Should I install my website on GCA or GAE ?

[Vianney Lejeune]

Hello,

I intend to install a website which contains those specifications:

• PHP 5.3+ 
• MySQLi extension (enabled by default on most hosts) 
• cURL

It is a bit short for me, but obviously it needs a database, apache or nginx, and the others tools necessary to support a web server + sending emails (via SMTP or sendmail).

I am unsure if I should use:

• Google Cloud Engine
• Google App Engine

And more importantly some pre-packaged exists to install on those infrastructure/platform, and which one, reputable and automatically updated ?

As a note, I would like much more to focus on the business and website features instead or managing the actual OS and associated software.

Thanks for your help.

[Fady (Google Cloud Platform)]

Hello Vianney,

Checking your requirements, generally both can be achieved on either Google Compute Engine, or App Engine with the exception of sending emails per this example. You may check this document for examples using PHP on both platforms.

In a nutshell, you can use Compute Engine for everything, but you would have to manage the (virtual) infrastructure yourself. For example, you can install a LAMP server per this community tutorial. On the other hand, you may use both (GAE and GCE) at the same time (maybe less infrastructure management). For example, you may use Google App Engine for your PHP application while you can use a GCE instance for sending emails, and another instance (GCE or Cloud SQL) for your MySQL database.

If you decide to use Google App engine for your PHP application, you would have to choose between standard or flexible environment per this document (check the differences). Note that per your requirements I found that in standard environment cURL extension is subject to quota and restrictions per this document, and in flexible environment MySQLi extension uses mysqlnd per this document. Furthermore, I found this stackoverflow discussion that can be useful if setting up MySQLi with CloudSQL in app engine.

That said, you have many options to deploy your web application, and going through the (hands-on) tutorials may help you decide.