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Google Compute Engine VPS Review

Go to Google Compute Engine

GCE

Last updated on

Google Compute Engine was founded in 2008.
It is headquartered in the USA.
It offers VPS, Database, Storage and Networking hosting products.

It has datacenters in:
  • Australia
  • Belgium
  • Brazil
  • Canada
  • China
  • Finland
  • Germany
  • Hong Kong
  • India
  • Indonesia
  • Japan
  • Netherlands
  • Qatar
  • Singapore
  • South Korea
  • Switzerland
  • Taiwan
  • United Kingdom
  • United States

Quick Links

Google Compute Engine plans specs and prices Plans
Google Compute Engine instance types Instance Types
How fast are Google Compute Engine servers? Check them out in the Screener Screener
Review CPU models found in Google Compute Engine trials CPUs
Performance variations of Google Compute Engine VPS over the long term Consistency

Google Compute Engine VPS Features

Features not included in the VPS price are marked as missing below.

Feature Value Comment
Hourly Billing  Yes
DDOS Protection  Yes

GCE uses the Andromeda network stack which features DDOS protection.
https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2014/04/enter-andromeda-zone-google-cloud-platforms-latest-networking-stack.html
Backups  No

Snapshots and Images are available but are charged extra as storage ($0.026 per GB per month as of 5/8/2016).
Control Panel  Builtin
SSH Keys Setup  Yes
Total Number of Datacenters  20
Number of Datacenter Continents  4
Monitoring Charts  Yes

CPU, disk and network utilization.
Admin REST API  Yes

URL: https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/api/getting-started
Upgrade VPS from admin console  No
Mobile Friendly UI  No
Reverse DNS  No
Accepted Forms of Payment  Credit Cards
Hidden CPU Model  Yes
Affiliate Program  No
Firewall  No
Shelving  Yes

"A stopped instance does not incur charges, but all of the resources that are attached to the instance continue to incur charges.": https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances/stop-start-instance
Compare Features

Pros and Cons

Strengths

  • Large catalog of available features.
  • Datacenter locations all over the world.

Weaknesses

  • Disk IO is throttled on small storage volumes.

Google Compute Engine Extra Services

In addition to features included in VPS plans, Google Compute Engine also offers the following services (possibly for a fee):

Backups   Block storage   Object storage   Load balancer   Floating IP addresses  
Team Management   Managed databases   Serverless   DDoS protection   Kubernetes  
GPU instances   Private network  

VPS Instance Provisioning Time

For each Google Compute Engine VPS trial, we measured how long it took to provision the server from the moment it was ordered to the moment it accepted SSH connections.

See also VPS provisioning times for all providers.

Average Provisioning Time Min Provisioning Time Max Provisioning Time Number of VPS Samples
41s 25s 60s 4

Control Panel Screenshots


Cloud Storage Prices

For a comparison of storage features and prices from all providers, please check the Cloud Storage Prices page.

Storage Type Price / GB / month Description Restriction
Block $0.170 Called "Persistent Disk" at Google.
Also available in Standard form on HDD at $0.04/GB/month.
https://cloud.google.com/persistent-disk/ 		SSD Provisioned space
Object $0.023 Object storage is called "Cloud Storage" at Google.
Nearline and Coldline storage are also available at lower prices and speeds. Data transfer and operation fees are extra.
https://cloud.google.com/storage/pricing 		Standard Storage. First 5GB free.
Snapshots $0.023 GCE snapshots are incremental and stored in "Cloud Storage" (object storage)
https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/disks/snapshots?hl=en

Google Compute Engine Instance Types and Plans

How fast are Google Compute Engine servers:  Screen all Google Compute Engine VPS Plans

All Google Compute Engine instance types

Note: All VPS prices reported at VPSBenchmarks are for one month without any further commitment and before promotions. The IPv4 charge is added to the VPS monthly price in case the provider doesn't include it by default.

Plan Number of CPU cores RAM Storage Price
Family:
General purpose
Instance Type:
N2 Standard

N2 machine series has up to 128 vCPUs, 8 GB of memory per vCPU, and is available on the Intel Ice Lake and Cascade Lake CPU platforms.
VPSBenchmarks has not tested any plan for this instance type yet.
Family:
Compute optimized
Instance Type:
C2 Standard

The C2 series enables the highest performance per core and the highest frequency for compute-bound workloads using Intel 3.9 GHz Cascade Lake processors.
VPSBenchmarks has not tested any plan for this instance type yet.
Family:
General purpose
Instance Type:
N2D Standard

N2D machine series has up to 224 vCPUs, 8 GB of memory per vCPU, and is available on second generation AMD EPYC Rome and third generation AMD EPYC Milan platforms.
n2d-standard-2 2 8.0GB 40GB $56.14
Family:
Compute optimized
Instance Type:
C2D Standard

The C2D machine series provides the largest VM sizes and are best-suited for high-performance computing (HPC). They use the third generation AMD EPYC Milan platform
c2d-standard-2 2 8.0GB 40GB $73.08
Family:
General purpose
Instance Type:
E2 Standard

The E2 machine series has a predefined CPU platform, running either an Intel processor or the second generation AMD EPYC Rome processor. E2 offers 2 vCPUs for short periods of bursting.
VPSBenchmarks has not tested any plan for this instance type yet.
Family:
General purpose
Instance Type:
E2 Shared cores

Unlike predefined machine types and custom machine types, shared-core machine types are not billed on their individual resources. Each machine type has a defined price for both vCPUs and memory. E2 shared-core machines with committed use discount contracts consume cores in the following manner:
e2-micro: 0.25 cores
e2-small: 0.50 cores
e2-medium: 1.0 cores
e2-small 2 2.0GB 40GB $16.23
e2-medium 2 4.0GB 40GB $24.46
Family:
General purpose
Instance Type:
N2 High memory

N2 machine series has 8 GB of memory per vCPU, up to 128 vCPUs, and is available on the Intel Ice Lake and Cascade Lake CPU platforms.
VPSBenchmarks has not tested any plan for this instance type yet.
Instance Type:
Other

No description
g1-small 1 1.7GB 10GB $13.13
n1-standard-1 1 3.75GB 20GB $27.67
t2d-standard-1 1 4.0GB 20GB $34.24
e2-highcpu-2 2 2.0GB 0GB $36.11
n1-highcpu-2 (Off rankings) 2 1.8GB 20GB $36.23
n2-highcpu-2 2 2.0GB 0GB $41.87
n1-standard-2 (Off rankings) 2 7.5GB 10GB $48.55

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