Our world is leading towards technology and innovation. Businesses, organizations possess a large amount of sensitive data and hence google introduces a cloud computing service which is Google Compute Engine (GCE). Google Compute Engine (GCE), is the infrastructure service of Google Cloud Platform. Amazon EC2 was announced in 2006 while Microsoft added VMs to Azure in 2012. Google announced the general availability of GCE just in late 2013.
Rather than being the laggard in the IaaS segment, GCE had some more advantages. Administrators can choose a region and zone where specific data resources can be stored and used. Right now, there are 3 regions of GCE: the United States, Europe and Asia. Each region possess two availability zones and each zone supports one of these two- Ivy Bridge or Sandy Bridge processors. GCE offers a suite of tools for administrators to create advanced networks on the regional level. Here are five amazing features of Google Compute Engine (GCE). Let us see one by one.
Five secret features of Google Compute Engine (GCE)-
1. Shared Storage-
To find NAS or SAN appliances deployed in enterprise data centers is very common. They offer shared storage to applications and end users. There is a significant large barrier between on-premises and cloud in the form of shared storage. To imitate NAS -like configurations in the public cloud becomes very difficult for Enterprise customers. Configuring NFS or other shared file systems will negatively impact the performance of applications. There are some block storage devices like Amazon EBS or Azure Page Blobs that can be attached to one at a time.
This restricts the functionality of the disks by limiting to just one VM. Azure and AWS offer shared file system services but still they don’t reach to the performance of a SSD-backed storage device. You can attach one persistent disk to multiple running instances in Google Compute Engine. The main reproach is- the disk is available in read-only mode to the VMs. When data is in read only mode, it helps customers to copy multiple scenarios close to on-premises deployment.
2. Disk Resizing-
Redirecting to the virtual infrastructure possesses many benefits. These benefits include rapid scale out and scale in. It is difficult to emulate the same with block storage when IaaS providers offer elastic scaling of compute resources. SSD-backed persistence for block storage devices are independent of the VM. The data stored in block storage will be available even after a smooth or abrupt termination of virtual machines. Amazon’s EBS (Elastic Block Storage) can be attached to EC2 instances. And also EBS volumes can be periodically backed up.
At the time when an EBS volume runs out of space, customers should stop the running instance, detach the EBS volume, restore the latest snapshot to new EBS with a larger volume and to reattach that instance before starting it. This includes downtime of the instance. Microsoft Azure is the same with respect to resizing an attached disk. Google Compute Engine has the Persistent disks which are the counterparts of Elastic Block Storage of Amazon EC2. It provides long-term, durable storage to VMs.
Just now, online disk resizing is introduced by google without any downtime of virtual machines. It avoids the bulky workflow of taking the VMs offline, restoring the snapshot, and also reattaching them. Hence you should gracefully drain the connections before starting the resizing task when you are running I/O-intensive workloads. To resize the live disk, the customer can either use the portal or the command line interface. After completing the disk space expanding, they must follow the routine specific to the operating system to claim the available space. Online disk resizing is an amazing feature of Google Compute Engine that no other competitors provide.
3. Sustained Usage Discounts-
Economies of scale in the IaaS business directed by the infrastructure use. It is just like the aviation industry in which operational cost is decreased with the increase in passengers. The IaaS providers invest into infrastructure capacity upfront hence they have to ensure the most ideal resource use. Cloud providers offer infrastructure at a low cost than the on-demand price to motivate the customers to run their workloads for a longer term. Example of such pricing scheme is- Amazon EC2 Reserved Instances feature. When a customer commits to a 12-month term services, Microsoft offers a 5% discount on Azure.
Know more at- [https://solaceinfotech.com/blog/secret-features-of-google-compute-engine/]
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