What are Google Cloud Platform and Google Kubernetes Engine?
Before we roll up our sleeves and look at signing up for a Google Cloud Platform account and installing the tools, we will need to launch our GKE-powered cluster. We should also discuss Google Kubernetes Engine and how it came to be.
Henceforth, I will refer to Google Cloud Platform as GCP and Google Kubernetes Engine as GKE in the body text of the chapter.
Google Cloud Platform
Of the “big three” public cloud providers, GCP is the newest. In the following two chapters, we will examine Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure.
Google’s foray into public cloud technology started differently from the other two providers. In April 2008, Google launched the public preview of its Google App Engine, which was the first component of its cloud offering. As a service, App Engine is still available at the time of writing, in mid-2024. The service allows developers to deploy their...