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Ask HN: Is GCP harder to use than AWS?

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Re: Ask HN: Is GCP harder to use than AWS?

#11

Post by more_corn »

zbjornson wrote: post #7

I feel the opposite. Everything I've used in GCP, I've understood and appreciated the design decisions behind. Most things I've used in AWS, I've wondered why they shipped it that way. Examples: * High-availability HSM KMS: trivial in GCP, super difficult in AWS. * Object storage (GCS/S3): multi-region is trivial in GCP, somewhat harder in AWS. Archival is so much simpler in GCS than S3 Glacier. * IAM: makes sense to…

How about: Security groups Creating load balancers Creating and managing access to cloudsql vs rds Gcp internal request limits Gcp documentation is not task oriented. (How do I “X”) Getting effective support is impossible.

That looks like at least six important things that are significantly harder on GCP.

Don’t get me wrong, I like GCP. I just hate that they are failing in ways I think are so clear and simple to fix if they’d change their thinking. Oh also, critical components being alpha/beta and unsupported, but no alternative existing. (I’m think of the kubernetes monitoring thing who’s name I forget)

One thing I HAVE liked is cloudshell, being able to spawn an authenticated shell into any resource without having to figure out access from my location.

Re: Ask HN: Is GCP harder to use than AWS?

#12

Post by garciasn »

serverlessmom wrote: post #8

> Permissions in GCP seem like a mess, I’m trying to use python to get credentials and there is a whole python library for authentication and getting credentials (google-auth). I feel you, but I gotta agree with the other commenters that it's really just about time and experience. Anyone long-experienced on one public cloud will really struggle switching clouds. Your experience is low but your expectations are high.…

I use an overly simplistic way to compare how I see GCP vs AWS: MacOS vs PC.

AWS is great, has many options, is ubiquitous across verticals and is everywhere, but it lacks polish in many ways. GCP offers similar tools to that of AWS but, in many ways, feels more polished and offers tools that are integrated across the ecosystem by those who don't want to have to mess with the underpinnings of the infrastructure, roll their own, or have to buy third party services if they do not want to.

That all said, IAM on both absolutely suck. I should NOT need to read the documentation or study the systems like I do to get it up and running. Both providers seriously need to up their game here and offer sane and secure defaults that just work. The last time I dealt with AWS I wanted to pull out my hair (and this could be due to my heavy investment in GCP) and while GCP is frustrating with IAM, it wasn't nearly as arcane as I felt AWS was.

YMMV.

Re: Ask HN: Is GCP harder to use than AWS?

#13

Post by peakaboo »

I'm certified architect in both AWS and GCP and I prefer AWS. But it's possible it's because I learned it first.

GCP is easier to start with for me, but becomes annoying because it's missing things that I can do in aws.

For example, cloud run can't run docker containers that doesn't listen to a port. Just run it once and shut down like Fargate does in AWS.

They want people to use kubernetes which is more complex and has features a lot of people don't need ever. Fargate is simple and just works.

So I prefer AWS for reasons like that but I think GCP is easier to understand.

Re: Ask HN: Is GCP harder to use than AWS?

#15

Post by mark_l_watson »

Almost all of my professional work has been on AWS - that is simply what companies that I have worked for use.

For my own use, I massively prefer GCP, with an admittedly small monthly spend.

I worked at Google as a contractor and really loved their environment for internal developers and using GCP has a little of that “flavor.”

Re: Ask HN: Is GCP harder to use than AWS?

#16

Post by onaworkcomputer »

I'd echo others and say this boils down to familiarity more than anything else.

Identity and authentication is honestly the one area where the popular cloud platforms differ the most. I used to work for AWS and currently work for Azure, and the switch from IAM to AAD caused more cognitive dissonance than any other difference between the platforms' respective offerings.

Re: Ask HN: Is GCP harder to use than AWS?

#17

Post by hopefullywrong »

more_corn wrote: post #11
zbjornson wrote: post #7

I feel the opposite. Everything I've used in GCP, I've understood and appreciated the design decisions behind. Most things I've used in AWS, I've wondered why they shipped it that way. Examples: * High-availability HSM KMS: trivial in GCP, super difficult in AWS. * Object storage (GCS/S3): multi-region is trivial in GCP, somewhat harder in AWS. Archival is so much simpler in GCS than S3 Glacier. * IAM: makes sense to…

How about: Security groups Creating load balancers Creating and managing access to cloudsql vs rds Gcp internal request limits Gcp documentation is not task oriented. (How do I “X”) Getting effective support is impossible. That looks like at least six important things that are significantly harder on GCP. Don’t get me wrong, I like GCP. I just hate that they are failing in ways I think are so clear and simple to fix…

iam authenticated access to a cloudsql instance is exactly what I’m trying to do right now… and it’s not surprising why people give up and hard code credentials…

Re: Ask HN: Is GCP harder to use than AWS?

#18

Post by eb0la »

For me GCP is way easier than Amazon. I feel like home there.

Just remember to create a project (or put that one in a folder) for anything that must be billed together or when you have several projects that must inherit permissions or restrictions.

Remember that some resources are global (like projects), and others are regional.

Authorization can be a bit tricky, though: they are deprecating old authorization roles (adminitrator, viewer, etc..) to make it more granular. Sometimes is good.

Re: Ask HN: Is GCP harder to use than AWS?

#20

Post by hallway_monitor »

onaworkcomputer wrote: post #16

I'd echo others and say this boils down to familiarity more than anything else. Identity and authentication is honestly the one area where the popular cloud platforms differ the most. I used to work for AWS and currently work for Azure, and the switch from IAM to AAD caused more cognitive dissonance than any other difference between the platforms' respective offerings.

Having worked with both and gotten used to the difference, is azure AD more complex than the solutions from the other vendors?
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