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Google App Engine vs Kubernetes: What are the differences?
Google App Engine: Build web applications on the same scalable systems that power Google applications. Google has a reputation for highly reliable, high performance infrastructure. With App Engine you can take advantage of the 10 years of knowledge Google has in running massively scalable, performance driven systems. App Engine applications are easy to build, easy to maintain, and easy to scale as your traffic and data storage needs grow; Kubernetes: Manage a cluster of Linux containers as a single system to accelerate Dev and simplify Ops. Kubernetes is an open source orchestration system for Docker containers. It handles scheduling onto nodes in a compute cluster and actively manages workloads to ensure that their state matches the users declared intentions.
Google App Engine and Kubernetes are primarily classified as "Platform as a Service" and "Container" tools respectively.
Some of the features offered by Google App Engine are:
- Zero to sixty: Scale your app automatically without worrying about managing machines.
- Supercharged APIs: Supercharge your app with services such as Task Queue, XMPP, and Cloud SQL, all powered by the same infrastructure that powers the Google services you use every day.
- You're in control: Manage your application with a simple, web-based dashboard allowing you to customize your app's performance.
On the other hand, Kubernetes provides the following key features:
- Lightweight, simple and accessible
- Built for a multi-cloud world, public, private or hybrid
- Highly modular, designed so that all of its components are easily swappable
"Easy to deploy", "Auto scaling" and "Good free plan" are the key factors why developers consider Google App Engine; whereas "Leading docker container management solution", "Simple and powerful" and "Open source" are the primary reasons why Kubernetes is favored.
Kubernetes is an open source tool with 55.1K GitHub stars and 19.1K GitHub forks. Here's a link to Kubernetes's open source repository on GitHub.
According to the StackShare community, Kubernetes has a broader approval, being mentioned in 1048 company stacks & 1099 developers stacks; compared to Google App Engine, which is listed in 482 company stacks and 345 developer stacks.
Our whole DevOps stack consists of the following tools:
- GitHub (incl. GitHub Pages/Markdown for Documentation, GettingStarted and HowTo's) for collaborative review and code management tool
- Respectively Git as revision control system
- SourceTree as Git GUI
- Visual Studio Code as IDE
- CircleCI for continuous integration (automatize development process)
- Prettier / TSLint / ESLint as code linter
- SonarQube as quality gate
- Docker as container management (incl. Docker Compose for multi-container application management)
- VirtualBox for operating system simulation tests
- Kubernetes as cluster management for docker containers
- Heroku for deploying in test environments
- nginx as web server (preferably used as facade server in production environment)
- SSLMate (using OpenSSL) for certificate management
- Amazon EC2 (incl. Amazon S3) for deploying in stage (production-like) and production environments
- PostgreSQL as preferred database system
- Redis as preferred in-memory database/store (great for caching)
The main reason we have chosen Kubernetes over Docker Swarm is related to the following artifacts:
- Key features: Easy and flexible installation, Clear dashboard, Great scaling operations, Monitoring is an integral part, Great load balancing concepts, Monitors the condition and ensures compensation in the event of failure.
- Applications: An application can be deployed using a combination of pods, deployments, and services (or micro-services).
- Functionality: Kubernetes as a complex installation and setup process, but it not as limited as Docker Swarm.
- Monitoring: It supports multiple versions of logging and monitoring when the services are deployed within the cluster (Elasticsearch/Kibana (ELK), Heapster/Grafana, Sysdig cloud integration).
- Scalability: All-in-one framework for distributed systems.
- Other Benefits: Kubernetes is backed by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), huge community among container orchestration tools, it is an open source and modular tool that works with any OS.
Pros of Google App Engine
- Easy to deploy144
- Auto scaling106
- Good free plan80
- Easy management62
- Scalability56
- Low cost35
- Comprehensive set of features32
- All services in one place28
- Simple scaling22
- Quick and reliable cloud servers19
- Granular Billing6
- Easy to develop and unit test5
- Monitoring gives comprehensive set of key indicators4
- Create APIs quickly with cloud endpoints3
- Really easy to quickly bring up a full stack3
- No Ops2
- Mostly up2
Pros of Kubernetes
- Leading docker container management solution161
- Simple and powerful126
- Open source102
- Backed by google75
- The right abstractions56
- Scale services24
- Replication controller19
- Permission managment9
- Simple7
- Supports autoscaling7
- Cheap6
- Self-healing4
- No cloud platform lock-in4
- Reliable4
- Open, powerful, stable3
- Scalable3
- Quick cloud setup3
- Promotes modern/good infrascture practice3
- Backed by Red Hat2
- Cloud Agnostic2
- Runs on azure2
- Custom and extensibility2
- Captain of Container Ship2
- A self healing environment with rich metadata2
- Golang1
- Easy setup1
- Everything of CaaS1
- Sfg1
- Expandable1
- Gke1
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Cons of Google App Engine
- It's a Google product - they don't like your political1
Cons of Kubernetes
- Poor workflow for development14
- Steep learning curve12
- Orchestrates only infrastructure6
- High resource requirements for on-prem clusters3