How do I host WordPress on Google Cloud Platform? Google Cloud Platform
GCP offers a wide range of cloud services that range from "Compute Engine" virtual machines, to managed Kubernetes clusters with the most advanced DNS as well as CDN services. In this piece we'll take a peek at some of the GCP's loved products for deploying an extremely fast WordPress site.
Fast forward to 2022, and the websites hosted there the GCP network are powered by their fastest Compute Engine VMs and their super fast premium Tier of network.
Is it unclear what this does? Let's look at Google Cloud Compute Engine!
What is Google Cloud Platform Compute Engine?
Compute Engine is Google Cloud's virtual machine (VM) product. The year 2022 is when a virtual machine can be used to refer to the term "server." Also, in the same way, when you hear somebody say that they must set up an account on a server to run their business, it usually means they're setting up a virtual machine.
What is What is a Compute Engine Virtual Machine?
As an example, a physical machine with 128 CPU CPU cores 128GB of RAM, and 1TB of SSD storage might be divided into 4 VMs each one with 32 CPU cores 32 GB of RAM and 250GB of SSD storage.
In practice, VMs from top-tier providers like Google Cloud Platform allow for flexibility in scaling that traditional physical machines can't match.
For a demonstration, think about what it would be like if your WordPress website lets users make reservations for restaurant reservations.
In the course of the week, the website doesn't see much activity. On Friday night, visitors increase and continue through the weekend. If your site were hosted on a physical server, you'd have to deal with static and non-scalable resources (e.g. 16 CPU cores, 32 GB RAM, 500 GB SSD storage). That means that your computer will only cost you less between Friday and Sunday but not as much from Monday to Thursday.
On the other hand, a Compute Engine VM allows you to allocate a minimal level of resources during each week (e.g. 4 processor cores, 16GB RAM, 500 GB SSD storage) and increase your computing resources in response to increased demand for the weekend traffic surge. After the weekend surge you can then reduce the return to your initial configuration. Because Google Cloud offers a powerful developer API, the scaling process could be made automated!
Compute Engine Machine Families
Before diving into the ways Compute Engine can be used to host an WordPress website, let's look over the various machine family options available through Compute Engine.
E2 Virtual Machines
E2 VMs were designed to be low-cost day-to-day computing scenarios. They're ideal for hosting small websites and apps, microservices, and development environments. Even though Google does not explicitly say that, many see that the E2 device family to be an easier and cheaper replacement for the aging N1 machine family.
E2 VMs utilize x86 processors made by Intel and AMD however, unlike other machine categories, they won't let you choose a specific generation of chips. Instead, E2 VMs use the proprietary "resource load balancing" technique to assign CPUs according to availability. This means that an E2 VM can be driven by different Intel (Skylake, Broadwell, and Haswell) and AMD EPYC Rome chipsets.
Thanks to Google's load balancing technology that includes customized CPU schedulers as well as performance-aware CPU transfer, E2 VMs can maintain a consistent quality of performance even with varying physical hardware powering the VM.
N1 Virtual Machines
Similar to the E2 VM family, N1 VMs also come with lower costs general-purpose, VMs designed for daily computing requirements. But, they utilize older Intel processors and have lower cost-to-performance than E2 virtual machines. Thus, unless you have an underlying reason for choosing N1 VMs, E2 VMs can achieve the same level of performance, but at a less price.
N2 Virtual Machines
N2 VMs provide a better performance alternative to N1 and E2 VMs. Unlike N1 and E2 devices, N2 VMs come fitted with more modern Intel Cascade Lake processors that are, as per Google, offer 20% higher performance with the same costs as the lower-end VMs. For memory-heavy use cases N2 VMs may be set up with as much as 25 percent more memory for each CPU.
N2D Virtual Machines
N2D Virtual Machines (VMs) are like N2 virtual machines, however they ditch Intel CPUs to make room for AMD chips. In comparison to N2 virtual machines, N2D VMs can be configured with more processors, 144 CPUs, and 256 more gigabytes of RAM. So, if you're looking for a powerful general purpose machine with a high number of CPU core counts and memory limits, N2D VMs are a solid option.
