Item: Google Cloud Datastore
Rating: 7
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We're using Google Cloud Datastore as part of an application deployed to Google AppEngine, which is all running entirely in the Google Cloud Platform. Since our application is using Google AppEngine, we wanted to use a datastore which was simple to set up and didn't require managing servers or deployments/configurations for. Because Google Cloud Datastore is part of the Google Cloud Platform, it really simplified billing and management.

Pros and Cons

Automatically handles shards and replication.
Schema-less & NoSQL.
Fully managed.

Part of the Google Cloud Platform walled garden.
Pay for read/writes to the datastore, in addition to storage.
Not many libraries exist.

Return on Investment

Simple billing part of Google Cloud Platform
No time spent configuring and maintaining Google Cloud Datastore.
Very good uptime for our applications.

Alternatives Considered

MySQL, MariaDB and Cassandra

If deploying an application in Google Cloud Platform, using Google Cloud Datastore is a no brainer because of the simplicity of setup. Other options would require more setup and configuration, and do not come with the same level of guaranteed uptime as Google Cloud Datastore. In our case, we've been using Google Cloud Datastore for 4 years without any issues and have never had to think about it.

Other Software Used

Google App Engine, CentOS, MySQL, MariaDB, JIRA Software, Atlassian Confluence, Redmine, GitHub, Bitbucket

Likelihood to Renew

For the amount of use we're getting from Google Cloud Datastore, switching to any other platform would have more cost with little gain. Not having to manage and maintain Google Cloud Datastore for over 4 years has allowed our teams to work on other things. The price is so low that almost any other option for our needs would be far more expensive in time and money.

Likelihood to Recommend

Using Google Cloud Datastore in conjunction with Google AppEngine was a very seamless integration and much easier than using other datastores since so much of the configuration is abstracted for you. Because of this, creating simple applications is very easy and getting Google Cloud Datastore to power the backend ties everything together. If we were using Google Compute Engine, I'd imagine the same seamless experience would be there as well.

Google Cloud Datastore

Overall Satisfaction with Google Cloud Datastore