Goigle Compute Engine (and Amazon EC2) are dynamically scalable IaaS services with instance prices per hour of use, and aren't the same service as monthly/annual priced VPS services.
If all you need is the latter, the former is an inefficient way to get it.
Generally cloud services like AWS or Google Cloud aren't about the specs you can get in a machine though, but about being able to deploy, resize and manage machines at scale; if you only need a single box of course you're better off with a VPS.
I find both AWS and GC incredibly difficult to estimate what it will cost. Their cost calculators have so many fields they may as well be random number generators. Once you commit and find out the real cost it may be too late to switch.
I used to use AppEngine for a few projects. For AppEngine apps you do get automatic deployment to multiple availability zones, and this is not inexpensive to implement and support. I think they charge a fair price for AppEngine.
I have not much used Google's newer VPS offerings because I got a much better deal elsewhere (BizSpark).
That's actually pretty big apples and oranges, not including the difference between a relatively static VM and on-demand instances (GCE, EC2).
It's OpenVZ, not KVM so you're getting a container, not a VM. That might be better for some people, or make no difference, but it's a important distinction. You're stuck with the host's kernel. This can make distro choice/upgrade interesting. RAM overcommit on the host side is easier, etc.
You aren't buying 50GB of SSD storage. You're buying 50GB of RAID10 spinning disk with SSD cache.
No mention if 1Gbps uplink is the host's uplink or if you get 1Gbps uplink out of a link bundle on the server. Given the other things, I'd suspect host has 1 or 2 GigE connections that you're sharing. That could be a big deal if one VM can saturate a significant portion of the server's network capacity.
I'm sure it's fine for a normal blog, secondary DNS server, or something like that but once you go below ~$5/mo on low-end VM/container hosting there tend to be gotchas.
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I find Google Cloud ridiculously expensive.
I can get a VPS for $1.5 per month and it will have 50GB SSD, 1GB RAM, 2 CPU cores, 1 Gbps link.
Google Cloud's cheapest server, f1-micro, costs $7.3/month, comes with 0.6GB RAM, a shared CPU, and zero storage.
Goigle Compute Engine (and Amazon EC2) are dynamically scalable IaaS services with instance prices per hour of use, and aren't the same service as monthly/annual priced VPS services.
If all you need is the latter, the former is an inefficient way to get it.
Maybe Google just has to be more honest than yet another VPS provider. How can the CPU you get for 1.5 per month not be shared for example?
Generally cloud services like AWS or Google Cloud aren't about the specs you can get in a machine though, but about being able to deploy, resize and manage machines at scale; if you only need a single box of course you're better off with a VPS.
I find both AWS and GC incredibly difficult to estimate what it will cost. Their cost calculators have so many fields they may as well be random number generators. Once you commit and find out the real cost it may be too late to switch.
I used to use AppEngine for a few projects. For AppEngine apps you do get automatic deployment to multiple availability zones, and this is not inexpensive to implement and support. I think they charge a fair price for AppEngine.
I have not much used Google's newer VPS offerings because I got a much better deal elsewhere (BizSpark).
Do the others provide an SLA and have a concrete ToS? I wouldn't have a problem trusting Google with my prod servers.
Please share.
which VPS provider?
http://lowendbox.com/blog/boltvm-18year-1gb-and-36year-2gb-o...
That's just an example. There are even cheaper ones out there.
That's actually pretty big apples and oranges, not including the difference between a relatively static VM and on-demand instances (GCE, EC2).
It's OpenVZ, not KVM so you're getting a container, not a VM. That might be better for some people, or make no difference, but it's a important distinction. You're stuck with the host's kernel. This can make distro choice/upgrade interesting. RAM overcommit on the host side is easier, etc.
You aren't buying 50GB of SSD storage. You're buying 50GB of RAID10 spinning disk with SSD cache.
No mention if 1Gbps uplink is the host's uplink or if you get 1Gbps uplink out of a link bundle on the server. Given the other things, I'd suspect host has 1 or 2 GigE connections that you're sharing. That could be a big deal if one VM can saturate a significant portion of the server's network capacity.
I'm sure it's fine for a normal blog, secondary DNS server, or something like that but once you go below ~$5/mo on low-end VM/container hosting there tend to be gotchas.