AWS Fargate vs. Google Cloud Run
Overview
- Serverless computing options allow for app and microservice deployment without the need for server maintenance.
- AWS Fargate by Amazon has powerful deployment capabilities and high ratings.
- Google Cloud Run is a newer contender with a promising development experience and scalability options.
3 key takeaways from the article:
- AWS Fargate and Google Cloud Run are both serverless container platforms, offering easy deployment and scaling of applications.
- Fargate provides more granular control over resources, while Cloud Run emphasizes simplicity and speed.
- Pricing differs, with Fargate charging for vCPU and memory, and Cloud Run based on CPU/memory usage and request count.
Table of contents
1. Overview
2. What Is Serverless Computing?
5. AWS Fargate vs. Google Cloud Run: Comparison and Reviews
- AWS Fargate
- Google Cloud Run
6. Conclusion
What Is Serverless Computing?
Serverless computing is nothing new. In fact, we’ve been writing about it for some time. In 2012 we predicted in a guest post on "Read Write" that future software would go “serverless,” and that remains true. Serverless computing allows you to develop scalable apps, microservices, and systems without the hassle of infrastructure management.
About AWS Fargate
AWS is Amazon’s cloud platform for container management. It was originally developed to solve the problem of tedious management and configuration required by Amazon’s Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS). Fargate helped to ease that management load on DevOps and let developers get back to developing.
AWS Fargate is a powerful computing option that comes highly rated. Some of its features:
- Ability to launch multiple containers at once.
- Runs in the AWS public cloud, and plays well with the rest of the Amazon Web Service (AWS) ecosystem.
- Use EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service) to run Kubernetes pods.
- Can be configured to auto-scale with Horizontal or Vertical Pod Autoscale.
This platform is used by several companies such as Vanguard, Foursquare, Ancestry, and National Australia Bank.
Pricing is on an as-needed basis, and varies by requested vCPU and memory.
About Google Cloud Run
Cloud Run service is Google’s serverless offering used by companies like MailChimp, Airbus, and MediaMarktSaturn. Some of the features it boasts include:
- Increased scalability. Auto-scaling and scale-to-zero functionality right out of the box.
- Ability to build REST APIs with ease.
- Works with any programming language or library.
- Ability to map services to your own custom domains.
- Choose between Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) or a fully managed service
Google includes a list of use cases here.
Pricing is a little more complex but based on CPU usage, memory, and requests. There’s also a free tier.
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AWS Fargate vs. Google Cloud Run: Comparison and Reviews
AWS Fargate
Fargate enjoys a 4.6 out of 5-star rating on G2. It also scores a 9.1 in ease of use and 8.2 in quality of support, but the latter ranks just below the industry average.
Reviewers generally like the fast deployment time and ease of management. One mentioned in a 5-star review, “...it removes the administration and overthinking that you would do in any other scenario, ...It's super easy to monitor and all the logs are available right in the...dashboard.”
Other users note that it plays well with microservices.
Google Cloud Run
Cloud Run has a 4.5 out of 5-star rating on the same website, but as the latest entrant to the serverless market, it has fewer reviews. One reviewer noted an advantage: "We already package code in Docker containers so using Cloud Run is easy."
The New Stack in one article notes that Cloud Run delivers on developer experience, but a major drawback is that it can only deploy one container at a time.
Conclusion
Both Cloud Run and Fargate present solid options, but the right choice comes down to what’s more important to you. Cloud Run comes out ahead in developer experience and pricing options, but falls short in deploying power. Fargate excels in deployment options but requires more configuring compared to Cloud Run, particularly with scalability.
It should also be noted that Google’s entrant to the serverless computing market is much younger and can be subject to significant changes in the future. But depending on your current workflows and whether you're using Docker containers, you may find Cloud Run easier to use.
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In my opinion, Google Cloud Run’s scale-to-zero is the killer feature, it basically makes it lambda for docker containers, in fact I’d go as far as to say it’s not really a true alternative to Fargate. I really hope AWS gets a true Cloud Run alternative up soon.