Google Compute Engine vs. VMware ESXi

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Google Compute Engine
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Google 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
VMware ESXi
Score 7.2 out of 10
N/A
A bare-metal hypervisor that installs directly onto a physical server. With direct access to and control of underlying resources, VMware ESXi partitions hardware to consolidate applications and cut costs.N/A
Pricing
Google Compute EngineVMware ESXi
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
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Google Compute EngineVMware ESXi
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
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 EngineVMware ESXi
Considered Both Products
Google Compute Engine
Chose Google Compute Engine
Neither of them has managed a user-friendly approach to setting up the global distribution of computing systems. Modern day business must be able to cater to the entire world instead of being regional to be competitive. Only Google offers this capability, hence why we have no …
VMware ESXi

No answer on this topic

Features
Google Compute EngineVMware ESXi
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
Google Compute Engine
7.8
66 Ratings
5% below category average
VMware ESXi
-
Ratings
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime8.125 Ratings00 Ratings
Dynamic scaling7.861 Ratings00 Ratings
Elastic load balancing8.854 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-configured templates8.963 Ratings00 Ratings
Monitoring tools3.026 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images8.965 Ratings00 Ratings
Operating system support8.366 Ratings00 Ratings
Security controls8.764 Ratings00 Ratings
Automation7.92 Ratings00 Ratings
Server Virtualization
Comparison of Server Virtualization features of Product A and Product B
Google Compute Engine
-
Ratings
VMware ESXi
8.2
128 Ratings
2% above category average
Virtual machine automated provisioning00 Ratings8.0116 Ratings
Management console00 Ratings9.0128 Ratings
Live virtual machine backup00 Ratings8.0112 Ratings
Live virtual machine migration00 Ratings8.1116 Ratings
Hypervisor-level security00 Ratings8.0117 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Google Compute EngineVMware ESXi
Small Businesses
DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 9.4 out of 10
DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 9.4 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Google Compute EngineVMware ESXi
Likelihood to Recommend
8.6
(64 ratings)
9.0
(129 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.4
(3 ratings)
10.0
(6 ratings)
Usability
8.8
(9 ratings)
9.0
(6 ratings)
Availability
9.6
(27 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(27 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(10 ratings)
10.0
(55 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(3 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
-
(0 ratings)
5.1
(2 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Product Scalability
7.3
(1 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
Google Compute EngineVMware ESXi
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.
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VMware by Broadcom
If you're looking for the industry standard in server virtualization, I would recommend ESXi. After decades of expertise in the field, VMware continues to provide a strong product, production-ready, with an easy-to-learn interface that allows for quick management along with less costly upfront onboarding and training. Grab the free personal-use license and install in your homelab to start!
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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
Read full review
VMware by Broadcom
  • Resource management. The automatic load balancing works very well to ensure no host is taxed disproportionately compared to the others.
  • Templates and cloning. It is very easy to set up a template and spin up new servers based on a specific setup. This makes server management very streamlined.
  • VM management. The vSphere interface is very easy to use and navigate. Everything is responsive and it works when you need it to. The options are also robust while also being arranged in a straightforward manner.
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.
Read full review
VMware by Broadcom
  • VMware ESXi can improve on the UI that is installed on the bare metal machine. The menus can be hard to navigate when looking for simple configuration items.
  • VMware ESXi can improve on the stability of their overall hypervisor. There have been a few times we had to reinstall due to corruption of VMware ESXi.
  • I would like to see VMware ESXi do better at adding more standard free features in their consumer version of VMware ESXi. For example, having the ability to back up virtual machines is good practice and something that would be very nice if offered in their free version.
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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.
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VMware by Broadcom
It is critical to our business, what started out as a way to do certain functions, it has now become core to ensuring our product is available to our customers and reducing our costs to operate and reduce our recovery time and provisioning servers. Their support is great and the costs to renew is reasonable.
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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.
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VMware by Broadcom
The interface is fairly intuitive for most things, and the areas that are a little less obvious usually have fantastic documentation in the online knowledgebase. In 3-4 years of managing our ESXi hosts, I think that I have only opened 4-5 support cases for things that I could not figure out myself or find answers to on the website.
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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
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VMware by Broadcom
Without the need to patch the servers with bug fixes and enhancements we whave not experienced any downtime with VMware issues. Even the bug fixes and updates do not cause of downtime as we just migrate the servers to the opposite node and update the one and then move servers back. Very simple and painless.
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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.
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VMware by Broadcom
We do not notice any difference between a physical and virtual server running the same workload. In fact we can scale quicker with the virtual server than we can with the physical.
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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.
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VMware by Broadcom
I can't say enough good about VMware's support team. To an individual they take ownership of the case, provide thorough answers, and follow up regularly. On one occasion, a problem we experienced with NSX Endpoint was escalated to development for a permanent resolution after a workaround was found. In my experience, most companies would have tried to find a way to close a case like that instead of taking it all the way. Most importantly, when production is down and every second counts, they VMware teams understand that urgency and treat your issue as if it were the only one they had to deal with. You can't ask for better.
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Implementation Rating
Google
No answers on this topic
VMware by Broadcom
Jsut read and follow anything your storage provider may require to allow the integration of VMware with storage operations, outside of that VMware jsut works.
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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.
Read full review
VMware by Broadcom
As long as you're using Nutanix AOS on Nutanix hardware and are paying their software support fees, AOS is a valid competitor to VMware and can save money due to not needing a license and having their server management system built into the base host management system. If you aren't using Nutanix hardware, however, VMWare is in most cases the best way to go. I cannot comment on HyperV, but most IT people I know either use it because they have to (most) or they like it better (not many).
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Google
No answers on this topic
VMware by Broadcom
it has been fair and easy to understand. I know VMware is looking at wanting to change from CPU to core pricing so we will see what that looks like when it happens.
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Scalability
Google
It works really well with other Google Cloud services, making it easy to build scalable solutions across different teams and locations.
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VMware by Broadcom
We started out with a two-server cluster and adding a third or fourth is very straightforward and simple with no issues. You just need to be aware of the size of your Vcenter Server to handle the workload, but still the resources needed is very minimal
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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.
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VMware by Broadcom
  • VMWare ESXi licensing is affordable for our business - and the licensing model is simplistic. Not like that of Microsoft with having to keep track of server licenses and CAL licenses for users.
  • VMWare ESXi also has hardware-monitoring built-in, so that further saves us money from having to be spent with another vendor.
  • As much as I hate the saying "a single pane of glass" does fit for this product. You can manage your servers, monitor hardware status, create and export backup snapshots, manage virtual NICs, connect to various storage devices. We're very happy with this product.
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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.