Google Compute Engine (GCE)
Google Compute Engine delivers virtual machines running in Google's innovative data centers and worldwide fiber network. VMs boot quickly and deliver consistent performance. Our VMs are available in predefined sizes or as Custom Machine Types optimized for your workload. Flexible pricing and automatic sustained use discounts provide leading price/performance.
Features
- High-performance, scalable VMs
- Fast VM boot times
- Custom machine types
- High-performance persistent and local disk options
- Live migration of VMs
- Preemptable machines
- Flexible pricing
- Sustained use discounts
- Per-second billing
- Transparent maintenance
Benefits
- Live migration maximizes virtual machine uptime
- Preemptible machines offer predictable low-cost compute for batch processing
- Create custom machines with exact resources required by your workload
- Fast VM boot to launch, scale and recover VMs quickly
- Friendly pay-for-what-you-use pricing
- Scale automatically in response to increased demand
- Highly efficient carbon-neutral data centres to reduce your carbon footprint
- Discounted prices for long-running workloads, no sign-up fees/up-front commitment
Pricing
£0 a unit
- Education pricing available
Service documents
Request an accessible format
Framework
G-Cloud 10
Service ID
3 2 5 6 4 4 2 9 1 6 0 0 2 4 4
Contact
Google
Adam Stewart
Telephone: +44 20 3821 2223
Email: G-Cloud@google.com
Service scope
- Service constraints
-
Please refer to https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/ for more information on service constraints.
Supplier (Google) is unable accept payment for G-Cloud Services by the Government Procurement Card (GPC). - System requirements
- https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/
User support
- Email or online ticketing support
- Yes, at extra cost
- Support response times
- Target Initial Response Time of 4 business hours for the silver support, 1 hour for the Gold and 15 minutes for the Platinum.
- User can manage status and priority of support tickets
- No
- Phone support
- Yes
- Phone support availability
- 24 hours, 7 days a week
- Web chat support
- No
- Onsite support
- Yes, at extra cost
- Support levels
-
Bronze - Includes our product documentation, community support, and support for billing issues
Silver - Lowest-cost access to support services
Gold - For production services on Cloud Platform
Platinum - For high volume production services on Cloud Platform
A full description of the service offerings can be found at https://cloud.google.com/support/ - Support available to third parties
- Yes
Onboarding and offboarding
- Getting started
-
Documentation, training, worked examples, best practices are available to assist users with getting started on Google Cloud Platform.
Getting Started: https://cloud.google.com/getting-started/
Online Documentation: https://cloud.google.com/docs/
Training Sessions: https://cloud.google.com/training/
Google Developers Codelabs provide a guided, tutorial, hands-on coding experience:
https://codelabs.developers.google.com/
Best practices: https://cloud.google.com/docs/enterprise/best-practices-for-enterprise-organizations - Service documentation
- Yes
- Documentation formats
- HTML
- End-of-contract data extraction
-
Google Cloud Platform allows customers to extract data from the platform using the standard tooling and APIs that are available on the platform.
Google will enable Customer to delete Customer Data during the Term in a manner consistent with the functionality of the Services. If Customer uses the Services to delete any Customer Data during the Term and that Customer Data cannot be recovered by Customer, this use will constitute an instruction to Google to delete the relevant Customer Data from Google’s systems in accordance with applicable law. Google will comply with this instruction as soon as reasonably practicable and within a maximum period of 180 days, unless EU or EU Member State law requires storage.
During the Term, Google will, in a manner consistent with the functionality of the Services, enable Customer to access, rectify and restrict processing of Customer Data, including via the deletion functionality provided by Google.
https://cloud.google.com/terms/data-processing-terms - End-of-contract process
- On expiry of the Term, Customer instructs Google to delete all Customer Data (including existing copies) from Google’s systems in accordance with applicable law. Google will, after a recovery period of up to 30 days following such expiry, comply with this instruction as soon as reasonably practicable and within a maximum period of 180 days, unless EU or EU Member State law requires storage.
Using the service
- Web browser interface
- Yes
- Using the web interface
- Manage and get insights into everything that powers your cloud application -- including web applications, data analysis, virtual machines, datastore, databases, networking, and developer services. Google Cloud Console helps you deploy, scale and diagnose production issues in a simple web based interface. Search to quickly find resources and connect to instances via SSH in the browser. Handle devops workflows on the go with powerful native iOS and Android applications. Master the most complex development tasks with Google Cloud Shell, your admin machine in the cloud.
- Web interface accessibility standard
- None or don’t know
- How the web interface is accessible
- We are working towards making our products and services more accessible for assistive technology users.
