GKE or Cloud Run?

Are you a small, medium, or large enterprise looking to move your application to a containerized orchestration solution on Google Cloud? What Google Cloud platform solution will you use, GKE or Cloud Run?

In this article, we’ll focus on the differences between Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and Cloud Run.

What is GKE?

Kubernetes is an open-source platform for container orchestration, designed to automate the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. Originally developed by Google, it’s become popular because it simplifies complex tasks such as managing large-scale applications across clusters of servers.

Google Kubernetes Engine, or GKE, is a managed kubernetes service which enhances Kubernetes by offering a managed environment that handles tasks like upgrades and scaling automatically. This integration makes deploying and managing applications on Google Cloud efficient, secure, and scalable, appealing to businesses of all sizes.

Additionally, GKE allows applications upgrades with zero downtime, facilitating the implementation of CI/CD Continuous Integration / Continuous Deployments software development processes.

In summary, the Google Kubernetes Engine is a managed container orchestration system that automates the deployment, management, and scaling of containerized applications using Google infrastructure. This makes it ideal for applications that require container orchestration, such as microservices architectures.

Kubernetes Engine deploys Kubernetes on managed instance groups.

There are two modes to operate GKE, standard mode and autopilot mode. GKE Autopilot manages the entire underlying infrastructure of clusters, including the control plane, nodes, and all system components.

In contrast, GKE Standard mode requires you to manage the nodes, while GKE manages the control plane and system components. Autopilot clusters are pre-configured with optimized settings, while Standard provides more options but requires more work.

What is Cloud Run?

Cloud Run from Google Cloud is a serverless, fully managed Kubernetes orchestration solution, which is able to automatically scale up and down according to user requests. It abstracts away the complexities of infrastructure management, allowing developers to focus on writing code without worrying about the underlying infrastructure.

Cloud Run allows you to run any stateless container that listens for HTTP requests. This gives you the flexibility to use any programming language, runtime, or library.

Cloud Run integrates seamlessly with other Google Cloud services such as Cloud Pub/Sub, Cloud SQL, Firestore, and more, enabling you to build comprehensive cloud-native applications.

Cloud Run is designed to be simple and to manage the infrastructure for you, providing a straightforward way to deploy and scale containerized applications. Key points about Cloud Run include:

1. Project-Based Organization: Resources in Cloud Run are organized at the project level. You can use multiple Google Cloud projects to logically separate your environments (e.g., development, staging, production) if needed.
2. Services: In Cloud Run, you deploy “services.” Each service corresponds to a specific containerized application. You can manage different versions of the service within the same Cloud Run service using traffic splitting.
3. No Kubernetes API: Cloud Run does not expose the Kubernetes API directly, so concepts like namespaces, pods, and nodes are abstracted away.How to choose between GKE and Cloud Run?

You have your business, you want to deploy a containerized app: should you use GKE or Cloud Run?

1. Managed vs. Control: Cloud Run is fully managed, while GKE requires more platform management. GKE gives you the flexibility to set the vCPUs and memory to run larger containerized workloads.GKE allows direct access to Kubernetes API, providing full control over pods, nodes, deployments, namespaces, clusters, etc..
2. Billing: With GKE, you are billed for nodes regardless of utilization, while Cloud Run bills only for actual consumption.
3. Stateless vs Stateful: CloudRun is a stateless containerized microservices,while GKE Kubernetes allows you to deploy stateful applications using its StatefulSet controller.
4. CI/CD: Both GKE and Cloud Run support Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment processes by seamlessly integrating with Google Cloud solution to automate building, testing, and deploying your applications. To ensure that your application is built, tested, and deployed automatically, providing robust CI/CD pipeline deployments, both for GKE or CloudRun, follow these steps: a) Set up a repository in Cloud Source Repositories. b) Configure Cloud Build with a cloudbuild.yaml file. c) Create build triggers to automate builds on code push. d) Grant necessary permissions to the Cloud Build service account. e) Automate testing and deployment steps to ensure code quality and reliability.

Use Cases

Cloud Run is recommended for the following use cases:

• Microservices: Deploy individual microservices as stateless containers.
• APIs and Web Services: Host APIs and web services that can scale based on demand.
• Event-Driven Applications: Run background tasks or process events from services like Cloud Pub/Sub.
• Data Processing: Execute short-lived data processing tasks or jobs.

GKE is recommended for the following use cases:

• Complex Microservices Architecture: You have an application composed of many interdependent microservices that need to communicate with each other.
• Custom Networking and Security Requirements: Your application requires custom networking configurations, such as fine-grained network policies, custom VPC configurations, or integration with on-premises networks.
• Stateful Workloads: You need to run stateful applications, such as databases, that require persistent storage and consistent state management.
• Advanced Resource Management and Scheduling: You need fine-grained control over resource allocation, custom scheduling, and optimized resource utilization.

In summary, GKE is suitable for scenarios where you need more control over your environment, advanced networking and security configurations, support for stateful applications, and complex resource management requirements. Cloud Run, on the other hand, is ideal for simpler, stateless applications where ease of use and quick deployment are prioritized.

Example: Small Static Websites on Cloud Run

For small websites that are static, Cloud Run is an excellent choice. The learning curve is minimal, even if you are not familiar with Google Cloud. You simply need to configure gcloud for container builds and deployment. Implementation takes only a few hours, not days. Additionally, if the website experiences low traffic, Cloud Run can result in a nearly zero-cost solution.

To estimate costs, you can use the Google Cloud Pricing Calculator (link here). However, it can sometimes be tricky to get an accurate estimate. As an alternative, you can deploy your website on Cloud Run and monitor costs for a couple of weeks using the Billing and Cost Management tools in the GCP console. This approach provides real-time insights into your actual expenses.

Written by Mauro Di Pasquale

Google Professional Cloud Architect and Professional Data Engineer certified. I love learning new things and sharing with the community. Founder of Dipacloud.

Written by human. Misspelling and grammar errors corrected with AI.