
Comparison Cloud Service AWS vs GCP vs Azure
The purpose of our cloud services comparison is to provide an illustration of the vast range of services available and the names given to them. As we progress through the cloud services comparison, it will become evident there is very little distinguishing one cloud service provider from another except the names given to services. Where significant differences exist, these are highlighted.
Enterprise companies around the world have made the switch from self-hosted infrastructure to public service cloud configurations. While most enterprises will always need some on-premise technology, they are developing their applications directly in the cloud. This allows the development teams to stay product focused, rather than having to work on the infrastructure to support the application. By moving to the cloud, enterprises have an existing physical infrastructure that is continuously maintained and updated. This gives them more resources and time to dedicate to the mobile app development project at hand.
The adoption of cloud computing has quickly become a key driving force for businesses today, as applications are moved out of on-premise data centres in a bid to cut costs and increase agility.
Compiling a cloud services comparison is a daunting task in the rapidly-evolving cloud environment. There are thousands of cloud services, hundreds of cloud service providers, and dozens of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) providers offering pay-as-you-go pricing models each one frequently changing and upgrading their portfolios.
IaaS is a model where a third-party provider hosts and maintains core infrastructure, including hardware, software, servers and storage on behalf of a customer. This typically includes the hosting of applications in a highly scalable environment, where customers are only charged for the infrastructure they use.
Early concerns over security and data sovereignty have largely been addressed by the big three public cloud service vendors, We have chosen to limit our cloud services comparison to the top three IaaS providers : Amazon Web Service (AWS), Microsoft Azure (Azure) and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) , with only the most heavily regulated businesses lagging behind in terms of adoption.
What the big three Western public cloud service providers offers? And how can you start to decide which IaaS platform is best-suited to your organisation?
Compute
Calculate, process, and computer’s fundamental role. In addition, the right cloud provider can scale to thousands of processing nodes for you in just a few minutes. As far we now the platform compute is we call the virtual machine running on the cloud services.
Service | Amazon Web Services | Google Cloud Platform | Microsoft Azure |
Deploy, manage, and maintain virtual servers | Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) | Compute Engine | Virtual Machine |
Platform-as-a-Service | Elastic Beanstalk | App Engine | Cloud Services |
Virtual private servers made easy | Lightsail | Virtual Machine Images | |
Management support for Docker / Kubernetes containers | – EC2 Container Service (ECS) – Kubernetes (EKS) | Kubernetes Engine | Container Service (AKS) |
Docker container registry | EC2 Container Registry (ECR) | Container Registry | Container Registry |
Orchestrate and manage microservice-based applications | App Engine | Service Fabric | |
Integrate systems and run backend logic processes | Lamda | Cloud Functions (Beta) | Functions Event Grid Web Jobs |
Run large-scale parallel and high-performance batch computing | Batch | Batch | |
Automatically scale instances | Auto Scaling | Instance Groups | – Virtual Machine Scale Sets – App Service Scale Capability (PAAS) – AutoScaling |
Storage
A key function of cloud services is its storage capabilities. While AWS’ storage services are the longest running, Google’s and Microsoft Azure’s are also very respectable and reliable options.
Service | Amazon Web Services | Google Cloud Platform | Microsoft Azure |
Object storage service for use cases | Simple Storage Services (S3) | Google Cloud Storage | Storage (Block Blob) |
Virtual server disk infrastructure | Elastic Block Store (EBS) | Compute Engine Persistent Disks | Storage (Page Blobs) |
Archive storage | – S3 Infrequent Access (IA) – Glacier – Data Archive | Nearline Coldline | Storage (Cool)Storage (Archive) |
Create and configure shared file systems | Elastic File System (EFS) | ZFS / Avere | Files |
Hybrid storage | Storage Gateway | Egnyte Sync | Store Simple |
Bulk data transfer solutions | – Import/Export Disk – Snowball Edge – Snowmobile | Storage Transfer Service | – Import/Export – Azure Data Box |
Backup | – Object Storage – Cold Archive Storage – Storage Gateway | Backup | |
Automatic protection and disaster recovery | Disaster Recovery | Disaster Recovery Cookbook | Site Recovery |
Networking and Content Delivery
Each provider offers different networks and partners which interconnect their data centers across the globe using a variety of different products to achieve this.