- Web interface accessibility testing
- It is in our pipeline to test and deliver our products and services to become more accessible for assistive technology users
- API
- Yes
- What users can and can't do using the API
-
You can automate your workflows in your language by accessing the Google Cloud Platform products from your code. Cloud APIs provide similar functionality to Cloud SDK and Cloud Console, and allow you to automate your workflows by using your favorite language.
https://cloud.google.com/apis/ - API automation tools
-
- Ansible
- Chef
- OpenStack
- SaltStack
- Terraform
- Puppet
- Other
- Other API automation tools
-
- Jenkins
- Packer
- Kubernetes
- Spinnaker
- Google Cloud Deployment Manager
- Pivotal
- Openshift
- Drone
- API documentation
- Yes
- API documentation formats
- HTML
- Command line interface
- Yes
- Command line interface compatibility
-
- Linux or Unix
- Windows
- MacOS
- Other
- Using the command line interface
-
The CLI can be used to access products and services on GCP from the command-line. You can run these tools interactively or in your automated scripts.
https://cloud.google.com/sdk/
Scaling
- Scaling available
- Yes
- Scaling type
-
- Automatic
- Manual
- Independence of resources
-
GCP runs on top of Google's infrastructure which serves billions of users across many products and services, the integrity and scale of those services ensures that user demand is handled appropriately.
Customer data is logically segregated by domain to allow data to be produced for a single tenant only.
The authorization to provision additional processing capacity is obtained through budget approvals and
managed through internal SLAs as part of an effective resource economy.
Further details - https://cloud.google.com/files/Google-Cloud-CSA-CAIQ-January2017-CSA-CAIQ-v3.0.1.pdf (Section AAC-03.1 and IVS-04.3) - Usage notifications
- Yes
- Usage reporting
-
- API
Analytics
- Infrastructure or application metrics
- Yes
- Metrics types
-
- CPU
- Disk
- HTTP request and response status
- Memory
- Network
- Number of active instances
- Other
- Other metrics
- See documentation for further metrics https://cloud.google.com/products/management/
- Reporting types
-
- API access
- Real-time dashboards
- Regular reports
Resellers
- Supplier type
- Not a reseller
Staff security
- Staff security clearance
- Conforms to BS7858:2012
- Government security clearance
- Up to Security Clearance (SC)
Asset protection
- Knowledge of data storage and processing locations
- Yes
- Data storage and processing locations
-
- United Kingdom
- European Economic Area (EEA)
- EU-US Privacy Shield agreement locations
- Other locations
- User control over data storage and processing locations
- No
- Datacentre security standards
- Complies with a recognised standard (for example CSA CCM version 3.0)
- Penetration testing frequency
- At least every 6 months
- Penetration testing approach
- In-house
- Protecting data at rest
-
- Physical access control, complying with CSA CCM v3.0
- Physical access control, complying with SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
- Physical access control, complying with another standard
- Encryption of all physical media
- Scale, obfuscating techniques, or data storage sharding
- Other
- Other data at rest protection approach
-
Google Cloud Platform encrypts customer content stored at rest, without any action required from the customer, using one or more encryption mechanisms.
Data for storage is split into chunks, and each chunk is encrypted with a unique data encryption key. These data encryption keys are stored with the data, encrypted with ("wrapped" by) key encryption keys that are exclusively stored and used inside Google’s central Key Management Service. Google’s Key Management Service is redundant and globally distributed.
Data stored in Google Cloud Platform is encrypted at the storage level using either AES256 or AES128.
https://cloud.google.com/security/encryption-at-rest/default-encryption/ - Data sanitisation process
- Yes
- Data sanitisation type
-
- Deleted data can’t be directly accessed
- Hardware containing data is completely destroyed
- Equipment disposal approach
- Complying with a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v.30, CAS (Sanitisation) or ISO/IEC 27001
Backup and recovery
- Backup and recovery
- Yes
- Backup controls
- This varies between services, users can control what backups are performed via the web interface, CLI or APIs.
- Datacentre setup
- Multiple datacentres with disaster recovery
- Scheduling backups
- Users schedule backups through a web interface
- Backup recovery
- Users can recover backups themselves, for example through a web interface
Data-in-transit protection
- Data protection between buyer and supplier networks
-
- Private network or public sector network
- TLS (version 1.2 or above)
- IPsec or TLS VPN gateway
- Bonded fibre optic connections
- Legacy SSL and TLS (under version 1.2)
- Other
- Other protection between networks
-
Google employs several security measures to help ensure the authenticity, integrity, and privacy of data in transit.
