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Google Compute Engine vs WebFaction: 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 WebFaction? Hosting for developers: full shell access to fast servers with all your favorite tools pre-installed and maintained for you. No need to spend hours installing and configuring the software, database and other tools. We have over 50 one-click installers in our control panel.
Google Compute Engine and WebFaction can be primarily classified 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, WebFaction provides the following key features:
- 100GB diskspace, RAID-10 setup
- 512MB application RAM
- Free RAM for web and database servers
"Backed by google" is the top reason why over 86 developers like Google Compute Engine, while over 2 developers mention "Cost effective" as the leading cause for choosing WebFaction.
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.
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 WebFaction
- Cost effective3
- Great customer support3
- Servers administered for you3
- Comes with Rails installed automatically2
- Great documentation1
- SSH access1
- Best price1
- SSD1
- Many pre-installed apps1
- Having the least amount of new "fancy" terminologies1
- No needs configuration1
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What is Google Compute Engine?
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