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Google Cloud - your dev friendly alternative to AWS and Azure
March 12, 2024

Google Cloud - your dev friendly alternative to AWS and Azure

Eddie Galvez | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Google Compute Engine

Most development servers and build machines are migrating into Google Cloud Compute engine. This allows us to spin up/down resources on demand based on workload, product needs, etc. QA does the same for testing resources.
  • Fast
  • Great CLI
  • Great APIs
  • gcloud CLI is very broad
  • Billing detail could get more finer grained
  • We are promised lower total cost and some discounts are in place
  • In practice, at first migration, the cost is just as high as any prior cloud
  • However, with clever use of APIs we should get a positive ROI
  • Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
Similar in capabilities, slightly slicker APIs and CLIs. More observability in the default UI and the CLIs. Easier to setup, the google console is slick. Azure has a good user interface as well with lots of documentation to help. CLI is slightly less intuitive, but decent. AWS I find is the most lacking, most convoluted and complex.

Do you think Google Compute Engine delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Google Compute Engine's feature set?

Yes

Did Google Compute Engine live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Google Compute Engine go as expected?

No

Would you buy Google Compute Engine again?

Yes

It's Google! Always strong for devs and engineers. Cost, seemingly cheaper than Azure and AWS, yes. In practice, who knows. Their APIs and CLI are strong enough to ensure this is definitely an 8 in recommendation.

Google Compute Engine Feature Ratings

Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
5.5
Dynamic scaling
9
Elastic load balancing
7
Pre-configured templates
3
Pre-defined machine images
2
Operating system support
6
Security controls
6

Using Google Compute Engine

The user interface is fast loading, quick to navigate and delivers the basic information rapidly and in a clean UI, as is common with Google interfaces. The CLI is chock full of options - good and bad, as some commands are very long, but cleaner to type than AWS equivalents.
ProsCons
Like to use
Easy to use
Well integrated
Consistent
Convenient
Requires technical support
Slow to learn
  • CLI
  • API
  • Instance management
  • Networking setup
  • Orchestration
  • Scheduled instance allocations