Migrating a project/site from GCE to GAE?

[Torsten Därr]

Hi, is it possible to move a project from GCE to GAE? I'm not a developer but I hired a company whom I ordered a GAE app from. They didn't built the app in GAE but in GCE and are now saying the project can 'easily be moved to GAE if needed'. Is this true? As far as I understand, you can't just 'move' a project to GAE. You can only built a site in GAE from scratch. Is that right? Many thanks, Torsten

[Richard Cheesmar]

[Richard Cheesmar]

Hi, Torsten, this depends on how the project is setup, language used, data base, server etc. etc.

Can you provide more details?

I emailed you at your `google address some time ago with an email address for you to get hold of me

Richard

On Friday, December 1, 2017 at 12:53:53 AM UTC+3, Torsten Därr wrote:

[George (Cloud Platform Support)]

Hello Torsten, 

You are right, you cannot just move a project to GAE, but you can use your existing GCE programming code for the app, open a GAE project and deploy the code in accordance with GAE guidelines. The "Deploying the Application" documentation page [1] provides more detailed information on how to deploy to the GAE. 

Your code might need some adapting and re-writing prior to such GAE deployment, mainly if your code had made use of local storage when running the app on the GCE. In App Engine, the local filesystem that your application is deployed to is not writeable. This behavior ensures the security and scalability of your application. There are alternatives to accessing the local file system, and re-writing accordingly should make your app ready for GAE deployment. You may gather more related detail from the "Reading and Writing Files" documentation page. [2]  

[1] https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard/python/getting-started/deploying-the-application 

[2] https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard/php/googlestorage/

[Torsten Därr]

Hello George,

Thank you very much for your explanation. What I'm trying to establish is, why the developing company wrote the site in Python using GCE instead of using GAE when per our contract, they should have used GAE from the start. They stored the files in an external repository and deployed it in my GCE account. Now, they say they fulfilled the contract but I don't agree.  

[Vitaly Bogomolov]

Hi, Torsten.

Your Django project uses Cloud SQL as a database backend, so its ready to transfer from Compute Engine VM to GAE Standard Environment project.

In fact, you can be faced only one problem on this transfer: user upload files facility.

If your site allows your users upload files, this piece of code must be rewritten, because Django by default will store uploaded files in the local filesystem. This behavior not allowed by GAE Standard Environment, as explained here.

WBR, Vitaly.