What is our primary use case?
We use this solution to handle big data workloads in that specific NGK.
What is most valuable?
The solution is the latest and greatest. It has everything in it. You can have service and everything that you need.
What needs improvement?
There is room for improvement in terms of visibility and observability of solutions. One of the things I missed a bit is the visibility and availability of solutions. If I compare it to a different solution, it is a bit behind.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using this solution for three years. We use the tool’s latest version; it was Kubernetes V1.24
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is quite stable.
I rate the solution’s stability a nine out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is a scalable solution. We are using this solution for small enterprises.
I rate the solution’s scalability a ten out of ten.
How are customer service and support?
The customer service and support are not too good. Usually, the vendor acts as the middleman for support on GK, and it's not good.
They should be more professional.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
How was the initial setup?
We used automation for the initial setup. It was okay. So it wasn't too complex.
With automation, the deployment took about a week. But if you do it manually, it can take even just minutes or hours.
What about the implementation team?
The deployment was done in-house with the help of one DevOps engineer.
Maintenance is required for the solution. Moreover, maintenance is a bit of an issue because we don't have good observability for those issues, so I'm less positive about that. It was hard to maintain. Only one person is enough for the maintenance.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The pricing is the same, as far as I recall. So it's the same pricing. It depends on the compute pricing, so the pricing is relative.
It's a monthly solution for the Control Plane, and pay-as-you-go for the workers, and the compute — it depends on how you define it. I don't think there are any extra costs. It is only pay for the Control Plane, and that's it.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I worked with AWS, specifically EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service) and Postgres.
In brief, I would say that Amazon's support is better. The solutions are quite equal, but there is better integration for EKS with AWS services.
What other advice do I have?
My advice to others looking to use Google Kubernetes Engine is to pay attention to maintenance and utilize automation and platform tools to build and manage it. Do not do it manually.
Many maintenance errors should be managed automatically, especially by Google. Otherwise, you need to be very attentive to the cluster due to maintenance issues. I suggest automating most of the manual tasks. There is a distribution of Google called Autopilot that handles it, although I haven't personally worked with it. I recommend considering its usage rather than doing everything manually. Maybe it's related to the specific solution we chose, but ultimately, it's about pricing.
Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Google
*Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.