Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)

Many public clouds are investing heavily in compute services that utilize containerization technologies, often referred to as CaaS. These technologies solve entire classes of problems by abstracting away underlying virtual machines and networking components, allowing developers to build and deploy applications inside Linux containers. Container technologies like Docker allow developers to manage services somewhere between the application layer and the system layer, giving developers the ability to package the entire runtime environment including the application, external dependencies, and operating system components.

For Google Cloud, CaaS takes the form of the GKE. Building on top of the open source Kubernetes project, GKE allows developers to package and deploy applications inside Docker containers while Google manages the underlying VM clusters and Kubernetes installation. This level of abstraction has quickly grown in popularity for its ability to preserve many of the benefits of IaaS while providing much of the convenience seen in higher levels of abstraction.