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Compute Engine or Kubernetes Engine? New trainings teach you the basics of architecting on Google Cloud

October 11, 2019
Philipp Maier

Manager, Curriculum Development

Google Cloud wants you to be able to use the cloud on your terms, and we provide a range of computing architectures to meet you where you are. In practice, this often means choosing between Compute Engine and Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE). But, which one will best serve your needs?

If you're used to managing virtual machines (VMs) in your on-premises environment or other clouds, and want a similar experience in Google Cloud, then Compute Engine is for you. It offers scale, performance, and value so you can easily launch large compute clusters on Google's infrastructure. Compute Engine also lets you build predefined VMs or tailor custom machine types to your specific needs.

If you’re working with containers, and need to coordinate more than one in your solution, then GKE—our managed, production-ready environment for deploying containerized applications—is your best choice. It uses our latest innovations in developer productivity, resource efficiency, automated operations, and open source flexibility to help you accelerate your time-to-production.

Of course, your cloud architecture will look very different depending on whether you build it with VMs (Compute Engine) or containers (GKE). That’s why we now offer two architecting training paths, available on-demand or in a classroom setting:

Architecting with Google Compute Engine takes you from introductory to advanced concepts in five courses. You’ll learn all the basics of the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) console and how to create virtual machines using Compute Engine. Then, you’ll dive into core services, such as Identity and Access Management (IAM), database services, billing resources, and Stackdriver services. Next, you’ll gain an understanding of how to configure load balancers and autoscaling for VM instances. The course will teach you to automate the deployment of GCP services and leverage managed services for data processing, as well as how to design highly reliable and secure GCP deployments.

Over four courses, Architecting with Google Kubernetes Engine teaches you the basics of the GCP console, and then goes deeper into deploying and managing containerized applications using GKE. You’ll learn all the tools of GKE networking, and how to give your Kubernetes workloads persistent storage, while gaining an understanding of security, logging, monitoring, GCP managed storage, and database services.

Ready to learn more about architecting with GCP? Join us on Friday, October 25 at 9:00 AM PST for a special webinar, Architecting with Google Compute Engine: Building your cloud infrastructure. In this webinar, we’ll give you an overview of the different Compute Engine services and demonstrate some of those services in GCP. By attending the webinar, you’ll also get one month of access to this training on Coursera at no charge. Click here to register today.

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