Google encrypts and authenticates all data in transit at one or more network layers when data moves outside physical boundaries not controlled by Google or on behalf of Google. Data in transit inside a physical boundary controlled by or on behalf of Google is generally authenticated but not necessarily encrypted.
Depending on the connection that is being made, Google applies default protections to data in transit. For example, we secure communications between the user and the Google Front End (GFE) using TLS.
https://cloud.google.com/security/encryption-in-transit/ - Data protection within supplier network
-
- TLS (version 1.2 or above)
- Other
- Other protection within supplier network
-
Google encrypts Cloud Platform data as it moves between our data centers on our private network. Traffic on Google's networks is encrypted.
https://cloud.google.com/security/
Availability and resilience
- Guaranteed availability
- https://cloud.google.com/compute/sla
- Approach to resilience
-
Google operates a global network of data centers to reduce risks from geographical disruptions. The link below includes the locations of our data centers:
http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/inside/locations/
Google does not depend on failover to other providers and builds redundancy and failover into its own global infrastructure.
Google performs annual testing of its business continuity plans to simulate disaster scenarios that simulate catastrophic events that may disrupt Google operations.
https://cloud.google.com/files/Google-Cloud-CSA-CAIQ-January2017-CSA-CAIQ-v3.0.1.pdf - Outage reporting
-
Google maintains a dashboard with service availability and service issues here:
https://status.cloud.google.com/
Identity and authentication
- User authentication
-
- 2-factor authentication
- Public key authentication (including by TLS client certificate)
- Identity federation with existing provider (for example Google apps)
- Limited access network (for example PSN)
- Dedicated link (for example VPN)
- Username or password
- Other
- Other user authentication
-
A built-in Password Monitor is visible to the end user upon password
creation and to the System Administrators of the tenant whom can decide to force a password change on any user that is later detected to have a password that is weak. Google's native authentication has
protections in place that would detect a brute force attack and challenge the user to solve a Captcha and would auto lock the account if suspicious activity is detected. The tenant's System Administrators can
reset that account for the end user. - Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels
-
Google Cloud Identity & Access Management (IAM) lets administrators authorize who can take action on specific resources, giving you full control and visibility to manage cloud resources centrally. IAM access policies are defined at the project level using granular controls of users and groups or using ACLs.
Support services are only provided to authorized customer administrators whose identities have been verified in several ways. Googler access is monitored and audited by our dedicated security, privacy, and internal audit teams.
https://cloud.google.com/iam/
https://cloud.google.com/security/overview/whitepaper#administrative_access
https://cloud.google.com/files/Google-Cloud-CSA-CAIQ-January2017-CSA-CAIQ-v3.0.1.pdf - Access restriction testing frequency
- At least once a year
- Management access authentication
-
- 2-factor authentication
- Public key authentication (including by TLS client certificate)
- Identity federation with existing provider (for example Google Apps)
- Dedicated link (for example VPN)
- Username or password
- Other
- Devices users manage the service through
- Directly from any device which may also be used for normal business (for example web browsing or viewing external email)
Audit information for users
- Access to user activity audit information
- Users have access to real-time audit information
- How long user audit data is stored for
- Less than 1 month
- Access to supplier activity audit information
- Users have access to real-time audit information
- How long supplier audit data is stored for
- At least 12 months
- How long system logs are stored for
- User-defined
Standards and certifications
- ISO/IEC 27001 certification
- Yes
- Who accredited the ISO/IEC 27001
- Ernst & Young CertifyPoint
- ISO/IEC 27001 accreditation date
- 18/04/2017
- What the ISO/IEC 27001 doesn’t cover
-
See certificate for full list of products covered, anything not listed is not covered.
https://cloud.google.com/files/GCP_ISO_27001_Fall_2017.pdf
https://cloud.google.com/files/GCP_ISO_27001_2017.pdf
https://cloud.google.com/files/EYCP_GCP_ISO_27001_2017.pdf - ISO 28000:2007 certification
- No
- CSA STAR certification
- Yes
- CSA STAR accreditation date
- 30/01/2017
- CSA STAR certification level
- Level 1: CSA STAR Self-Assessment
- What the CSA STAR doesn’t cover
-
For further information see:
https://cloud.google.com/files/Google-Cloud-CSA-CAIQ-January2017-CSA-CAIQ-v3.0.1.pdf - PCI certification
- Yes
- Who accredited the PCI DSS certification
- Securisea Inc.
- PCI DSS accreditation date
- 19/06/2016
- What the PCI DSS doesn’t cover
- The validation enables PCI Level 1 merchants to use Google Cloud Platform for their processing services.
