FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
We see the two as being complementary. App Engine is Google’s Platform-as-a-Service offering and Compute Engine is Google’s Infrastructure-as-a-Service offering. App Engine is great for running web-based apps, line of business apps, and mobile backends. Compute Engine is great for when you need more control of the underlying infrastructure. For example, you might use Compute Engine when you have highly customized business logic or you want to run your own storage system.
Yes. Cloud Storage allows customers to use a global DNS name for uploads and downloads. Google uses its private network to transfer data to/from the closest POP that the data is being uploaded from or downloaded to. This generally results in significantly higher performance for the transfers than what would be possible over the public Internet. This functionality is included with all Cloud Storage buckets at no additional charge.
Compute Engine charges based on compute instance, storage, and network use. Virtual machines are charged on a per-second basis with a 1 minute minimum. Storage cost is calculated based on the amount of data you store. Network cost is calculated based on the amount of data transferred between virtual machine instances that communicate with each other and with the Internet.
Cloud Interconnect extends your on-premises network to Google’s network through a highly available, low latency connection. You can use Dedicated Interconnect to connect directly to Google or use Partner Interconnect to connect to Google through a supported service provider.
To connect to a VM instance by using IAP Desktop, do the following:
- In IAP Desktop, select File > Add Google Cloud project.
- Enter the ID or name of your project, and click OK.
- In the Project Explorer window, right-click the VM instance you want to connect to and select Connect.