C2 Virtual Machines
C2 VMs feature high-performance "compute-optimized" devices. C2 VMs are equipped with the latest Intel Xeon CPUs that permit sustained clock speeds that exceed 3.8 2 GHz. Comparatively, E2, N2, and N2D use lower-tier Intel CPUs that are not capable of sustaining 3.8 the GHz. C2 VMs are specifically designed for high-end CPU-intensive tasks including electronic design automation gaming, certain types of scientific modeling, and single-threaded programs.
M1/M2 Virtual Machines
M1 and M2 VMs are perfect for workloads that demand a large amount of memory including massive memory (non-persistent) databases, enterprise warehouses, data analytics software and many more. M1 VMs offer up to 4 TB memory M2 VMs may be equipped with 12 TB memory.
A2 Virtual Machines
A2 VMs are the newest models within the GCP Compute Engine lineup. As with M1 and M2 virtual machines A2 VMs were designed for particular workloads. A2 VMs can be equipped with 16 powerful NVIDIA Ampere A100 Tensor core GPUs and are designed for developing and training deep learning and machine learning models.
Compute Engine VM Configuration
When you go through the Compute Engine VM set-up procedure, you will be able to select your VM location and the specifications (machine family, CPU and RAM). It is also possible to select an operating system (Debian, Ubuntu, Windows Server, etc.) to boot the disk, and attach secondary local and persistent drive storage device.
Once you've installed the Compute Engine VM, you'll get access to the computing resources backed by Google's powerful technology and network. But, you must be aware that the Google infrastructure is secured at the hardware level however, you are responsible to manage security on the level of the application or software.
While having access to world-class computing infrastructure is definitely amazing, managing your own WordPress hosting platform in the present cyber-security environment can be a challenge. Therefore, unless there is an incentive and capabilities to run your own WordPress infrastructure with GCP it is recommended to use the services of a managed WordPress host that supports Google Cloud Platform instead.
What exactly is cloud DNS?
What do you need to Be Aware Of About Cloud CDN?
For advanced users, Cloud CDN is also compatible with other GCP services like Cloud Storage (object storage) and Stackdriver (monitoring). It can cache files of up to 5 terabytes in size. It also can use signed URLs to provide temporary permissioned access to the asset.
If you're deploying your WordPress site on Google Cloud Platform, Cloud CDN is a great CDN solution for delivering static files to your visitors efficiently and quickly method.
What Are the Advantages to GCP Internet Networking?
Imagine if you're driving from home to your local grocery store. Even if you have an ultra-fast vehicle time to get to the supermarket is most likely affected by roads, traffic conditions, stop signs and traffic lights.
This is why optimizing the drive by finding a light-traffic route with minimal stops and traffic signals can help you make the most of your super fast car.
Similar principles apply to hosting, which is usually a topic that a lot of web hosting firms don't speak about.
Let's say your site is hosted by San Francisco, and you draw visitors from all over the world. Visitors from New York, Sweden, Taiwan, and Cape Town will travel through different network cables, many of them are located at the bottom of the ocean, to get to your site. When your server is able to process the request, the result has to be returned to the client via network cables.
Like the various routes that connect your home to the nearest supermarket, there's a myriad of networking cables for internet traffic for getting from one location to another. Like roads throughout the physical globe, there are some Internet transport routes are better quicker, more reliable and less congested as compared to other routes.
In the last 20 years, Google has been building one of the largest private internet networks. In 2017, Google estimates that their network handled " 25-30% of the internet's traffic." In actual, Google currently has an ownership stake of more than 63,000 miles of submarine network cables around the world.
GCP Standard Tier Network
According to Google, the Standard Tier network "delivers network performance comparable to other public cloud providers and at a cost that is lower than our Premium Tier."
