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Introduction
Technology is getting more advanced by the hour and what was difficult to achieve in the past days is now a piece of cake. Same is the case with the online networking of the businesses.
In the past, networking was not easy to manage due to complicated on-ground servers and complex network methods. There were a lot of disruptions and lags due to inefficiencies.
However, these complications are now eased to a great extent due to the introduction of cloud computing in the technological world. In cloud computing, the server is virtual and is hosted through by the providers.
In short, you enjoy the benefits of on-ground networking and computing without having to worry about management. This has transformed the face of business completely.
Now the competition between cloud-computing providers is more intense than ever. They are putting huge efforts in order to make their systems more well-founded, organized and economical. In this way, they get most of the market share to themselves.
This intense competition is proving good for the consumers due to low costs and high efficiency of the systems. The three main cloud-based computing providers of the day are AWS, Google Cloud and Azure.
Today, we are going to put forth Google Cloud vs AWS comparison in front of you. By the end of this article, you’ll be able to decide for yourself which one is the best for you.
When we compare Google Cloud vs AWS, it does not mean that one of them is going to win. Both are top market competitors, and both come with their own set of perks and demerits. What matters is which one suits you the one. After all, life is never a straight road. You’ll face problems no matter which provider you choose.
Cloud Computing Trends
Prior to starting the AWS vs GCP platforms comparison, we think it’s best you understand what we’re into. To give you a demonstration of how cloud computing services are getting better with time, let’s go through some real-time stats.
According to a survey conducted by RightScale annually, the features provided by the cloud computing providers are getting better with a steep curve. The survey consisting of around a thousand IT veterans showed betterment in every field.
- From 2016 to 17, the individuals complaining about the lack of expertise in cloud computing services decreased by 7%.
- People concerned with security when dealing with providers decreased by 4%.
- The individuals grading performance as the deteriorating factor lessened by 4% as well.
These trends give an exact depiction of how the industry is booming. Many online webmasters including BionicWP no longer have to indulge themselves in the complex technical niche rather they enjoy the cloud services without any expertise.
The public adaptation of the trend has also increased a great deal from 2016 to 2017.
Here is a chart showing the amount of increase in growth each of these cloud computing providers have enjoyed:
Features of Google Cloud Platform and Amazon Web Services
- Google Cloud Platform or GCP
Google cloud platforms offer a lot of interesting perks which attracts a general web provider. A major setback other providers face when competing with the GCP is that you can utilize other mainstream softwares provided by Google such as YouTube Gmail.
Google Cloud Platform offers a deluge of products. Their line of 50+ products is amazing and some of them are:
- Google Storage
- Google Compute Engine
- Google BigQuery
- Google Storage
- Google Cloud Functions
- Google Cloud Datastore
- Google Cloud CDN
- Google Cloud DNS
In this article, we are mainly going to discuss the Google Compute Engine and its other linked services that allow users to release virtual machines. Google Cloud was released for the use of the general public in 2013 and many big brands are using its services including Apple, HTC, Domino’s Pizza, Paypal Coca Cola, Sony Music and others.
The CEO of Google Mr Sundar repeats that google cloud is among the firm’s top three priorities. The annual run rate of Google cloud has increased about 4$ billion from 2018-19.
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- Amazon Web Services or AWS
Launched by Amazon.com in 2006, AWS was created with the aim of providing cloud computing services to business owners and officers. They also offer a great number of services with amazing benefits. Amazon Web Services came into the business with many competitors and it has dealt with them in the most efficient way.
They have a whopping 200 plus products of which some are:
- Â Â Â Â Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud
- Â Â Â Â AWS Elastic Beanstalk
- Â Â Â Â Amazon EC2 Container Service
- Â Â Â Â Amazon DynamoDB
- Â Â Â Â Amazon Redshift
- Â Â Â Â Amazon S3
- Â Â Â Â Amazon Route 53
In this article, we are looking mainly into Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud or Amazon EC2 and other services that are linked with it. It is almost the same as the GCP. Many big players in the technological and industrial world trust AWS for their cloud computing including NASA, Netflix, Time Inc, Lamborghini, Airbnb etc.
- Features
When we discuss AWS vs Google Cloud, we are primarily comparing the features both of them provide. We also discuss the extent to which both of the services go to make the user experience un-parallel.
In this article, we will try to compare some of the features provided by both of the services and breakdown our research into statistical evaluations. These include:
- Compute
- Storage/Disk
- Network
- Billing and Pricing
- Support and Uptime
- Security
- Compute
We would like to start the comparison of Google Cloud vs AWS with the computing efficiency and power of both. This essentially shows how well they manage the virtual machines which are provided.
The technology which is used in the GCP’s KM is known as KVM whereas AWS EC2 uses Xen. When we look into it, each of them can give a range of predefined configurations with specific virtual CPU, RAM and networking abilities.
