Public Cloud Services Compared

In this article we'll compare 3 major public cloud providers: Azure, AWS and Google Cloud. For each type of service you'll find links to the corresponding cloud provider offer.  Let's start. If you need help with cloud architectures consulting from the best experts, ping us.

Compute / virtual machines on public clouds

AWS: EC2, Amazon Elastic Compute. 6 different types of machines from general purpose to GPU, Memory and CPU optimized
Azure: Azure Virtual Machines. 6 different types of machines from general purpose to GPU, Memory and CPU optimized
GCP: Compute Engine. 3 different types of machines, but custom configurations are optional

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Machine type pricing/billing options for AWS, Azure & GCP

AWS: On-Demand, Spot Instances, Reserved Instances, and Dedicated Hosts
Azure: On-Demand a.k.a. Pay as you Go, and Reserved Virtual Machine Instances
GCP: Pay as you Go, Preemptible, and Commitment. However, pricing will always be based on resource (vCPU and memory) consumption

Cloud pricing consulting.

Load Balancing / Auto scaling on public clouds

AWS: Elastic Load Balancing, Auto Scaling
Azure: Azure Load Balancer and Auto Scale, VM Scale sets, Application Load Balancer
GCP: Cloud Load Balancer, Instance Groups

Kubernetes / Docker AWS vs Azure vs GCP

AWS: ECS, EC2 Container Service, Firecracker, Fargate
Azure: Azure Kubernetes Service, Azure Container Instance
GCP: Kubernetes Engine, Container Registry

Kubernetes consulting.

How Serverless is managed on each cloud?

AWS: Lambda
Azure: Azure Functions
GCP: Cloud Functions

Cloud Management, monitoring, and automation

AWS: AWS Management Console, CLI, API, CloudWatch, CloudTrail, CloudFormation (YAML, JSON)
Azure: Resource Manager, Cloud Shell, API, Azure Monitor, Log Analyses, Network Watcher, Application Insights, Automation (JSON)
GCP: Cloud Console, Cloud Shell, API, Google Cloud Operations suite (Monitoring, Logging, Diagnostics), Cloud Deployment Manager (YAML, JSON)

Cloud monitoring experts.

How Authentication / authorization works on public clouds?

AWS: Identity and Access Management, Active Directory
Azure: (Azure) Active Directory, Active Directory Premium
GCP: Cloud Identity and Access Management, Cloud Identity aware Proxy

What is the equivalents of object based storage?

AWS: S3 (Buckets), Simple Storage Service
Azure: Object based Blob Storage
GCP: Cloud Storage Buckets

What Block based storage to choose?

AWS: EBS, Elastic Block Storage
Azure: Storage Disk Page Blobs, Premium Storage Disks
GCP: Persistent Disk - various Compute Engine HDD and SSD options

What is the best File based storage?

AWS: Elastic File System, FSx hybrid Windows file storage
Azure: Azure Files, NetApp Files, Filestore
GCP: Cloud Filestore

Archive storage in public clouds

AWS: S3 Infrequent Access, Glacier, Data archive
Azure: Cool Storage, Storage (Standard Archive)
GCP: Nearline and Coldline Storage

What Hybrid storage options I have?

AWS: Storage Gateway
Azure: StorSimple, Data Box
GCP: Egnyte Sync

Cloud storage experts.

How Data encryption works on public clouds?

AWS: Server and Client-side encryption options (key managed), EBS Volume Encryption (Disk), TLS/SSL
Azure: Server and Client-side encryption options (key managed). BitLocker (Disk), Azure Storage Service Encryption, TLS/SSL
GCP: Server and Client-side encryption options (key managed), Encryption by Default (Disk), TLS/SSL

What are the Bulk Data transfer options on AWS vs Azure vs GCP?

AWS: Snowball (Edge (GPU) and Mobile), Import/Export Disk, CLI, PowerShell, Rsync, Transfer Acceleration, DataSync, partner options
Azure: Azure Data Box (Disk), Import/Export Disk, AzCopy, PowerShell, Azure CLI, plus various partner options
GCP: Cloud Data Transfer, Transfer Appliance, Cloud Storage Transfer Service

How can I implement Disaster Recovery / backups on public clouds?

AWS: Various best practices and setups: Back-up & Restore, Pilot Light, Warm Standby, and Multi-Site. Partner options available
Azure: Azure Site Recovery, plus various partner options
GCP: Multiple best practices and white-papers available – Google Cloud Disaster Recovery Planning Guide

What are the Database options for AWS, Azure and GCP?

AWS: SQL, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, MariaDB, DynamoDB, Neptune
Azure: SQL, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Cosmos, Table Storage, MariaDB
GCP: MySQL, PostgreSQL, Cloud Datastore, Cloud BigTable, Cloud Spanner, YugaByte DB (Cassandra, Redis & PostgreSQL), Firestore

What options for Data Warehouse / Big data I have?

AWS: Amazon Kinesis (Firehose), Redshift, S3 Data Lake, Athena, EMR, QuickSight, Elasticsearch, and more
Azure: SQL Data Warehouse, Data Lake Analytics & Storage, Data Factory, Analytic Service, Data Catalog & Explorer, HDInsight, Steam Analytics, and more
GCP: BigQuery, Cloud Pub/Sub, Dataflow, Dataproc, Apache Beam & Airflow, Composer, Data Studio, BigQuery ML, TensorFlow, and more

How setup Caching on AWS, Azure and GCP?

AWS: ElastiCache (Redis and Memcached)
Azure: RedisCache
GCP: Cloud CDN and Cloud Memorystore (Redis compatible)

Main Protocol (connection) options on public clouds

AWS: Nice DCV (graphics intensive 3D), RDP (Windows EC2), PCoIP (AWS Workspaces), BLAST (VMware), ICA/HDX (Citrix), Frame Remoting Protocol, SSH/Putty (Linux), PowerShell
Azure: RDP (Windows VM’s), PCoIP/BLAST (VMware), ICA/HDX (Citrix), Frame Remoting Protocol, SSH/Putty (Linux), PowerShell
GCP: RDP & RDP for GCP Extension – for use with GCP Console (Windows Compute Engine), PCoIP, ICA/HDX (Citrix), Frame Remoting Protocol, SSH (Linux), PowerShell

Virtual network options for AWS, Azure and GCP

AWS: VPC, Virtual Private Cloud and subnets, API, NAT, and Transit Gateway, VPN options available, network Peering
Azure: Virtual Network and subnets, API Management, VPN Gateway, Network Peering
GCP: VPC, Virtual Private Cloud and Subnets, Google Cloud Endpoints (API), Cloud NAT, Google Cloud VPN, Network Peering

Firewall options in public clouds

AWS: Web Application Firewall, AWS Shield (DDOS), Firewall Manager, Security Groups
Azure: Web Application Firewall, DDOS Protection. Azure Firewall, Network Security Groups
GCP: Google Cloud Platform Firewall Rules (part of VPC’s), Cloud Armor (Beta), IP Deny/Allow List (Beta)