It is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering
Allows to quickly deploy and scale web-applications without having to manage the underlying infrastructure
Features
Supports multiple programming languages (Node.js, Java, Python, PHP, [[c-sharp|C#]])
Allows user to bring own language runtime (achieved using custom containers)
Provides robust monitoring and diagnostics:
- Cloud Monitoring and Cloud Logging
- Cloud Debugger and Error Reporting
Application Versioning
Allows to create different environments (staging, production, development)
Traffic Splitting
Route incoming traffic to different app versions, A/B test and incremental feature rollout
Application Security
Define access rules with App Engine Firewall, uses SSL/TLS certificates by default
Environments
App Engine has two types of environments: Flexible and Standard
Both can be simultaneously used by the application
App Engine is well suited for applications designed using the microservice architecture
| Standard Environment | Flexible Environment |
|---|---|
| Serverless Compute | Fully Managed Containers |
| Starts in Seconds | Starts in Minutes |
| Runs in Sandboxed Environment | Runs with Docker Containers on Compute Engine (VMs) |
| Designed for rapid scaling (sudden traffic spikes) | Designed for predicable and consistent traffic |
| Supports specific language versions, not custom runtime | Supports any language version and custom runtime |
| Can scale to zero instances | Must have at least one instance running |
| Pricing based on hours used | Pricing based on vCPUs, Memory and Disk |
| Cannot use SSH to debug | Can use SSH to debug |
| No background processes | Can have background processes |