It does not matter if Google Cloud calls it machine types or AWS calls it Instances type, they’re both actually the same things. The specifications are as below:
- With Google Compute Engine instances, you can get up to 3844 GB of RAM and up to 160 vCPUs. Â
- With AWS EC2 service, you can get as much as 128 vCPUs and up to 3904 GB RAM.
It is interesting to note that with GCP, you can change the default configuration and select your own instance’s CPU and RAM. They are called Custom machines.
- Storage/Disk
The kind of storage that is provided by the service is of prime importance. They do have a first-hand impact on the service’s overall performance and output, for example, expected throughout (IO) max IOPs per instance and the capability to burst capacity for small spans.
Let’s discuss the main types of storages i.e. block storage and object storage.
- Block Storage
You can get an idea about what block storage is by knowing that it is a virtual disk volume which is applied with the cloud-based virtual machines.
Where Google Compute Engine offers persistent disks machines, AWS EC2 rather offers an Elastic Block Storage or EBS. You can also refer to the comparison given below for a better understanding.
- Object Storage
Object storages are basically essentially hosted services used for keeping and using large amounts of binary objects, blobs or blocks. Google compute engine offers this with the help of Google Cloud Storage whereas AWS uses Amazon S3 for this service.
Now, other than standard network block and block storage, both EC2 and Compute Engine allow users to use the storage of the physical disks attached to the computers that are making the instances work.
This is a great addition as local storage can offer better performance in terms of IOPs and latency. You can also get several gigabytes of reading and writing speeds which is very large.
GCP calls these devices as local SSDs while EC2 calls them instance store volumes. Google allows local SSDs for any type of instance whereas, with EC2, you can only avail this with specific models called C3, F1, HI1, M2 etc.
- Network
GCP vs AWS both use different platforms and connection providers for the internetworking of their servers across the world and deliver the data using ISPs to the user end. They use a great range of products to transform this structure in physical grounds.
- The network capacity that is achievable by the Compute Engine instances varies as it mainly depends upon the quality of CPUs you use in your VMs. Each core gives about 2 Gigs/sec cap for the peak performance. You can increase the network capability with addition of cores. The maximum achievable speed is 16 Gigs/s.
- Amazon takes the lead here with a maximum speed of 25 Gigs/s. This is for the most ideal of the cases and is not applicable in general. In normal circumstances, they give a maximum bandwidth of 10 Gigs/s.
Latency is another important consideration which we cannot miss while discussing the Network capabilities of these cloud computing providers. Latency has geographical importance. Consider you are running an e-commerce shop in Frankfurt and you want to target the market of Germany which constitutes 90% of your customers. In this case, you can get the maximum outcome if you base your site in Germany.
This can create a difference of almost 2 seconds when compared to other regions which is a big number on networking grounds. However, DNS, TTFB and other factors also have a contribution in this.
Latency and site load time are inevitable but both AWS vs GCP use a large amount of locations worldwide so you will most probably not face a major setback due to this.
Certain tools online are also available which you can utilize in order to calculate the efficiency of the providers you want to opt for. You can consider CloudHarmony. They are honest-most and get you the closest possible results.
They use a total of about 50 servers around the globe in order to continually measure the performance of all the cloud services you might come across.
Google Cloud latency is undoubtedly winning as shown in the charts. However, these tests relate specifically to a single location and results will be different at your respective locations. The best way is to do the testing yourself. You can use some small test tools for starters as well such as:
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- Google Cloud Platform Network
Google is putting huge amounts in their network management systems. They also have made some new data centres. They are trying their best to get the ideal most business model and overall layout. Almost half of their present sites were opened in 2017.
This means low latency and faster load times for the users. To establish new compute instances, Google is currently working in about twenty-four locations.
Google recently announced taking part in investing in the FASTER cable system which enables maximum bandwidth usage of 10 Tbps from the total 60 Tbps which the cable actually provides from the US to Japan.
Apart from this, the line established for this connection is the longest ever built with one endpoint in Oregon and two in Japan. They also have exclusive access to 100 Gbps x 100 wavelength cables.
Google is also the first cloud computing provider that provides a tiered cloud network. The premium tier also offers traffic delivery over Google’s ultra-fast and efficient network system.
They achieve maximum redundancy by using a network of pathways as shown below:
The standard tier delivers the capacity compared to the other providers available in the market.
You can compare the latency difference between standard and premium tiers with the help of this graph:
Google has also brought into attention its dedicated interconnect option for those interested in even faster networking.
With dedicated interconnect, you get a range of organizational level network capacities. These include interconnects and peering which are very inviting.
- AWS Network
Coming to the second competitor in the AWS vs Google Cloud, we will now take a detailed analysis of the global AWS network. They also have many operating locations worldwide with many data centres and availability zones. This is great ease in terms of redundancy, fault tolerance and low latency.
There is an AWS direct connect as well as compared to GCP’s dedicated interconnect. With the help of it, you can establish a direct connection between your network and AWS Direct Connect locations.
