At this point, it’s safe to say that Kubernetes has emerged as the standard for container orchestration. Based on this, you might think that the obvious cloud provider of choice to deploy your Kubernetes cluster will be Amazon Web Services (AWS) mostly due to it’s popularity and adoption rate rather than Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

An obvious choices as this may seem, if you want to run Kubernetes on AWS, you have a lot of work. If you’re looking for container-based workflow’s, GCP will make Kubernetes a lot easier to manage and keep up to date. Being that Google created Kubernetes, Google Container Engine (GKE) provides you with a Kubernetes cluster by default rather than having to build yours on AWS.

GKE vs. AWS

The first advantage of running Kubernetes on GCP is that because Google created it, GCP supports new Kubernetes features faster and right out of the gate than other cloud providers. The latest version of Kubernetes is always supported first by Google Container Engine (GKE).

Overall, you’ll spend less time, resources and money getting started with Kubernetes on GCP than you will on AWS.

  • Simple vs. Complex

Unlike GCP, AWS doesn’t offer a managed Kubernetes service like GKE does or like it’s other offerings such as AWS ElacsticSearch. GKE on the other hand comes with a cluster out of the box with built-in logging, log management and monitoring at both the host and container levels. With GKE you get a batteries-included system saving you time and money than if you were building everything by hand on AWS.

  • Automated vs. Manual

The learning curve of Kubernetes is greatly shortened on GKE due to batteries-included approach which can have you running a production-ready cluster in 10 minutes as opposed to AWS where you have to do a lot of work to understand how to set up the cluster and make major decisions around what tooling to use to automate the building and management of your cluster with.

GKE eliminates these time-consuming steps. Just tell GKE some basic things about your cluster, and it will automatically bootstrap your cluster for you. GKE saves a ton of headache and time in the actual creation of the cluster, and you can actually start deploying applications on the cluster quickly without the overhead of having to keep the cluster running in the first place.

Making The Decision

With GKE, you get a production-ready Kubernetes cluster with all the necessary tooling, along with ongoing support needed to make sure your packages and versions stay current. GKE takes care of security defaults for you and integrates with other Google services. This combination requires less overhead in managing the cluster and makes it more seamless to use in the long run.

Simply put, Kubernetes is better on GKE than on AWS and if you’re not already an Amazon shop is the way to go.

Here at OSODevOps, we’ve helped our clients run Kubernetes on both AWS and GCP and have learned a great deal over time and are capable of deploying and managing on either cloud provider.

At OSO DevOps, our experts can maintain your DevOps platform and be responsible for day-to-day operational issues, allowing you to develop and ship your product without the need for internal DevOps hires.