which simplified infrastructure, very much recommend.

Incentivized

Having interacted with several cloud services, GCE stands out to me as more usable than most. The naming and locating of features is a little more intuitive than most I've interacted with, and hinting is also quite helpful. Getting staff up to speed has proven to be overall less painful than others.

Incentivized

Google Compute Engine works well for cloud project with lesser geographical audience. It sometimes gives error while everything is set up perfectly. We also keep on check any updates available because that's one reason of site getting down. Google Compute Engine is ultimately a top solution to build an app and publish it online within a few minutes

Incentivized

It works great all the time except for occasional issues, but overall, I am very happy with the performance. It delivers on the promise it makes and as per the SLAs provided. Networking is great with a premium network, and AZs are also widespread across geographies. Overall, it is a great infra item to have, which you can scale as you want.

Incentivized

The documentation is sufficient for setting up and it is basic NFS for mounting so not much support is required. I have not had any issues to warrant a request with AWS support.

Incentivized

• The documentation needs to be better for intermediate users - There are first steps that one can easily follow, but after that, the documentation is often spotty or not in a form where one can follow the steps and accomplish the task. Also, the documentation and the product often go out of sync, where the commands from the documentation do not work with the current version of the product.
• Google support was great and their presence on site was very helpful in dealing with various issues.

Incentivized

EFS is easier to configure, no need for Active Directory.

Incentivized

Azure NetApp Files is very well integrated with Microsoft Azure, we use the same request methods that everyone knows from Azure. NetApp and Microsoft has built a very efficient solution that allows you to transfer virtually any service to the Microsoft public cloud. Azure NetApp Files also protects our data very well.

Incentivized

Google Compute Engine provides a one stop solution for all the complex features and the UI is better than Amazon's EC2 and Azure Machine Learning for ease of usability. It's always good to have an eco-system of products from Google as it's one of the most used search engine and IoT services provider, which helps with ease of integration and updates in the future.

Incentivized

It works really well with other Google Cloud services, making it easy to build scalable solutions across different teams and locations.

Incentivized

• Cost is always a paramount issue when looking at ROI
• It is fast and if that's what you need for your implementation - you probably will not find a better solution
• Expertise in EFS is sometimes hard to come by so it's best to look at your employee's ability to grasp this technology. Otherwise, it's a pretty steep learning curve.

Incentivized

• The main hurdle in promoting this solution is the price. Its price definitely requires an improvement. It is more expensive than other options, so customers go for a cheaper option.
• Its security and ease of use are most valuable.
• It is stable and scalable.

Incentivized

• With Google Compute we don't have the overhead of managing our own data centers reducing costs and reducing the staff needed to manage systems.
• As I said earlier, Google's costs are ~1/2 of AWS, so we are able to see a ROI much faster.

Incentivized