Google Cloud Finally Gets IaaS Service

Google has announced its first major play in the public compute cloud space, with the introduction of the Google Compute Engine.

The Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) offering takes Google cloud services into much closer competition with Amazon, which dominates the market, and Microsoft, which recently added IaaS to its Azure cloud. Dell is set to bring its IaaS service to Europe soon too.

The tech giant will let people run Linux virtual machines (VMs), controlled by the KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine)  hypervisor, on the same infrastructure that powers Google. That could alienate those running virtualised workloads on Citrix, Microsoft or VMware hypervisors, and any Windows Server users.

Users can set up 1, 2, 4 and 8 virtual core VMs with 3.75GB RAM per virtual core on the Compute Engine. They can also connect VMs together using Google’s “high-performance network”.

On the Google cloud?

IT will be able to configure and control VMs via a scriptable command line tool or web UI. Alternatively, they can create their own management system using a Google API.

Partnerships have been formed with cloud management vendors such as RightScale and MapR to help users shift their in-house infrastructure to Google’s public cloud.

Google Compute Engine is currently in limited preview, as Google wants to pace itself, but users can sign up here.

“Using Google’s data centers, Google Compute Engine reduces the time to scale up for tasks that require large amounts of computing power. You can launch enormous compute clusters – tens of thousands of cores or more,” said Craig McLuckie, product management lead for Google Compute Engine.

“Many of you have learned to live with erratic performance in the cloud. We have built our systems to offer strong and consistent performance even at massive scale. For example, we have sophisticated network connections that ensure consistency. Even in a shared cloud you don’t see interruptions; you can tune your app and rely on it not degrading.”

“Our goal is to give you all the pieces you need to build anything you want in the cloud. Whether you need a platform like Google App Engine, or virtual machines like Google Compute Engine, these days, you define your limits. We’re just at the start of what the cloud can do.”

McLuckie claimed the IaaS offering would bring “50 percent more compute for your money than with other leading cloud providers.” Reports have also indicated Google App Engine will have some solid security features too, such as encrypted communications between VMs.

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