7 ms·

This is silly and will further harm GCP's viability as alternative to AWS or Azure. Firstly, I can't find any official announcement regarding the rationale and

by xkgt 7y ago

This is silly and will further harm GCP's viability as alternative to AWS or Azure. Firstly, I can't find any official announcement regarding the rationale and suggested solutions for their customers to reduce their cost. Just adding a banner to docs pages is plain lazy and is not customer friendly. Ideally IPv6 support should have been added or at least scheduled to be available at instance level [1] before enforcing such charges. This indicates a lack of engineering capability (more likely resource commitment) to implement such a critical feature on its platform in a timely manner, particularly given that its rivals already have the support in place. To me, that is more worrying than an increase in bill. What is the pace of innovation one can expect from GCP platform? How committed are its leaders as a public cloud service provider? 1. https://googlecloudplatform.uservoice.com/forums/302595-compute-engine/suggestions/8518246-support-ipv6 https://googlecloudplatform.uservoice.com/forums/302595-comp...

AaronFriel 7y ago
Not to detract from what you're saying about IPv6: support there is key. Azure and AWS both support IPv6. That said, Azure charges for IPv4 external IPs. AWS does not, but I'd be surprised if the cost wasn't internally associated with ELB/ALB, EC2 instances, or other products. That is, you're still paying for it.
- omeid2 7y ago
  Sure, you're paying for everything you use, but the difference is when you compare costs. The less "addons" you need, the more true is the cost.
- ben509 7y ago
  While elastic IPs are free for an active instance, AWS does charge for unused EIPs[1]. (You can also set a public IP on an instance, but it can change when the instance is restarted.) So if you need to hold on to an IPv4 address, it's going to cost you. That seems like it's exactly the same model as GCP. [1]: https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/elastic-ip-charges/ https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/elast...
  - alexeldeib 7y ago
    It won't be the same, right? Per the article, GCP will be charging on active instances.
    - unionpivo 7y ago
      No they will charge you for addresses you don't use. Which makes perfect sense imo.
      - cowsandmilk 7y ago
        > No they will charge you for addresses you don't use. No, that is what they currently do. Starting January 1, 2020, they will charge you for addresses on active instances. Current: Static IP address (assigned but unused) $0.010/hr Starting January 1, they add: Static and ephemeral IP addresses in use on standard VM instances $0.004/hr Static and ephemeral IP addresses in use on preemptible VM instances $0.002/hr
    - ben509 7y ago
      Oh, derp, I must have skipped past the article to the GCP page.
      - alexeldeib 7y ago
        Not sure if I'm just misunderstanding you -- by "article" I mean "GCP documentation page", which for completeness states: "Static and ephemeral IP addresses in use on standard VM instances *Starting January 1st, 2020, you will be charged $0.004 per hour."
jhealy 7y ago
> Just adding a banner to docs pages is plain lazy and is not customer friendly We will be affected by the change (our prices will drop) and we received a proactive email about them this morning.
- markbnj 7y ago
  We will also be affected and also received a proactive email this morning.
  - luka-birsa 7y ago
    +1 Plus, this is chump change, but it reminded us that we really should migrate behind their NATs for outgoing traffic. I do think that they are doing this to motivate customers to reduce the IP usage as the IPv4 space is finite.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
lucasjans 7y ago
>What is the pace of innovation one can expect from GCP platform? How committed are its leaders as a public cloud service provider? Has a customer GCP for the last 3 years I am concerned about the pace of innovation. For example, CloudFunctions still can't be put behind a VPC. I also run another product that's built on AWS and extensively uses lambdas, and the depth and breath of the solution continues to amaze me.
- topicseed 7y ago
  And I gave up on Step Functions... Probably announced at the next summit but we needed it 18 months ago... our move to AWS was beneficial with just that
- tlarkworthy 7y ago
  It works! https://stackoverflow.com/questions/57058395/when-will-google-cloud-serverless-vpc-be-available-in-europe https://stackoverflow.com/questions/57058395/when-will-googl...
  - lucasjans 7y ago
    That's progress! Though it's sill in beta - which might be OK for a side project but does make me nervous any critical aspect of a production application. https://cloud.google.com/vpc/docs/configure-serverless-vpc-access https://cloud.google.com/vpc/docs/configure-serverless-vpc-a...
jhgg 7y ago
I think this nets to a < 0.01% delta to our bill. Is this really that big an issue in practice? For hobbyist projects, maybe? But for larger customers, this is a drop in the ocean. I actually think this is a (somewhat) smart move. It incentivizes you to use a NAT gateway to egress traffic to your instances. You can either run your own fleet (it's very easy - but you gotta fix it if it breaks), or use their managed NAT solution (more expensive, but with less worry hopefully) - and not just tack on a public IP to every instance that needs internet connectivity. We did this from the get-go (running our own NATs) - and only have a few public IPs relative to the # of instances we run.
- yyhhsj0521 7y ago
  For many startups, using this more difficult but technologically sounder solution could mean hiring another engineer they can't afford.
  - sbarre 7y ago
    Setting up an inbound proxy VM that NATs all your other machines is not "difficult". There are plenty of tutorials online for doing this with nginx or Apache, and even a junior dev ops person should be able to do this in a few hours' work. I highly doubt this requires hiring another engineer.
  - 0xEFF 7y ago
    GCP has had CloudNAT for some time now. It’s a checkbox in the GUI and just works.
- rohan1024 7y ago
  It's not about the cost. Every Internet connected system(at least in cloud. Ideally every system) should be publicly accessible but instead of providing it by default they are providing it as feature. If you don't want to show VM to the world then you use NAT but they have got this backward. This is slippery slope. One day they might charge you to open a port to external world.
  - 7y ago

