Applications in the Cloud

GCP Fundamentals: Core Infrastructure

Getting Started with App Engine

Last modified 2018-08-13

© 2017 Google Inc. All rights reserved. Google
and the Google logo are trademarks of Google Inc.
All other company and product names may be
trademarks of the respective companies with
which they are associated.
© 2017 Google Inc. All rights reserved. Google and the Google logo are trademarks of Google Inc. All other
company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.
 Agenda Google App Engine

Google App Engine Standard Environment

Google App Engine Flexible Environment

Google Cloud Endpoints and Apigee Edge

Quiz and Lab

© 2017 Google Inc. All rights reserved. Google and the Google logo are trademarks of Google Inc. All other
company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.
 App Engine is a PaaS for building scalable applications

● App Engine makes deployment, maintenance,

and scalability easy so you can focus on
innovation
● Especially suited for building scalable web
applications and mobile backends

© 2017 Google Inc. All rights reserved. Google and the Google logo are trademarks of Google Inc. All other
company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

App Engine is a platform for building scalable web applications and mobile
backends. It allows you to concentrate on innovating your applications by
managing the application infrastructure for you. For example, App Engine
manages the hardware and networking infrastructure required to run your
code.

App Engine provides you with built-in services and APIs such as NoSQL
datastores, memcache, load balancing, health checks, application logging, and
a user authentication API, common to most applications.

App Engine will scale your application automatically in response to the amount
of traffic it receives so you only pay for the resources you use. Just upload
your code and Google will manage your app's availability. There are no servers
for you to provision or maintain.

Security Scanner automatically scans and detects common web application

vulnerabilities. It enables early threat identification and delivers very low
false-positive rates. You can easily set up, run, schedule, and manage security
scans from the Google Cloud Platform Console.

App Engine works with popular development tools such as Eclipse, IntelliJ,
Maven, Git, Jenkins, and PyCharm. You can build your apps with the tools you
love without changing your workflow.
 Agenda Google App Engine

Google App Engine Standard Environment

Google App Engine Flexible Environment

Google Cloud Endpoints and Apigee Edge

Quiz and Lab

© 2017 Google Inc. All rights reserved. Google and the Google logo are trademarks of Google Inc. All other
company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.
 App Engine standard environment

● Easily deploy your applications

● Autoscale workloads to meet demand
● Economical
○ Free daily quota
○ Usage based pricing
● SDKs for development, testing and
deployment

© 2017 Google Inc. All rights reserved. Google and the Google logo are trademarks of Google Inc. All other
company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

The App Engine standard environment is based on container instances running

on Google's infrastructure. Containers are preconfigured with one of several
available runtimes (Java 7, Python 2.7, Go and PHP). Each runtime also
includes libraries that support App Engine standard APIs. For many
applications, the standard environment runtimes and libraries may be all you
need.

The App Engine standard environment makes it easy to build and deploy an
application that runs reliably even under heavy load and with large amounts of
data. It includes the following features:
● Persistent storage with queries, sorting, and transactions
● Automatic scaling and load balancing
● Asynchronous task queues for performing work outside the scope of a
request
● Scheduled tasks for triggering events at specified times or regular
intervals
● Integration with other Google cloud services and APIs
 App Engine standard environment: Requirements

● Specific versions of Java, Python, PHP, and Go

are supported
● Your application must conform to sandbox
constraints:
○ No writing to local file system
○ All requests time out at 60 seconds
○ Third-party software installations are limited

© 2017 Google Inc. All rights reserved. Google and the Google logo are trademarks of Google Inc. All other
company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

Software Development Kits (SDKs) for App Engine are available in all
supported languages. Each SDK includes:
● All of the APIs and libraries available to App Engine
● A simulated, secure sandbox environment that emulates all of the App
Engine services on your local computer
● Deployment tools that allow you to upload your application to the cloud
and manage different versions of your application

The SDK manages your application locally, and the Google Cloud Platform
Console manages your application in production. The Google Cloud Platform
Console uses a web-based interface to create new applications, configure
domain names, change which version of your application is live, examine
access and error logs, and much more.

