TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

Save this comparison

Save this comparison

Add Product

Recommended Comparisons

    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Google Compute Engine

    Score8.8 out of 10
    N/AGoogle Compute Engine is an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) product from Google Cloud. It provides virtual machines with carbon-neutral infrastructure which run on the same data centers that Google itself uses.

    $0

    per month GB

    Consul

    Score9.6 out of 10
    N/AHashiCorp Consul is a tool for discovering and configuring services in the IT infrastructure. It provides service discovery, health checking, key/value stores and support for multiple data centers out of the box.

    $0

    always free

    Pricing
    Google Compute EngineConsul
    Editions & Modules
    Preemptible Price - Predefined Memory
    0.000892 / GB
    Hour
    Three-year commitment price - Predefined Memory
    $0.001907 / GB
    Hour
    One-year commitment price - Predefined Memory
    $0.002669 / GB
    Hour
    On-demand price - Predefined Memory
    $0.004237 / GB
    Hour
    Preemptible Price - Predefined vCPUs
    0.006655 / vCPU
    Hour
    Three-year commitment price - Predefined vCPUS
    $0.014225 / CPU
    Hour
    One-year commitment price - Predefined vCPUS
    $0.019915 / vCPU
    Hour
    On-demand price - Predefined vCPUS
    $0.031611 / vCPU
    Hour
    Open Source (self-managed)
    $0
    always free
    HCP Consul (Cloud)
    $0.027/hr
    Per Hour
    Enterprise
    Self-Managed Custom Deployments
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Google Compute EngineConsul
    Free Trial
    YesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
    Additional DetailsPrices vary according to region (i.e US central, east, & west time zones). Google Compute Engine also offers a discounted rate for a 1 & 3 year commitment.—
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Google Compute EngineConsul
    Considered Both Products
    Google
    No answer on this topic
    IBM
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    98%
    Would buy again
    45 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    44 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    96%
    Happy with the feature set
    44 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    91%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    31 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    93%
    Implementation went as expected
    41 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Features
    Google Compute EngineConsul
    Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
    Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Google Compute Engine and HashiCorp Consul
    Feature
    Google Compute Engine
    8.0
    65 Ratings
    3% below category average
    HashiCorp Consul
    -
    Ratings
    Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime8.125 Ratings00 Ratings
    Dynamic scaling7.860 Ratings00 Ratings
    Elastic load balancing9.353 Ratings00 Ratings
    Pre-configured templates9.562 Ratings00 Ratings
    Monitoring tools3.026 Ratings00 Ratings
    Pre-defined machine images9.464 Ratings00 Ratings
    Operating system support8.365 Ratings00 Ratings
    Security controls9.163 Ratings00 Ratings
    Automation7.92 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Google Compute EngineConsul
    Small Businesses
    IBM Cloud Object Storage
    Score9 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers
    Score8.7 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Enterprises
    SAP on IBM Cloud
    Score9 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Google Compute EngineConsul
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.9
    (65 ratings)
    8.1
    (5 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    6.9
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    8.0
    (9 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Availability
    9.6
    (28 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    9.0
    (28 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    10.0
    (10 ratings)
    8.8
    (2 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    7.3
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Google Compute EngineConsul
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Google
    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
    Read full review
    IBM
    Consul can provide a light-weight, lightning-fast and robust solution for the following:
    • Network mesh
    • Service DNS
    • Global key-value store (values can be complex objects as well)
    • Utility for blue-green deployments
    • Service health checking
    Consul can be used in any or a combination of these scenarios. Regardless if you are a network administrator or a regular software engineer, Consul can add value to your work.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Google
    • 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
    Read full review
    IBM
    • Key-Value database management.
    • Service discovery.
    • Centralized configuration database with native high availability.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Google
    • 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
    Read full review
    IBM
    • The GUI: The GUI interface for Consul has gotten a lot better over the years. Since Consul is so easy to interact with via API, this isn't a showstopper, but for those that are less command line inclined it's always nice to be able to refer them to an easy to use and understand web interface
    • It's chatty: Consul is extremely chatty. Sometimes it's particularly chatty at 2am with no indication as to why and eats up quite a bit of resources. Just be sure to provision your systems that typically take a heavy load with a little extra for Consul
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Google
    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
    Read full review
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    Google
    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
    Read full review
    IBM
    Consul's API is extremely user friendly. While their web interface isn't quite as "mature", it's still pretty easily navigated for the average person. Together they make a pretty easy to pick up and use tool.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Google
    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
    Read full review
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    Google
    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
    Read full review
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Google
    • 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
    Read full review
    IBM
    I've never used paid support from HashiCorp, but I consider its support a good one, since they provide a lot of free resources for the community and there are good user groups supporting you on several sorts of issues. Also, HashiCorp is known as a company with a strong relationship with the community, that is easily noticed by the events HashiCorp promotes over the world.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Google
    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
    Read full review
    IBM
    Consul was easier to configure out of the box than Serf and gave us more initial options. Its easy to use tools and support were by far superior to Serf in many ways. Support alone was one of those areas that Serf could take an example from Consul to keep its customers happy.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Google
    It works really well with other Google Cloud services, making it easy to build scalable solutions across different teams and locations.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Google
    • 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
    Read full review
    IBM
    • It contains a native web UI, which in contrast to its counterparts, is handy, very intuitive and - most importantly - very informative. It leaves no room for doubt about your services "forest" health. So, for that purpose, the learning curve was almost down to non-existent. Our team managed to work seamlessly with Consul being our services API
    • Our management staff had a difficult time understanding what Consul was really all about. For technical staff it is pretty simple to understand the huge value such a tool can pose to our suite of solutions, but once our management staff took the grasp of its valuable handy set of tools, we didn't take long to start using it and keeping track of our Swarm overall health, with was a constant concern for the entire company before.
    • For load balancing purposes, we were relying pretty much on guesses before we decided to use Consul. One would check a certain node overall health and decide if we would need to spring a new instance at AWS or Digital Ocean.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Google Compute Engine Screenshots

    Screenshot of How to choose the right VM
With thousands of applications, each with different requirements, which VM is right for you?Screenshot of documentation, guides, and reference architectures
Migration Center is Google Cloud's unified migration platform with features like cloud spend estimation, asset discovery, and a variety of tooling for different migration scenarios.

    Consul Screenshots

    Product screenshotProduct screenshot