Contrary to Google, many other cloud-based providers like DigitalOcean or Linode don't have an extensive private global network that can route Internet traffic. They instead redirect traffic to internet service providers (ISP) networks on the public internet.
Traffic routed via the open web is usually optimized to reduce cost, which means it may be subject to several additional "hops" before it reaches the final destination.
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Going back to our real-world road analogy, think of your Standard Tier network as local roads and the Premium Tier network as highways. By using local roads, or even the Standard Tier network, you'll probably have to contend with more stoppages due to roads, traffic lights or road construction.
Let's say your site is hosted in GCP's Virginia data center and utilizes Standard Tier. Standard Tier network. If you get a request by a person from London, UK, the route of traffic through Virginia and London is handled by ISPs rather than Google.
In the eyes of the user from the perspective of the user, the request to your site may be directed to different locations prior to reaching your server within Virginia. In contrast, the information from your server could be required to go to another location prior to getting routed back to London, UK.
GCP Premium Tier Network
It is the Premium Tier network utilizes as much of Google's private network as is possible. When using Premium Tier Premium Tier network there will be fewer trips between your destination and source as the route of traffic routing is no longer optimized for cost. In fact, Premium Tier is optimized to improve speed and efficiency.
Google's Premium Tier network comprises more than 100 Points of Presence (PoPs) worldwide, many of which are connected by privately-owned submarine cables. In 2022, Google is investing in 18 cable subsea installations (over 63,000 miles), six of which it owns in full. Subsea cables that are affiliated with Google span the globe and connect key areas within North America, South America, Asia, Europe, and Africa.
Google's subsea cable investments comprise the Firmina (East Coast USA from Argentina), Echo (California to Singapore and Indonesia) and Grace Hopper (New York to Spain and UK).
Taking the same example above (routing routes between Virginia between Virginia and London), routing via the Premium Network allows traffic to traverse Google's transatlantic subsea cables. Instead of going through several public ISPs, traffic would be directly routed through Virginia to London through Google's private network. When the traffic reaches Google's data center in London the traffic would then be picked up by the client's ISP and served accordingly.
GCP Standard Tier Network vs. Premium Tier Network
GCP's premium Tier network is significantly quicker and more stable than the Standard Tier network. According to Cedexis during a load balancing test commissioned by Google in a load balancing test, its Standard Tier network could sustain the equivalent of 3,223 kbps in traffic, and GCP's Premium Tier network sustained 5,401 kbps --a significant 1.7x variation. According to another test carried out by Cedexis the company, they discovered that Google's Premium Tier network had 30% lower latency.
What are the reasons to install WordPress on Google Cloud?
WordPress Websites are Dynamic
WordPress Doesn't have the capabilities to support Multicore
After we've confirmed that WordPress sites depend on a server that is active in the background, let's explore the computational limitations of WordPress. Nowadays, it's common for computers to ship with multiple CPUs as well as applications to use multiple cores to perform the same task. For example, photo editing apps like Adobe Photoshop utilize more than one CPU core for speedier processing of images.
There are many aspects of an CPU's performance, and the clock speed is on the top of the list. The clock frequency of a CPU determines how many instructions it is able to execute in a second. The general rule is that a CPU with an increased clock speed will handle more information in less time.
Because WordPress does not have the capacity to use multiple CPU cores to process one request, using a processor that has a higher clock speed lets more requests be processed in less time. This is the reason Google Cloud Platform is a great choice for hosting WordPress sites.
More latency, higher bounce Rate
In 2022, an average internet user is bombarded with daily blog posts and videos, as well as ads and posts on social media. If you're a webmaster, it's important to make sure your site is loading as quickly as you can across a broad range of devices because users will not wait for a slow site to take a while to load.
Google's Cloud CDN lets you offload static assets to data centers worldwide. Additionally they also have their Premium Tier network optimizes the routing of traffic to give users an advantage over sites that depend on the public ISPs for all of the traffic flow.