Applications run in a secure, sandboxed environment, allowing the App Engine

standard environment to distribute requests across multiple servers, and
scaling servers to meet traffic demands. Your application runs within its own
secure, reliable environment that is independent of the hardware, operating
system, or physical location of the server.
 Example App Engine standard workflow: Web applications

App Engine automatically App Engine can access

3 scales & reliably serves a variety of services
1 Develop & test the web your web application using dedicated APIs
application locally
Project
Memcache
App Engine
Task
App Servers queues
Use the SDK to deploy Application
instances Scheduled
2 to App Engine tasks
Application
instances Search
Application
instances Logs

© 2017 Google Inc. All rights reserved. Google and the Google logo are trademarks of Google Inc. All other
company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

In this diagram we see App Engine Standard Environment in practice. You’ll develop
your application and run a test version of it locally using the App Engine SDK. Then,
when you’re ready, you’ll use the SDK to deploy it.

Each App Engine application runs in a GCP project. App Engine automatically
provisions server instances and scales and load-balances them. Meanwhile, your
application can make calls to a variety of services using dedicated APIs. For example,
a NoSQL datastore to make data persistent; caching of that data using memcache;
searching; logging; user login; and the ability to launch actions not triggered by direct
user requests, like task queues and a task scheduler.
 Agenda Google App Engine

Google App Engine Standard Environment

Google App Engine Flexible Environment

Google Cloud Endpoints and Apigee Edge

Quiz and Lab

© 2017 Google Inc. All rights reserved. Google and the Google logo are trademarks of Google Inc. All other
company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.
 App Engine flexible environment

● Build and deploy containerized apps with a click

● No sandbox constraints
● Can access App Engine resources
● Standard runtimes: Python, Java, Go, Node.js
● Custom runtime support: Any language that
supports HTTP requests
○ Package your runtime as a Dockerfile

© 2017 Google Inc. All rights reserved. Google and the Google logo are trademarks of Google Inc. All other
company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

If the restrictions of App Engine Standard Environment’s sandbox model don’t

work for you, but you still want to take advantage of the benefits of App Engine
(like automatic scaling up and down), consider App Engine Flexible
Environment. Instead of the sandbox, App Engine Flexible Environment lets
you specify the container your application runs in.

Your application runs inside Docker containers on Google Compute Engine

virtual machines (VMs). App Engine manages these Compute Engine
machines for you. They’re health-checked, healed as necessary, and you get to
choose what geographical region they run in. And critical,
backward-compatible updates to their operating systems are automatically
applied. All this so that you can just focus on your code.

Microservices, authorization, SQL and noSQL databases, traffic splitting,

logging, search, versioning, security scanning, memcache, and content delivery
networks are all supported natively. In addition, the App Engine flexible
environment allows you to customize your runtime and even the operating
system of your virtual machine using Dockerfiles.
● Runtimes: The flexible environment includes native support for Java
8/Servlet 3.1/Jetty 9, Python 2.7 and Python 3.4, Node.js, and Go.
Developers can customize these runtimes or provide their own runtime,
such as Ruby or PHP, by supplying a custom Docker image or
 ● Dockerfile from the open source community.
● Infrastructure customization: Because VM instances in the flexible
environment are Compute Engine virtual machines, you can use SSH to
connect to every single VM and Docker container for debugging
purposes and further customization.
● Performance: Take advantage of a wide array of CPU and memory
configurations. You can specify how much CPU and memory each
instance of your application needs, and the flexible environment will
provision the necessary infrastructure for you.

App Engine manages your virtual machines, ensuring that:

● Instances are health-checked, healed as necessary, and co-located with
other module instances within the project.
● Critical, backward-compatible updates are automatically applied to the
underlying operating system.
● VM instances are automatically located by geographical region
according to the settings in your project. Google's management
services ensure that all of a project's VM instances are co-located for
optimal performance.
● VM instances are restarted on a weekly basis. During restarts, Google's
management services will apply any necessary operating system and
security updates.