You also get Amazon Virtual Private Cloud and other ways to accelerate content delivery using the Amazon CloudFront.
- Billing and Pricing
When you compare AWS and GCP, the billing methodology differs greatly. Being straightforward, they don’t provide you with an easy way to understand their billings. But worry not as BionicWP has got your back here as well. You can also use these calculators for starters:
You can estimate that monthly balance calculation by using these calculators is not a piece of cake. You can get complete tools such as Cloudability and reOptimize to get a hold of your billing methods better.
In addition to that, you can use the AWS dashboard to get an insight on your billings and GCP’s BigQuery Tool. Both of the platforms are doing this for cost decreasing and making the billing easier.
- Per Second Billing
AWS released the per-second billing system in September 2017. This allows for greater flexibility for clients who want to establish new instances and do a large amount of work in a small time.
GCP also announced their per second billing. This indicates the amount of competition which exists in Google Cloud vs AWS.
- Committed Use Discounts vs Reserved Instances
Both Google Cloud and AWS offer different saving options for the customers that make huge investments. The AWS EC2 offers reserved instances which provide up to 75% discounts as compared to on-demand pricing. They offer standard, convertible and scheduled instances for this campaign.
Google Cloud also offers a committed use discount. Here is a comparison of both:
- Sustained Discounts
Sustained discounts are provided by the GCP which is one of their huge economical concessions. These discounts are provided by the GCP as long as you are using the instances as compared to AWS where you need to commit to it for longer times.
- Free Trials
If you are a fresh starter and want to compare the services of both AWS vs GCP, you can go for the free trials which are offered by both the services.
- Support and Uptime
You can utilize plenty of support from GCP and AWS from their tons of documentation and community forums. However, if you need immediate assistance or support, you will need to pay them.
AWS vs Google Cloud Platform both have support plans which you can utilize after paying heed into their charges as they can be pretty expensive if timely.
- GCP Premium Support
- Three levels: Gold, Silver and Platinum
- Silver starts from 150$/month
- Gold starts at $400/month
- Platinum starts at $1250/month
- AWS Support
- With AWS you get Basic, Developer, Business and Enterprise level support.
- Developer starts at $29/month
- Business starts at $100/month
- Developer starts at $15000/month
- Uptime
Both Google Compute Engine and EC2 use SLAs which provide a monthly uptime percentage of up to 99.95%. No provider is 100% efficient which we at BionicWP also witness. If you are using an SLA, you’d better be subscribed to their channels to get timely updates from them.
However, both GCP and AWS can delay updates on their dashboards. With AWS you can get multiple machines in different availability zones per region.
- Security
According to a survey by Clutch from Google, out of 283 IT professionals, 70% said that they are more comfortable in storing their data on google cloud than their previous services in use.
45% of the users said that security is the top benefit of the GCP:
- Google Cloud Security
When considering security in the AWS vs Google Cloud comparison, we need to take this factor into account that GCP has a head start and is improving the security section long before AWS even started.
While using GCP, you have the edge of benefitting from a security model which is improving for 15 years. At present, they are operating securely on huge platforms like Gmail and YouTube.
- Some of their important Security Features include:
- All the data you use is decrypted in transit between Google, customers and data centres. The data is stored in persistent disks which are encrypted using 256-bit AES and each key is encrypted with a master key which is regularly changed.
- There are several enterprise securities certificates which have regular audits.
- Google has relations with some of the largest ISPs in the world and that’s why they have the security of data in transit.
- The google application and storage stack layers require authentic requests coming from outside agents.
- Cloud IAM was also released which give granular access to the cloud sources and prevent unwanted access from other sources.
- AWS Security
There is a security model for AWS as well which has been getting better for almost 10 years. Some major features include:
- All data is encrypted in transit between AWS, customers, data centres and AWS cloud the same as in GCP. There is data encryption with 256-bit AES key as well with a set of regularly changing master keys.
- There are network firewalls built into Amazon VPC and web application firewalls.
- There are flexible key management options as well that allow you to choose between encrypt key management between yourself and AWS.
- AWS also has audit friendly service features for PCI, ISO, SOC etc.
·     There is dedicated hardware-based cryptographic key storage as well which allows you to satisfy compliance requirements.
AWS vs Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Summary and Conclusion
Which one is best when it comes down to Google Cloud vs AWS cloud computing providers? Well, if we put it in a nutshell, it depends upon you. By now, you must be aware of the extent of services provided by both of the providers and which one should suit you the most.
At BionicWP, we use Google Cloud Platform. However, we reviewed both of the systems unbiased and gave you real-time results. Both of the platforms have their own advantages and disadvantages.
AWS has a long-standing history for providing to enterprises and businesses. They were the first one in the cloud industry. There are many other products and services if you are interested, for you to search out there.
We hope this article served you the best and now you are better able to decide the best for yourself then you were before you came here!
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