by xkgt 7y ago

AaronFriel 7y ago

Not to detract from what you're saying about IPv6: support there is key. Azure and AWS both support IPv6. That said, Azure charges for IPv4 external IPs. AWS does not, but I'd be surprised if the cost wasn't internally associated with ELB/ALB, EC2 instances, or other products. That is, you're still paying for it.

omeid2 7y ago
Sure, you're paying for everything you use, but the difference is when you compare costs. The less "addons" you need, the more true is the cost.
ben509 7y ago
While elastic IPs are free for an active instance, AWS does charge for unused EIPs[1]. (You can also set a public IP on an instance, but it can change when the instance is restarted.) So if you need to hold on to an IPv4 address, it's going to cost you. That seems like it's exactly the same model as GCP. [1]: https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/elastic-ip-charges/ https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/elast...
- alexeldeib 7y ago
  It won't be the same, right? Per the article, GCP will be charging on active instances.
  - unionpivo 7y ago
    No they will charge you for addresses you don't use. Which makes perfect sense imo.
    - cowsandmilk 7y ago
      > No they will charge you for addresses you don't use. No, that is what they currently do. Starting January 1, 2020, they will charge you for addresses on active instances. Current: Static IP address (assigned but unused) $0.010/hr Starting January 1, they add: Static and ephemeral IP addresses in use on standard VM instances $0.004/hr Static and ephemeral IP addresses in use on preemptible VM instances $0.002/hr
  - ben509 7y ago
    Oh, derp, I must have skipped past the article to the GCP page.
    - alexeldeib 7y ago
      Not sure if I'm just misunderstanding you -- by "article" I mean "GCP documentation page", which for completeness states: "Static and ephemeral IP addresses in use on standard VM instances *Starting January 1st, 2020, you will be charged $0.004 per hour."

jhealy 7y ago

> Just adding a banner to docs pages is plain lazy and is not customer friendly We will be affected by the change (our prices will drop) and we received a proactive email about them this morning.

markbnj 7y ago
We will also be affected and also received a proactive email this morning.
- luka-birsa 7y ago
  +1 Plus, this is chump change, but it reminded us that we really should migrate behind their NATs for outgoing traffic. I do think that they are doing this to motivate customers to reduce the IP usage as the IPv4 space is finite.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

lucasjans 7y ago

>What is the pace of innovation one can expect from GCP platform? How committed are its leaders as a public cloud service provider? Has a customer GCP for the last 3 years I am concerned about the pace of innovation. For example, CloudFunctions still can't be put behind a VPC. I also run another product that's built on AWS and extensively uses lambdas, and the depth and breath of the solution continues to amaze me.

topicseed 7y ago
And I gave up on Step Functions... Probably announced at the next summit but we needed it 18 months ago... our move to AWS was beneficial with just that
tlarkworthy 7y ago
It works! https://stackoverflow.com/questions/57058395/when-will-google-cloud-serverless-vpc-be-available-in-europe https://stackoverflow.com/questions/57058395/when-will-googl...
- lucasjans 7y ago
  That's progress! Though it's sill in beta - which might be OK for a side project but does make me nervous any critical aspect of a production application. https://cloud.google.com/vpc/docs/configure-serverless-vpc-access https://cloud.google.com/vpc/docs/configure-serverless-vpc-a...

jhgg 7y ago

I think this nets to a < 0.01% delta to our bill. Is this really that big an issue in practice? For hobbyist projects, maybe? But for larger customers, this is a drop in the ocean. I actually think this is a (somewhat) smart move. It incentivizes you to use a NAT gateway to egress traffic to your instances. You can either run your own fleet (it's very easy - but you gotta fix it if it breaks), or use their managed NAT solution (more expensive, but with less worry hopefully) - and not just tack on a public IP to every instance that needs internet connectivity. We did this from the get-go (running our own NATs) - and only have a few public IPs relative to the # of instances we run.

yyhhsj0521 7y ago
For many startups, using this more difficult but technologically sounder solution could mean hiring another engineer they can't afford.
- sbarre 7y ago
  Setting up an inbound proxy VM that NATs all your other machines is not "difficult". There are plenty of tutorials online for doing this with nginx or Apache, and even a junior dev ops person should be able to do this in a few hours' work. I highly doubt this requires hiring another engineer.
- 0xEFF 7y ago
  GCP has had CloudNAT for some time now. It’s a checkbox in the GUI and just works.
rohan1024 7y ago
It's not about the cost. Every Internet connected system(at least in cloud. Ideally every system) should be publicly accessible but instead of providing it by default they are providing it as feature. If you don't want to show VM to the world then you use NAT but they have got this backward. This is slippery slope. One day they might charge you to open a port to external world.
- 7y ago