App Engine flexible environment apps that use standard runtimes can access
App Engine services: Datastore, Memcache, task queues, logging, users, and
so on.
 Comparing the App Engine environments

Standard Environment Flexible Environment

Instance startup Milliseconds Minutes

SSH access No Yes (although not by default)

Write to local disk No Yes (but writes are ephemeral)

Support for 3rd-party binaries No Yes

Network access Via App Engine services Yes

Pricing model After free daily use, pay per instance Pay for resource allocation per hour; no
class, with automatic shutdown automatic shutdown

© 2017 Google Inc. All rights reserved. Google and the Google logo are trademarks of Google Inc. All other
company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

Here’s a side-by-side comparison of Standard and Flexible. Notice that Standard

Environment starts up instances of your application faster, but that you get less
access to the infrastructure in which your application runs. For example, Flexible
Environment lets you ssh into the virtual machines on which your application runs; it
lets you use local disk for scratch space; it lets you install third-party software; and it
lets your application make calls to the network without going through App Engine. On
the other hand, Standard Environment’s billing can drop to zero for a completely idle
application.
 Deploying Apps: Kubernetes Engine vs App Engine

Kubernetes Engine App Engine Flexible App Engine Standard

Language Any Any Java, Python, Go, PHP
support

Service model Hybrid PaaS PaaS

Primary use Container-based Web and mobile Web and mobile

case workloads applications, applications
container-based
workloads

Toward managed infrastructure Toward dynamic infrastructure

© 2017 Google Inc. All rights reserved. Google and the Google logo are trademarks of Google Inc. All other
company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

Because we mentioned App Engine’s use of Docker containers, you may be

wondering how App Engine compares to Kubernetes Engine. Here’s a side-by-side
comparison of App Engine with Kubernetes Engine. App Engine Standard
Environment is for people who want the service to take maximum control of their
application’s deployment and scaling. Kubernetes Engine gives the application owner
the full flexibility of Kubernetes. App Engine Flexible Edition is in between.

Also, App Engine Environment treats containers as a means to an end. But for
Kubernetes Engine, containers are a fundamental organizing principle.
 Agenda Google App Engine

Google App Engine Standard Environment

Google App Engine Flexible Environment

Google Cloud Endpoints and Apigee Edge

Quiz and Lab

© 2017 Google Inc. All rights reserved. Google and the Google logo are trademarks of Google Inc. All other
company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.
 Application Programming Interfaces hide detail, enforce contracts

Consumers

Complex, changeable implementation Simple, versioned interface

© 2017 Google Inc. All rights reserved. Google and the Google logo are trademarks of Google Inc. All other
company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

Let’s be precise about what an API is. A software service’s implementation can be
complex and changeable. If other software services had to be explicitly coded all that
detail in order to use that service, the result would be brittle and error-prone. So
instead, application developers structure the software they write so that it presents a
clean, well-defined interface that abstracts away needless detail, and then they
document that interface. That’s an Application Programming Interface. The underlying
implementation can change, as long as the interface doesn’t, and other pieces of
software that use the API don’t have to know or care.

Sometimes you do have to change an API, such as to add or deprecate a feature. To

make this kind of API change cleanly, developers version their APIs. Version 2 of an
API might contain calls that version 1 does not; programs that consume the API can
specify the API version they want to use in their calls.

Supporting an API is a very important task, and Google Cloud Platform provides two
API management tools. They approach related problems in a different way, and each
has a particular forte.
 Cloud Endpoints helps you create and maintain APIs

● Distributed API management through an API

console
● Expose your API using a RESTful interface
● Control access and validate calls with JSON
Web Tokens and Google API keys
○ Identify web, mobile users with Auth0 and
Firebase Authentication

● Generate client libraries

© 2017 Google Inc. All rights reserved. Google and the Google logo are trademarks of Google Inc. All other
company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

Cloud Endpoints is a distributed API management system. It provides an API

console, hosting, logging, monitoring, and other features to help you create,
share, maintain, and secure your APIs. You can use Cloud Endpoints with any
APIs that support the OpenAPI Specification, formerly known as the Swagger
spec.

Cloud Endpoints uses the distributed Extensible Service Proxy to provide low
latency and high performance for serving even the most demanding APIs.
Extensible Service Proxy is a service proxy based on NGINX. It runs in its own
Docker container for better isolation and scalability. The proxy is containerized
and distributed in the Container Registry and Docker registry, and can be used
with App Engine, Kubernetes Engine, Compute Engine or Kubernetes.

