In today’s time, startups and product teams are making the move into cloud computing when building products and SaaS. Whether it’s using an individual cloud service or migrating the entire project into cloud ecosystem, one needs to analyze each platform and comprehend it’s capabilities and limitations to make an informed choice.

What factors should one consider when choosing a cloud provider? Let’s compare two of these popular cloud providers – Google Cloud & AWS.

Which features to consider:

Both Google Cloud and AWS platforms use different naming conventions for comparative products or features. To simplify the task we will group the features for the comparison.

To keep the comparison relevant, we’ll consider a typical cloud deployment scenario wherein we will focus on – compute, networking, security, and storage. Here at V2STech, we have the first-hand experience of utilizing these services in delivering market-leading software development solutions through our Offshore Development Center.

Technical features:

Computing power:

When comparing compute capabilities, we’ll need to consider virtual machines (VMs). These computer system emulations provide the functionality of a computer and can run any workload. These will form the foundation a cloud environment. It’s critical to choose a virtual machine setup that suits the application and business needs.

Both cloud providers have adopted a similar approach to VMs, though they use different naming conventions for their individual product offerings.

Compute Engine is the service offering on the Google Cloud Platform, while Amazon Web Services is named Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). Each provider also uses different terminology and concepts.

Virtual Machine features:

When deploying virtual machine instances both services deliver many features that closely align, these include:

• The ability to use stored disk images to create instances
• On-demand capabilities to launch and terminate instances
• Restriction free management of your instances
• The ability to tag your instances
• A variety of available operating systems that can be installed on your instance

When it comes to accessing the virtual machine, the approach taken by Compute Engine and Amazon EC2 are different.

In Amazon EC2 one will need to include own SSH key for terminal access to an instance. While Compute Engine offers a more flexible approach; allowing you to create an SSH key as and when you need it, even if that instance already running. There’s no need to store the keys on local machine, as Compute Engine provides a browser-based SSH terminal.

Server locations:

Both companies have sprawling networks of interconnected data centers across the globe. Both have state-of-the-art cloud network designed with high fault tolerance, redundancy scenarios and low latency levels. The networking services are capable of delivering high-speed connectivity to virtual machines, other cloud services, and on-premises servers.

Here’s a comparison of the networking products and services:

Google boasts cloud network locations across 34 regions, 73 zones, 144 network edge locations, and 200+ countries and territories. While AWS cloud network locations available in 24 regions, 77 zones, 210 network edge locations, and 245 countries and territories.

Storage:

Understanding the different storage options being offered is important, as they will directly impact the application performance.

AWS’s storage services include it’s Simple Storage Service (S3) for object storage, Elastic Block Storage (EBS) for persistent block storage (for use with EC2), and Elastic File System (EFS) for file storage. Some of its more innovative storage products include the Storage Gateway, which enables a hybrid storage environment, and Snowball, which is a physical hardware device that organizations can use to transfer petabytes of data in situations where internet transfer isn’t practical.

GCP has a growing menu of storage services available. Cloud Storage is its unified object storage service, and it also has a Persistent Disk option. It offers a Transfer Appliance similar to AWS Snowball, as well as online transfer services.

Conclusion:

Both platforms offer extensive range of cloud products and services offering significant benefits over an on-premises deployment. Considering scalability, performance, security, and cost is crucial at early stages of product development, selecting either one will add value to your startup or application. One can always use this comparison as a guide and zero in depending on your business needs. Our software specialists and architects have extensive hands-on of using Google Cloud Platform and AWS for product development.

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