A Powerful Developer API
Google Cloud Platform offers a rich and robust developer API that is designed for cloud architect, administrators and DevOps experts, engineers and much more. If you're considering hosting your WordPress site on Google Cloud Platform We suggest getting acquainted with the Google Cloud APIs and Google Cloud SDK to simplify tasks and simplify your work.
You can, for instance, utilize the Google Cloud API to automate scaling up your instance in response to your traffic monitoring software. In the same way, you can utilize the built-in Gcloud tool in the Google Cloud SDK to configure firewall rules, create and attach further SSDs to Compute Engine VMs, set up the Cloud CDN zone, and other.
How do I host a WordPress Site on Google Cloud Platform
There are a variety of methods to host a WordPress site on the Google Cloud Platform, and each method has its own set of compromises and constraints. Additionally, as GCP is an entirely unmanaged service, you need that you understand the administration of systems in order to deploy the WordPress site in a secure method (or choose a managed host which can take the responsibility for this).
If you're more inclined to an DIY approach, here's an overview of the key things you'll need to be aware of. While we don't explain step-by-step the steps to host an WordPress website using Google Cloud, we'll provide an overview of the basics you need to know to begin.
Host WordPress using GCP Compute Engine
The easiest method to self-host WordPress with the Google Cloud Platform is with a Compute Engine VM. Below are the basic steps you'll need to follow in order to get your WordPress website up and up and running.
- Next, you'll need to install and set up your WordPress core software to work with your website server and PHP installation.
Is a Google Cloud-Recommended Host
The hosting infrastructure of's hosts runs on the most powerful of GCP. Our computing resources are powered by GCP. we utilize C2 compute-optimized VMs in all supported locations.
We don't depend on Cloud DNS or Cloud CDN for their respective capabilities, we do make top-tier DNS and CDN service available to every customer at no additional cost.
Most importantly, hosting on Google Cloud means you don't need to fret any time about managing the various pieces of Google Cloud infrastructure for running WordPress. All of our Compute Engine VMs have been configured to make sure that data of customers is kept as safe as is possible This means that we use numerous firewalls, programs and port configurations, and specific user permissions for each user.
We also track software releases that are compatible with Linux, PHP, MySQL, Nginx, and more to make sure critical vulnerabilities are updated and fixed as quickly as is possible.
My -- A Custom-Built Dashboard to be used with WordPress
If you do manage to create your WordPress hosting platform on Google Cloud Platform, Google does not provide tools to help you manage the administration of your WordPress site.
There are other options and tools that you could anticipate to find in My:
- And much, much, more ....
For a chance to experience My take a look at our FREE demo right here!
Support for WordPress is available 24/7. WordPress Support
What you don't receive while self-hosting your site on Google Cloud Platform is 24/7/365 support for WordPress-specific issues. GCP offers various tiers of support that range from free to $500+ per month, but their scope of support primarily focuses on infrastructure-related issues.
Furthermore, we don't have tiered support, which means you'll be able to connect with a qualified engineer who can help you solve your issue. We are available 24 hours a day through live chat and with an average response time under 2 minutes, we'll be able to resolve your issue in no time!
Summary
Google Cloud Platform should be in the top spot on the list of cloud services to test out for high-performance WordPress hosting. With their wide range of top-tier cloud infrastructure and C2 compute-optimized VMs and high-speed networking, GCP has all the tools you need to build the fastest WordPress site.
Although Google Cloud Platform provides all the elements needed to construct the most efficient WordPress website, the process of putting these blocks together could be the most time-consuming and difficult task - especially if you don't have sophisticated sysadmin abilities.
This is where we come in!
Additionally, you don't must worry about the infrastructure maintenance and security on , as all of that is handled by our expert Sysadmins as well as DevOps engineers. This means you can spend your time doing what you do best -building your business and audience.
- Easy setup and management in the My dashboard
- Support is available 24/7.
- The top Google Cloud Platform hardware and network powered by Kubernetes to ensure maximum capacity
- Enterprise-level Cloudflare integration to speed up as well as security
- The global reach of the audience is enhanced by up to 35 data centers and more than 275 POPs across the globe