Service | Amazon Web Services | Google Cloud Platform | Microsoft Azure |
Isolated, private cloud private networking | Virtual Private Cloud | Virtual Private Cloud | Virtual Network |
Cross-premises connectivity | API Gateway | Cloud VPN | VPN Gateway |
Manage DNS names and records | Route 53 | Google Cloud DNS | – Azure DNS – Traffic Manager |
Global content delivery networks | CloudFront | – Cloud Interconnect – Cloud CDN | Content Delivery Network |
Dedicated, private network connection | Direct Connect | Cloud Interconnect | ExpressRoute |
Load balancing configuration | Elastic Load Balancing | Cloud Load Balancing | – Load Balancer – Application Gateway |
Database
All three providers allow you to implement both SQL and NoSQL solutions. Alternatively, if you don’t need a database, go for their caching capabilities instead.
Service | Amazon Web Services | Google Cloud Platform | Microsoft Azure |
Managed relational database-as-a-service | RDS | – Cloud SQL – Cloud Spanner | – SQL Database – Database for MySQL – Database for PostgreSQL |
NoSQL (Indexed) | DynamoDB | – Cloud Datastore – Cloud Bigtable | Cosmos DB |
NoSQL (Key-value) | – DynamoDB – SimpleDB | Cloud Datastore | Table Storage |
Application or Memory Caching | ElastiCache | Mem Cache | Redis Cache |
Database migration | Database Migration Service | Database Migration Service | |
Managed data warehouse | Redshift | Big Query | SQL Data Warehouse |
Management and Monitoring
Each of the top three offers a range of management and monitoring services which provide visibility into the health, performance, and utilization of applications, workloads, and infrastructure.
Service | Amazon Web Services | Google Cloud Platform | Microsoft Azure |
Cloud advisor capabilities | Trusted Advisor | Cloud Platform Security | Advisor |
DevOps deployment orchestration | – OpsWorks (Chef-based) – CloudFormation | Cloud Deployment Manager | – Automation – Resource Manager – VM extensions |
Cloud resources management & monitoring | – CloudWatch – X-Ray – Management Console | – Stackdriver Monitoring – Cloud Shell – Debugger – – Trace – Error Reporting | – Portal – Monitor – Application Insights |
Administration | – Application Discovery Service – Systems Manager – Personal Health Dashboard | Cloud Console | – Log Analytics – Operations Management Suite – Resource Health – Storage Explorer |
Billing | – Billing API | – Cloud Billing API | – Billing API |
Security
Here, we cover the range of capabilities provided to protect services and data at public cloud.
Service | Amazon Web Services | Google Cloud Platform | Microsoft Azure |
Authentication and authorization | – Identity and Access Management (IAM) – Organizations | – Cloud IAM – Cloud Identity-Aware Proxy | – Active Directory – Active Directory Premium |
Information Protection | Information Protection | ||
Protect and safeguard with data encryption | Key Management Service | Storage Service Encryption | |
Hardware-based security modules | CloudHSM | Cloud KeyManagement Service | Key Vault |
Firewall | Web Application Firewall | Application Gateway | |
Cloud security assessment and certification services | – Inspector – Certificate Manager | – Security Center – App Service Certificates | |
Directory services | – AWS Directory Service | Active Directory Domain Services | |
Identity management | Cognito | Active Directory B2C | |
Support cloud directories | Directory Service | Windows Server Active Directory | |
Compliance | Artifact | Service Trust Portal | |
Cloud services with protection | Shield | DDoS Protection Service |
Developer Tools
And finally DevOps the one developer need depends on us, the tools you need to build, deploy, diagnose, debug, and manage multiplatform, scalable applications and services for public cloud.
Service | Amazon Web Services | Google Cloud Platform | Microsoft Azure |
Media transcoding | Elastic Transcoder | Media Services | |
Improve and optimize workflow | Simple Workflow Service (SWF) | Logic Apps | |
API management | API Gateway | Cloud Endpoints | API Management |
App testing | Device Farm | Cloud Test Lab | DevTest Labs (backend) |
Git Repositories | AWS Source Repositories | Cloud Source Repositories | Azure Source Repositories |
DevOps | CodeBuild | Visual Studio Team Services | |
Programmatic access | Command Line Interface | – Cloud Tools for Powershell – Cloud SDK | – Command Line Interface (CLI) – PowerShell |
Predefined templates | Quick Start | Quickstart templates | |
Managed hosting platforms | Elastic Beanstalk | App Engine Standard Environment | – Web Apps (App Service) – Cloud Services – API Apps (App Service) |
Application deployment | – CodeDeploy – CodeCommit – CodePipeline | – Visual Studio Team Services | |
Developer Tools | Developer Tools | Developer Tools |
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