Google Cloud Functions vs. Google Kubernetes Engine

Google Cloud Platform Cloud functions are an excellent way to start a serverless journey in GCP, however, using Cloud Run may be the better solution. For users not acquainted with Docker & Linux, I would definitely recommend Google Cloud Functions, however, for more experienced users, Cloud Run may be better suited.

Incentivized

Google Kubernetes Engine is well suited for dynamic and large workloads since it can scale up with usage. It is easily configurable, which allows for flexibility. User interface is simple to navigate, which reduces roadblocks for a team with people unfamiliar with Kubernetes. Great if you are already using other GCP services as it integrates well with that.

Incentivized

• Deployment of a new GKE cluster is really fast in comparison to other cloud providers.
• GCP is ahead other vendors and always provide the most up to date Kubernetes version.
• GKE automation for master upgrade and the worker nodes pool works really well.

Incentivized

• Needing a zip file is problematic (when wanting to automate deployment for example).
• Requires another solution to execute automatically (ex. cloud scheduler).

Incentivized

• Not as intuitive as it could be
• Documentation could be better, especially for people using other Google Cloud tools
• Not the preferred Kubernetes Engine for many apps

Incentivized

Overall Google Cloud Functions is losing a lot of benefits to other GCP services, making it less attractive to users. A simple example would be the need to zip application files and push them to Google Storage which makes it a bit complicated to automate via a CI/CD pipeline. Another "similar" solution would be using Cloud Run although the need for a docker image is there, with the recent evolutions to Cloud Run (ability to downscale to 0) it makes a lot more interesting.

Incentivized

It's a great product if you learn it. It has flexibility and is very strong. Autoscaling and Resource management make running huge applications a breeze. Using Helm with Kubernetes and Terraform for infrastructure creation can totally automate your CICD pipeline. You also get easy access to CUDA cores for machine learning.

Incentivized

Documentation is provided and clear for this service. Although GCP support is included in the current contract we didn't get to use it since the process is pretty straightforward.

Incentivized

Google support is excellent and helpful, but the first answer is always so bureaucratic no matter how many logs, evidence, and information you sent.

Incentivized

We had to move several products to Google Cloud, and the Google Kubernetes Engine was the option recommended to us, so we investigated it and ran with it. Back then (2019), we were not aware of Cloud Run-provisioned K8s clusters, so our other option was a completely self-managed K8s cluster on Compute Engine VMs, which we did not have the knowledge of and capacity to handle.

Incentivized

• Using it for FinOps, we cut the bill in 2 for certain services (out of production).

Incentivized

• Compared to other big K8s providers it has the best price/performance factors.
• Upgrade process from stable to regular versions
• Old stable releases: 1.15/1.16 should be in a stable branch.

Incentivized