Does Google App Engine use google CDN to distribute static resources? - google-app-engine

I find a lot of articles on the web describing how GAE can be used as a CDN. But, I could not locate any mention about CDN in Google's documentation of App Engine.
Can somebody please point me to some official document/article mentioning how applications developed on top of GAE benefit from Google CDN servers?
Thanks in advance :)

Yes, GAE uses google's infrastructure for static content.
Have a look at this session at Google IO 2009 and read slides 24-28.
The static content is handled by specialized infrastructure. App runtimes don't serve them.

Using App Engine as distributed file hosting isn't really an "official" usage of the service, so that's why it's never mentioned in any official documentation.
App Engine apps are served out of multiple Google production datacenters, so in theory your app will serve requests (more or less) as quickly as GMail or Docs.
If all your app does is serve static files, then you've basically got a free (to a point) CDN built on Google's servers.
Some googling finds many examples of how to accomplish this.

Related

Why can't I deploy a React app to Google Cloud Storage?

In the past when I've created a client-side web app using a framework like React, I can create a browser build and push it to a static hosting platform like AWS S3.
For Google Cloud Platform, it seems like the go-to approach is to deploy it to App Engine. If I'm understanding correctly, GAE is a combination of storage and compute resources.
Why can't I simply host the JavaScript app as prepared by webpack?
Google Cloud Storage (GCS) would be the way to go to host your static website on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Notice that in order to use GCS you'll need to have a domain as well as a GCP project. The documentation is very straightforward on how to achieve this. Here you can find some examples and other useful information.
You could also host your static website on Google App Engine (GAE). But in this case you'll need to cleverly build your app.yaml file in order to manage your URL handlers, as well as structuring your project in a particular way. Simply uploading the JS app as prepared by webpack won't work. You can find all the useful information here in order to use GAE to host your static website.

Deploy non-web Java application

I have a relatively small Java app, which I'd like to move over to the Google App Engine. It runs in the console, with no user input needed after the initial startup. I researched a bit on how to deploy it, but all tutorials seem to focus on Java web apps, when I don't really need that. Is it possible to deploy my app if it's not a web app?
App Engine is probably the wrong GCP platform for you - you'd probably be better served just deploying your jar directly onto a Google Compute Engine node. GAE is pretty explicitly oriented around web applications and you'd need to do a bunch of configuration in order to have it work for your use case.
Does your non-web Java app handle web requests? If not, it seems difficult to imagine that you would be able to reach your deployed app and use it for any purpose, once deployed. Your Java app should be able to handle requests, to make deployment worthwhile, and the deployed app useful.
You may find out about how your app should handle requests by reading the How Requests are Handled documentation page.

Using Google App Engine as a CDN

I'm building a static site which deploys to Google App Engine. Are there any advantages of storing the assets (js, css, imgs) in CloudStorage. All of the assets are going be under 32MB (if thats a limit).
Based on this slide (slides 24-28), it sounds like requests for static assets of a GAE app would use Google's special infrastructure designed for serving static assets. However its not clear about how its performance compares to Google CloudStorage.
Any clarifications on this would be much appreciated. Similar questions on Stackoverflow exists, but they are fairly dated (2010), and Google's Cloud products have changed since then.
Setting your cache headers will result in similar performance AFAIK.
Both GAE and GCS use Google Edge cache.
GCS is probably easier to manage your static resources, whereas it takes a redeploy to GAE to add/remove static resources.
Other important note : GCS as CDN does not work over HTTPS with custom domains. GAE does support HTTPS with custom domains.

Uploading google apps engine to web hosting

Hi I'm new on google apps engine platform, I use python, and after follow the course on udacity.com I found that the site is uploaded to appspot, I just want to know that the website I made only avalible on appspot? or I can hosting it on my own web hosting.
thanks
Nope you cannot use it on your own hosting without loosing a lot of features, and not really using the NDB (except if you connect to the datastore via dev)
Check here for alternatives.
I recommend AppScale

Does Google uses AppEngine for its own products?

I've been wondering: does Google uses AppEngine for its own products?
Yes.
Google's app engine is a consumer-facing front-end for the same server resources that google uses internally.
None of the major world-facing google products DIRECTLY use app engine through the API, but many internal tools built by googlers for googlers do use it, including all the limitations that are placed on the public.
​Run corporate applications on Google App Engine? Yes [they] do.

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