Cloud Endpoints features

User authentication
● JSON Web Token validation and a streamlined developer experience for
Firebase Auth, Google Auth and Auth0.
Automated deployment
● With App Engine, the proxy is deployed automatically with your
application. On Kubernetes Engine or Compute Engine, use Google’s
containerized ESP for simple deployment.
Logging and monitoring
● Monitor traffic, error rates and latency, and review logs in Cloud
Logging. Use Cloud Trace to dive into performance and BigQuery for
analysis.
API keys
● Generate API keys in Google Cloud Platform Console and validate on
every API call. Share your API with other developers to allow them to
generate their own keys.
Easy integration
● Get started quickly by using one of Google’s Cloud Endpoints
Frameworks or by simply adding an Open API specification to your
deployment.
 Cloud Endpoints: Supported platforms

Runtime environment Clients

App Engine Flexible Environment Android

Kubernetes Engine iOS

Compute Engine Javascript

© 2017 Google Inc. All rights reserved. Google and the Google logo are trademarks of Google Inc. All other
company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

Cloud Endpoints supports applications running in GCP’s compute platforms, in your

choice of languages, and your choice of client technologies.
 Apigee Edge helps you secure and monetize APIs

● A platform for making APIs available to

your customers and partners
● Contains analytics, monetization, and a
developer portal

© 2017 Google Inc. All rights reserved. Google and the Google logo are trademarks of Google Inc. All other
company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

Apigee Edge is also a platform for developing and managing API proxies. It
has a different orientation, though: it has a focus on business problems like
rate limiting, quotas, and analytics. Many users of Apigee Edge are providing a
software service to other companies, and those features come in handy.
Because the backend services for Apigee Edge need not be in GCP,
engineers also often use it when they are working to take a legacy application
apart. Instead of replacing a monolithic application in one risky move, they can
instead use Apigee Edge to peel off its services one by one, standing up
microservices to implement each in turn, until the legacy application can finally
be retired.
 Agenda Google App Engine

Google App Engine Standard Environment

Google App Engine Standard Environment

Google Cloud Endpoints and Apigee Edge

Quiz and Lab

© 2017 Google Inc. All rights reserved. Google and the Google logo are trademarks of Google Inc. All other
company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.
 Quiz

Name 3 advantages of using the

App Engine flexible environment
over App Engine standard.

What is the difference between

Cloud Endpoints and Apigee
Edge?

© 2017 Google Inc. All rights reserved. Google and the Google logo are trademarks of Google Inc. All other
company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.
 Quiz Answers

Name 3 advantages of using the The flexible environment allows SSH access,
App Engine flexible environment allows disk writes, and supports third-party
over App Engine standard. binaries (also allows stack customization and
background processes).

What is the difference between

Cloud Endpoints and Apigee
Edge?

© 2017 Google Inc. All rights reserved. Google and the Google logo are trademarks of Google Inc. All other
company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.
 Quiz Answers

Name 3 advantages of using the The flexible environment allows SSH access,
App Engine flexible environment allows disk writes, and supports third-party
over App Engine standard. binaries (also allows stack customization and
background processes).

What is the difference between Cloud Endpoints helps you create and maintain
Cloud Endpoints and Apigee APIs; Apigee Edge helps you secure and
Edge? monetize APIs.

© 2017 Google Inc. All rights reserved. Google and the Google logo are trademarks of Google Inc. All other
company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.
 Lab instructions

In this lab you will create a simple App Engine application using the Cloud
Shell local development environment and then deploy it to App Engine.

● Preview an App Engine application using Cloud Shell

● Launch an App Engine application
● Disable an App Engine application

© 2017 Google Inc. All rights reserved. Google and the Google logo are trademarks of Google Inc. All other
company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.
 More resources

Google App Engine

https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/

Google App Engine Flexible Environment

https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/flexible/

Google App Engine Standard Environment

https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard/

Google Cloud Endpoints

https://cloud.google.com/endpoints/docs/

Apigee Edge
http://docs.apigee.com/api-services/content/what-ap
igee-edge
© 2017 Google Inc. All rights reserved. Google and the Google logo are trademarks of Google Inc. All other
company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.
 © 2017 Google Inc. All rights reserved. Google and the Google logo are trademarks of Google Inc. All other
company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

© 2017 Google Inc. All rights reserved. Google and the Google logo are trademarks of Google Inc. All other
company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.