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The article talks about upsides to using Standard over Flexible but what (if there are any) are the downsides?

teich 8y ago
PM on the team. Flex allows bigger instance sizes, VPC access, custom base docker images with custom binaries. Generally, it's a bit more flexible. :)
- friedman23 8y ago
  Thanks for the response! You all are doing some good work.
- frew 8y ago
  Does this runtime have access to the Standard APIs? It doesn't seem like the docs have any mention of Task Queue/Memcache/etc.
  - thefounder 8y ago
    No. The real issue is that these APIs/platforms are closed source. Sooner or later you may need to move a service from appengine to a non-gae environment and you will find that nothing works. If you invest in tools/libs (i.e wrappers/ORM around the GAE APIs) the loss is even bigger.
  - sudhirj 8y ago
    The other standard runtimes have special packages, but I think for Node everything is just being lumped into the companion package https://cloud.google.com/nodejs/docs/reference/libraries https://cloud.google.com/nodejs/docs/reference/libraries
yathern 8y ago
It only supports Node v8 (which sounds like an upside to me). The main difference is that you can't customize the run time image.
- kaspm 8y ago
  As far as I can tell, Flexible also only supports Node v8 unless you customize and host your own docker container in the registry. OOTB, deploying with v9+ generates an error
steren 8y ago
(PM on the team) This page details the differences and why you would pick one over the other: https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/nodejs/ https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/nodejs/
wasd 8y ago
Flex feels like a lower level of abstraction. You provide a docker file and what you want your machines to look like (vcpu, ram, storage) and it handles everything else. Standard is much closer to Heroku with the added benefit of being able to call APIs for managed services. If you want control over your environment (including what dependencies are available), you want to use Flex. In every other case, I think Standard is the way to go.

PM on the team. Flex allows bigger instance sizes, VPC access, custom base docker images with custom binaries. Generally, it's a bit more flexible. :)

friedman23 8y ago
Thanks for the response! You all are doing some good work.
frew 8y ago
Does this runtime have access to the Standard APIs? It doesn't seem like the docs have any mention of Task Queue/Memcache/etc.
- thefounder 8y ago
  No. The real issue is that these APIs/platforms are closed source. Sooner or later you may need to move a service from appengine to a non-gae environment and you will find that nothing works. If you invest in tools/libs (i.e wrappers/ORM around the GAE APIs) the loss is even bigger.
- sudhirj 8y ago
  The other standard runtimes have special packages, but I think for Node everything is just being lumped into the companion package https://cloud.google.com/nodejs/docs/reference/libraries https://cloud.google.com/nodejs/docs/reference/libraries

yathern 8y ago

It only supports Node v8 (which sounds like an upside to me). The main difference is that you can't customize the run time image.

kaspm 8y ago
As far as I can tell, Flexible also only supports Node v8 unless you customize and host your own docker container in the registry. OOTB, deploying with v9+ generates an error

steren 8y ago

(PM on the team) This page details the differences and why you would pick one over the other: https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/nodejs/ https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/nodejs/

wasd 8y ago

Flex feels like a lower level of abstraction. You provide a docker file and what you want your machines to look like (vcpu, ram, storage) and it handles everything else. Standard is much closer to Heroku with the added benefit of being able to call APIs for managed services. If you want control over your environment (including what dependencies are available), you want to use Flex. In every other case, I think Standard is the way to go.