Head full of ideas and a day too short? Whether you’re programming as a hobbyist after hours, building your startup, or creating a proof of concept for your company, you should get to know App Engine. It’s a cloud service that will allow you to focus on creating code, thanks to automating most infrastructure operations.
What is App Engine?
App Engine is one of Google Cloud’s most popular cloud services. It is a serverless, fully managed developer platform where you can deploy and host web applications and mobile app backends developed in almost any technology.
The service upscales automatically to handle higher loads and down when there is no more need for great computing power (i.a., when users leave the site or complex calculations end). This is followed by cost flexibility, as billing is charged according to current usage. A small amount of traffic means a small bill; more traffic equals a proportionally larger sum on the invoice. The cost of the service can be easily tracked in the Billing dashboard in the cloud console.
Two types of environments: standard and flexible
The platform is suitable for both monolithic and microservices architecture apps. It provides two environments: standard and flexible. The developer can deploy and develop the application in one environment or combine the advantages of both of them.
Standard environment for Python, Java, Node.js, PHP, Ruby, and Go
The Standard environment supports application source code created in the following programming languages:
- Python 2.7, 3.7, 3.8, 3.9,
- Java 8, 11,
- Node.js 8, 10, 12, 14,
- PHP 5.5, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4,
- Ruby 2.5, 2.6, 2.7,
- Go 1.11, 1.12, 1.13, 1.14, 1.15.
The standard environment is recommended for applications that may experience significant, sudden increases in load and need to maintain high scalability. Scaling down can be done manually or automatically; in the case of automatic downscaling, it takes seconds to start an instance. The environment can scale to zero instances, so there is no cost when the app is not in use. The standard also supports rapid deployment, as the implementation of a new version takes place within seconds.
Flexible environment for containers
The flexible environment serves application code that:
- is created in any version of a supported programming language: Python, Java, Node.js, Go, Ruby, PHP or .NET,
- is located in a Docker container; then, the code can be written in any programming language, using any framework or various libraries.
The flexible environment will work well for applications with a relatively constant load without sudden fluctuations. The platform can down- and downscale, but it takes more time than in the standard environment. The process can be done manually or automatically, and it takes a few minutes to start an instance. The minimum number of active instances is 1. Also, deployment in a flexible environment takes longer than in a standard – several minutes instead of seconds.
See also:
- Containerisation – what are containers, and why are they so popular?
- What is Proof of Concept, and how does it relate to cloud adoption?
- 15 reasons to create and develop a startup with Google Cloud solutions
How much does App Engine cost?
App Engine billing varies depending on the chosen environment.
Standard environment
In the standard environment, you have access to monthly renewable quota within the Free Tier as follows:
- 28 hours of an “F” instance per day,
- 9 hours of “B” instance per day,
- 1 GB of egress (outgoing network traffic) per day.
The costs are charged after the Free Tier quotas have been used.
App Engine’s costs include every commenced hour of instance work (the price depends on the type of machine and location) and every egress gigabyte.
For the europe-west2 region in London, prices are as follows:
- B1 instance – 0,06 $ / h
- B2 instance – 0,12 $ / h
- B4 instance – 0,24 $ / h
- B4_1G instance – 0,36 $ / h
- B8 instance – 0,48 $ / h
- F1 instance – 0,06 $ / h
- F2 instance – 0,12 $ / h
- F4 instance – 0,24 $ / h
- F4_1G instance – 0,36 $ / h
- egress traffic – 0,12 $ / GB (excluding traffic to *.googleapis.com))
- ingress – free of charge.
Prices may vary depending on the region and the currency.
Flexible environment
There are no free quotas from Free Tier for the flexible environment.
Applications are run on virtual machines of your choice, and consumption is charged per second. The memory charge includes the resources required to run the application and the memory that the application uses while working.
Prices per hour of consumption in the europe-west2 (London) region are as follows:
- vCPU – 0,063 $ / h / core
- RAM – 0,009 $ / h / GB
- disk space – according to the Compute Engine price list; the basic fee is $0.048 / month / GB
- egress – according to the Compute Engine price list; from $0.08 to $0.12 / GB / month,
- ingress – free of charge.
Prices may vary depending on the region and the currency.
Calculate the price of the App Engine in the Google Cloud calculator
For the specific case, the cost of the App Engine service in standard and flexible environments can be calculated in the Google Cloud Pricing Calculator.
See also: Optimizing Google Cloud costs – 10 areas to pay attention to
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