Review: Google Compute Engine 60
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Peter Wayner takes an in-depth look at Google Compute Engine, the search giant's response to Amazon Web Services and Rackspace. 'If you want to build your own collection of Linux boxes, Google Compute Engine offers a nice, generic way to buy servers at what — depending on the size of compute instance you need — can be a great price. The most attractive feature will probably be the proximity to the other parts of the Google infrastructure,' Wayner writes, adding that Google Compute Engine is just one part of the Google APIs portal, a grand collection of 46 services. 'I suspect many developers will be most interested in using Google Compute Engine when they want to poll these Google databases fairly often. While I don't think you're guaranteed to be in the same zone as the service you want, you're still closer than when traveling across the generic Web.'"
How easy is it to leave? (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, for when they shut it down?
TFA doesn't give comparison (Score:4, Insightful)
What we truly need is a comparison chart of some kind, to show us what Google's offering is different from the others
Re:I dunno... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not comparable to old laptops sitting in your attic.
Re:I dunno... (Score:4, Insightful)
But if you had nothing sitting around gathering dust, how much would it cost you to buy an equivalent amount of hardware? Keeping in mind depreciation, power , network access and infrastructure, and physical space. You also pay per hour, so if you don't need it one week, shut it all down and pay nothing. If you need something done very quick, pay for 100 cores for 1 hour instead of 1 core for 100 hours.
At the personal level (not speaking of businesses here): AMD x8 FX-8150 3.6/4.2 GHz, 32GB RAM, 1TB HDD - DYI from all-new parts, no monitor - approx $750. Let's make it a full $1750 to allow for power delivered by "gilded electrons", "diamond optical fiber" supported internet access and a bouquet of flowers once a month for the "better half" to make it for the physical storage space. $1750 vs $175/month...10 month worth of VPS in Google's "compute" cloud (with 1 core with 4GB RAM).
What about bandwidth? What about support? What about being able to be up and running on a new box in a few minutes when the old one takes a dump? You are totally missing the point of cloud services like this. It's not supposed to compete with your desktop machine.
May work? (Score:5, Insightful)
This one may work.
I was checking out the storage pricing, for example. Its 0.12/GB instead of 0.125 of amazon. If google does not do the "API fiasco", it will work. But as we all know, google and API is like chalk and cheese. Amazon is the king when it comes to accessibility.
But I am glad, because this means more competition. So finally I can start using cloud storage, in conjunction with cloud server for hosting my blog etc., Heck, I can set up a machine in US, and get US specific content using VPN. No more looking for ssh services
no way (Score:4, Insightful)
Google will fail utterly and completely at this.
Why?
Customer service. They have a horrible, HORRIBLE customer service record. They just simply are unable to do customer service.... and this product needs it.
Re:I dunno... (Score:3, Insightful)
If your business needs move slow enough that pulling a physical box out of a cabinet somewhere, hooking it up, including peripherals, because you know you're going to need to at least configure it by hand far enough to get at least an automated installer kicked off, setting up remote access, is worth your time, six times, whenever you want to rebuild your utterly non-uniform cluster, then these services are not for you.
For my time, I'd rather pay the TEN CENTS it costs to have Amazon do it for me.