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The Ultimate AWS to GCP Thesaurus

· 5 min read
Jeffrey Aven

aws to gcp thesauraus

There are many posts available which map analogous services between the different cloud providers, but this post attempts to go a step further and map additional concepts, terms, and configuration options to be the definitive thesaurus for cloud practitioners familiar with AWS looking to fast track their familiarisation with GCP.

It should be noted that AWS and GCP are fundamentally different platforms, nowhere is this more apparent than in the way networking is implemented between the two providers, see: GCP Networking for AWS Professionals

This post is focused on the core infrastructure, networking and security services offered by the two major cloud providers, I will do a future post on higher level services such as the ML/AI offerings from the respective providers.

Furthermore this will be a living post which I will continue to update, I encourage comments from readers on additional mappings which I will incorporate into the post as well.

I have broken this down into sections based upon the layout of the AWS Console.

Compute

EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud)GCE (Google Compute Engine)
Availability ZoneZone
InstanceVM Instance
Instance FamilyMachine Family
Instance TypeMachine Type
Amazon Machine Image (AMI)Image
IAM Role (for an EC2 Instance)Service Account
Security GroupsVPC Firewall Rules (ALLOW)
TagLabel
Termination ProtectionDeletion Protection
Reserved InstancesCommitted Use Discounts
Capacity ReservationReservation
User DataStartup Script
Spot InstancesPreemptible VMs
Dedicated InstancesSole Tenancy
EBS VolumePersistent Disk
Auto Scaling GroupManaged Instance Group
Launch ConfigurationInstance Template
ELB ListenerURL Map (Load Balancer)
ELB Target GroupBackend/ Instance Group
Instance Storage (ephemeral)Local SSDs
EBS SnapshotsSnapshots
KeypairSSH Keys
Elastic IPExternal IP
LambdaGoogle Cloud Functions
Elastic BeanstalkGoogle App Engine
Elastic Container Registry (ECR)Google Container Registry (GCR)
Elastic Container Service (ECS)Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)
Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)
AWS FargateCloud Run
AWS Service QuotasAllocation Quotas
Account (within an Organisation)Project
RegionRegion
AWS Cloud​FormationCloud Deployment Manager

Storage

Simple Storage Service (S3)Google Cloud Storage (GCS)
Standard Storage ClassStandard Storage Class
Infrequent Access Storage ClassNearline Storage Class
Amazon GlacierColdline Storage Class
Lifecycle PolicyRetention Policy
TagsLabels
SnowballTransfer Appliance
Requester PaysRequester Pays
RegionLocation Type/Location
Object LockHold
Vault Lock (Glacier)Bucket Lock
Multi Part UploadParallel Composite Transfer
Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS)Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS)
Static Website HostingBucket Website Configuration
S3 Access PointsVPC Service Controls
Object NotificationsPub/Sub Notifications for Cloud Storage
Presigned URLSigned URL
Transfer AccelerationStorage Transfer Service
Elastic File System (EFS)Cloud Filestore
AWS DataSyncTransfer Service for on-premises data
ETagETag
BucketBucket
aws s3gsutil

Database

Relational Database Service (RDS)Cloud SQL
DynamoDBCloud Datastore
ElastiCacheCloud Memorystore
Table (DynamoDB)Kind (Cloud Datastore)
Item (DynamoDB)Entity (Cloud Datastore)
Partition Key (DynamoDB)Key (Cloud Datastore)
Attributes (DynamoDB)Properties (Cloud Datastore)
Local Secondary Index (DynamoDB)Composite Index (Cloud Datastore)
Elastic Map Reduce (EMR)Cloud DataProc
AthenaBig Query
AWS GlueCloud DataFlow
Glue CatalogData Catalog
Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS)Cloud PubSub (push subscription)
Amazon KinesisCloud PubSub
Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS)Cloud PubSub (poll and pull mode)

Networking & Content Delivery

Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) (Regional)VPC Network (Global or Regional)
Subnet (Zonal)Subnet (Regional)
Route TablesRoutes
Network ACLs (NACLS)VPC Firewall Rules (ALLOW or DENY)
CloudFrontCloud CDN
Route 53Cloud DNS/Google Domains
Direct ConnectDedicated (or Partner) Interconnect
Virtual Private Network (VPN)Cloud VPN
AWS PrivateLinkGoogle Private Access
NAT GatewayCloud NAT
Elastic Load BalancerLoad Balancer
AWS WAFCloud Armour
VPC Peering ConnectionVPC Network Peering
Amazon API GatewayApigee API Gateway
Amazon API GatewayCloud Endpoints

Security, Identity, & Compliance

Root AccountSuper Admin
IAM UserMember
IAM PolicyRole (Collection of Permissions)
IAM Policy AttachmentIAM Role Binding (or IAM Binding)
Key Management Service (KMS)Cloud KMS
CloudHSMCloud HSM
Amazon Inspector (agent based)Cloud Security Scanner (scan based)
AWS Security HubCloud Security Command Center (SCC)
Secrets ManagerSecret Manager
Amazon MacieCloud Data Loss Prevention (DLP)
AWS WAFCloud Armour
AWS ShieldCloud Armour

† No direct equivalent, this is the closest equivalent

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