Google App Engine Background threads

[Fredrik Enestad]

This comparison: https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/managed-vms/#managed_vm_considerations

It compares "Background threads", it says "Yes, restricted" for regular gae, and "Yes" for mvm. What is the actual difference here? And whats the difference between "Background threads" and "Background processes"?

[Vinny P]

On Thu, Jan 29, 2015 at 10:57 PM, Fredrik Enestad <fredrik...@soundtrackyourbrand.com> wrote:

This comparison: https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/managed-vms/#managed_vm_considerations

It compares "Background threads", it says "Yes, restricted" for regular gae, and "Yes" for mvm. What is the actual difference here? And whats the difference between "Background threads" and "Background processes"?

For regular App Engine, threads are allowed/not allowed depending on the type of instance the code is currently running on. See the table here: https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/java/modules/#scaling_types and look at the entry marked "Background Threads." There's also a limit on the number of threads you can run: http://stackoverflow.com/a/20896720

For managed VMs, you can essentially run anything you want, however you want it. If you want to open up a ton of threads, that's perfectly fine within a managed VM. Depending on your use case, you may not be able the replicate the same in a regular instance.

 

 

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-Vinny P

Technology & Media Consultant

Chicago, IL

[nuchaev]

+1 Vinny

Regarding Background processes, on MVM's they can be: 

- Started from the application by starting an arbitrary process in the background 

- Started from a scheduler like cron 

- Invoked from the outside, e.g. using ssh.