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Google Compute Engine vs Rackspace Cloud Servers: What are the differences?
What is Google Compute Engine? Run large-scale workloads on virtual machines hosted on Google's infrastructure. Google Compute Engine is a service that provides virtual machines that run on Google infrastructure. Google Compute Engine offers scale, performance, and value that allows you to easily launch large compute clusters on Google's infrastructure. There are no upfront investments and you can run up to thousands of virtual CPUs on a system that has been designed from the ground up to be fast, and to offer strong consistency of performance.
What is Rackspace Cloud Servers? Powerful Linux and Windows servers in minutes. Cloud Servers is based on OpenStack, the open and scalable operating system for building public and private clouds. With the open cloud, you get reliable cloud hosting, without locking your data into one proprietary platform.
Google Compute Engine and Rackspace Cloud Servers can be categorized as "Cloud Hosting" tools.
Some of the features offered by Google Compute Engine are:
- High-performance virtual machines- Compute Engine’s Linux VMs are consistently performant, scalable, highly secure and reliable. Supported distros include Debian and CentOS. You can choose from micro-VMs to large instances.
- Powered by Google’s global network- Create large compute clusters that benefit from strong and consistent cross-machine bandwidth. Connect to machines in other data centers and to other Google services using Google’s private global fiber network.
- (Really) Pay for what you use- Google bills in minute-level increments (with a 10-minute minimum charge), so you don’t pay for unused computing time.
On the other hand, Rackspace Cloud Servers provides the following key features:
- 100% power and network uptime guarantee
- Cloud choice- We run the world’s largest open cloud, giving you flexibility, choice, and no vendor lock-in. That means your workloads are portable. Host them with any open cloud vendor—or even in your own data center.
- Technical expertise- We employ more Red Hat® Certified Engineers than any other hosting company. And over 100 Rackspace employees have earned the title of Microsoft® Certified Professional.
"Backed by google" is the top reason why over 86 developers like Google Compute Engine, while over 41 developers mention "Quick and reliable cloud servers" as the leading cause for choosing Rackspace Cloud Servers.
According to the StackShare community, Google Compute Engine has a broader approval, being mentioned in 592 company stacks & 427 developers stacks; compared to Rackspace Cloud Servers, which is listed in 109 company stacks and 24 developer stacks.
Albeit restricted to only a few places worlwide compared to its peers in the cloud segment, I am yet to find another provider capable of delivering a score over 5000 (Geekbench) in a benchmark on a single CPU machine, and each machine costs $6 a month. For homelab and experienced users who don't need DBaaS or IaaC's, it's a pretty straightforward choice. A more comprehensive review of Vultr's HF machines can be found here.
GCE is much more user friendly than EC2, though Amazon has come a very long way since the early days (pre-2010's). This can be seen in how easy it is to edit the storage attached to an instance in GCE: it's under the instance details and is edited inline. In AWS you have to click the instance > click the storage block device (new screen) > click the edit option (new modal) > resize the volume > confirm (new model) then wait a very long time. Google's is nearly instant.
- In both cases, the instance much be shut down.
There also the preference between "user burden-of-security" and automatic security: AWS goes for the former, GCE the latter.
Most bioinformatics shops nowadays are hosting on AWS or Azure, since they have HIPAA tiers and offer enterprise SLA contracts. Meanwhile Heroku hasn't historically supported HIPAA. Rackspace and Google Cloud would be other hosting providers we would consider, but we just don't get requests for them. So, we mostly focus on AWS and Azure support.
Pros of Google Compute Engine
- Backed by google87
- Easy to scale79
- High-performance virtual machines75
- Performance57
- Fast and easy provisioning52
- Load balancing15
- Compliance and security12
- Kubernetes9
- GitHub Integration8
- Consistency7
- Free $300 credit (12 months)4
- One Click Setup Options3
- Good documentation3
- Great integration and product support2
- Escort2
- Ease of Use and GitHub support2
- Nice UI1
- Easy Snapshot and Backup feature1
- Integration with mobile notification services1
- Low cost1
- Support many OS1
- Very Reliable1
Pros of Rackspace Cloud Servers
- Quick and reliable cloud servers42
- Great customer support29
- SSDs20
- Uses OpenStack10
- Windows server 2012 possible2
- Easy integration with Github2
- Ubuntu1
- Ssh access1
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