Since its launch five years ago, the Google Compute Engine has become one of the world’s most popular on-demand cloud computing infrastructures. The infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) platform is powered by the same hardware and data centres that are behind Google, the world’s largest search engine, as well as its other services, including YouTube, Docs and Gmail.
GCE allows users to effectively rent a portion of the tech giant’s immense computing power. Since almost all computing work is outsourced to a remote machine in such cases, all the user needs to take advantage of is the additional performance of any device capable of connecting to the internet. Google also provides several virtual machine types, including ones with high memory and multiple CPUs.
For businesses seeking an affordable way to take advantage of the latest technology in the constantly evolving world of IT, it’s not always easy to find the right solutions. IaaS solutions like GCE can quickly become prohibitively expensive, especially with large computing workloads. After all, on-demand cloud computing systems require that you pay by the hour, and rates vary between different providers and the specifications of the virtual machines themselves.
Independent computer consulting and benchmarking company Cloud Spectator recently rated GCE as #1 in price-performance ratio when compared with other major IaaS providers, including Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS and IBM SoftLayer. With their distinct pricing models, these services are often difficult to compare, and there’s also a lack of transparency when it comes to the cloud providers themselves.
Another important consideration when assessing the cloud computing price to performance ratio is how much you need in terms of resources. In fact, according to RightScale, an average of 30-45% of money spent on cloud computing is wasted on resources that aren’t required.
How Performance Varies between Providers
It’s easy to get misled when it comes to determining real-world performance levels with cloud-based resources. A lot of users end up being seduced by impressive-sounding specifications without considering the bandwidth bottlenecks and other inherent limitations of IaaS. In fact, the Cloud Spectator study found that virtual machine performance varied by as much as 1.4 times between different providers, even when the VM specifications themselves were almost identical. Block storage performance varied even more substantially, with discrepancies reaching a factor of up to 6.1 times.
One of the biggest problems with many public cloud vendors is that they allocate their resources to provide an optimal level of service to all their customers. While this might sound great, it also means that your virtual machine instances and storage transfers may be throttled back during peak times when other users are accessing their own services. All cloud service providers need to manage their available hardware, but things like fair use policies and bandwidth management can end up meaning that you’re not getting what you’re paying for. GCE scored significantly higher than the competitors according to the Cloud Spectator study.
For businesses wanting to take advantage of the public cloud, GCE promises industry-leading performance and value in many applications. In addition to the findings revealed by the Cloud Spectator, Google also has the fastest virtual machine boot times on the market, a transparent maintenance regime, and a consistently high level of storage performance.
Damson Cloud understands the increasing complexities involved with migrating to a cloud computing infrastructure that works flawlessly with your business. That’s where we can help by building a cloud roadmap to success that’s tailor-made to suit the individual needs of your organisation. Call us today, and we’d be delighted to answer your questions.