- Other security certifications
- Yes
- Any other security certifications
-
- SSAE16 / ISAE 3402 Type II
- SOC 1
- SOC 2
- SOC 3 public audit report
- ISO 27001
- ISO 27017
- ISO 27018
- EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework
- Approved EU Model Contract Clauses by EU data privacy authorities
- NCSC Cloud Security Principles
Security governance
- Named board-level person responsible for service security
- Yes
- Security governance certified
- Yes
- Security governance standards
-
- CSA CCM version 3.0
- ISO/IEC 27001
- Other
- Other security governance standards
-
https://cloud.google.com/security/compliance
SSAE16 / ISAE 3402 Type II:
SOC 1
SOC 2
SOC 3 public audit report
ISO 27001
ISO 27017
ISO 27018
PCI DSS v3.1
HIPAA
CSA STAR
EU Data Protection Directive
EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework
GDPR
Independent Security Evaluators Audit (ISE)
UK NCSC Cloud Security Principles - Information security policies and processes
-
https://cloud.google.com/security/compliance
Custom, ISO27001, ISO27017, ISO270018
Operational security
- Configuration and change management standard
- Conforms to a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v3.0 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
- Configuration and change management approach
- In Google production environments, software updates are manually vetted to ensure the stability of the system. Changes are then tested and cautiously rolled out to systems. The details vary somewhat depending on the service being considered, but all development work is separated from the operation systems, testing occurs in a multi-staged fashion in both environments and in dedicated test settings. We can share, under NDA, the SOC2 audit report (based on standards from the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board), which describes the change management process. Additionally, changes to code go through a process of code review involving additional engineer(s).
- Vulnerability management type
- Conforms to a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v3.0 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
- Vulnerability management approach
-
Google administrates a vulnerability management process that actively scans for security threats using a combination of commercially available and purpose-built in-house tools, intensive-automated and manual penetration efforts, quality assurance processes, software security reviews and external audits. The vulnerability management team is responsible for tracking and following up on vulnerabilities. Once a vulnerability requiring remediation has been identified, it is logged, prioritized according to severity, and assigned an owner. The vulnerability management team tracks and follows up frequently until remediated. Google also maintains relationships with members of the security research community to track issues in Google services and open-source tools.
https://cloud.google.com/security/overview/whitepaper#vulnerability_management - Protective monitoring type
- Conforms to a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v3.0 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
- Protective monitoring approach
-
At many points across our global network, internal traffic is inspected for suspicious behavior, such as the presence of traffic that might indicate botnet connections. This analysis is performed using a combination of open-source and commercial tools for traffic capture and parsing. A proprietary correlation system built on top of Google technology also supports this analysis. Network analysis is supplemented by examining system logs to identify unusual behavior, such as attempted access of customer data. Google security engineers place standing search alerts on public data repositories to look for security incidents that might affect the company’s infrastructure.
https://cloud.google.com/security/overview/whitepaper#monitoring - Incident management type
- Conforms to a recognised standard, for example, CSA CCM v3.0 or ISO/IEC 27035:2011 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
- Incident management approach
-
We have a rigorous incident management process for security events that may affect the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of systems or data. This process specifies courses of action, procedures for notification, escalation, mitigation, and documentation. Google’s security incident management program is structured around the NIST guidance on handling incidents (NIST SP 800–61). Key staff are trained in forensics and handling evidence in preparation for an event, including the use of third-party and proprietary tools. Testing of incident response plans is performed for key areas, such as systems that store sensitive customer information.
https://cloud.google.com/security/overview/whitepaper#incident_management
Secure development
- Approach to secure software development best practice
- Independent review of processes (for example CESG CPA Build Standard, ISO/IEC 27034, ISO/IEC 27001 or CSA CCM v3.0)
Separation between users
- Virtualisation technology used to keep applications and users sharing the same infrastructure apart
- Yes
- Who implements virtualisation
- Supplier
- Virtualisation technologies used
- KVM hypervisor
- How shared infrastructure is kept separate
-
We have a variety of isolation and sandboxing techniques for protecting a service from other services running on the same machine. These techniques include normal Linux user separation, language and kernel-based sandboxes, and hardware virtualization. In general, we use more layers of isolation for riskier workloads; example, when running complex file format converters on user-supplied data or when running user supplied code for products like Google App Engine or Google Compute Engine. As an extra security boundary, we enable very sensitive services, such as the cluster orchestration service and some key management services, to run exclusively on dedicated machines.
https://cloud.google.com/security/infrastructure/design/#service_identity_integrity_and_isolation
Energy efficiency
- Energy-efficient datacentres
- Yes
Pricing
- Price
- £0 a unit
- Discount for educational organisations
- Yes
- Free trial available
- No