2024 was a year of significant advancements in Google Cloud, particularly in the realm of Artificial Intelligence. While the company's blog rightly celebrated its most impactful AI-related posts, this overview focuses on 6 less publicized yet important features that truly transformed the workflow of our engineers.
1. Direct VPC Access: faster and cheaper
Previously, connecting Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs) with Google-managed services required cumbersome VPC Access Connectors. These connectors incurred significant costs, lacked down-scaling capabilities, and introduced latency.
Direct VPC Access, though in preview in 2023, has revolutionized connectivity this year. By eliminating the need for connectors, it has significantly reduced costs, improved performance, and enhanced reliability.
https://cloud.google.com/run/docs/configuring/vpc-direct-vpc
2. Cloud SQL Enhancements: Small Changes, Big Impact
Incremental improvements to Cloud SQL, such as the ability to directly execute queries from Cloud SQL Studio, authentication with IAM accounts and enhanced system metrics for streamlined troubleshooting, have dramatically improved engineer productivity.
https://cloud.google.com/sql/docs/release-notes
3. ARM Compute Instances: Power Efficiency Gains
Following their debut at Google Cloud Next, ARM-based C4a instance types are now available in select regions. These energy-efficient processors deliver significant cost savings for specific workloads.
https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/compute/try-c4a-the-first-google-axion-processor
4. Google Managed Apache Kafka: Empowering Data Engineers
Though relatively understated in release notes, Google Managed Apache Kafka has emerged as an indispensable tool for stream processing and real time messaging. As a highly scalable message bus, Kafka forms the foundation for many batch and stream processing tools. Combined with the power of BigQuery Engine for Apache Flink, it provides engineers with new options for building robust and flexible platforms.
https://cloud.google.com/products/managed-service-for-apache-kafka?hl=en
5. Cloud Run Functions (gen2): A New Era of Serverless Computing
The integration of Cloud Functions into Cloud Run has ushered in a new era of serverless computing. Cloud Run Functions (gen2) now boast a wealth of enhanced capabilities, including:
- Multi-event trigger management: Streamlined handling of diverse events.
- High-performance Direct VPC egress: Improved connectivity and reduced latency.
- Mountable Cloud Storage volumes: Enhanced data access and flexibility.
- Google-managed language runtimes: Enhanced security and simplified maintenance.
- Traffic splitting and revision control: Improved deployment capabilities
- Managed Prometheus and OpenTelemetry support: Enhanced observability and troubleshooting.
These enhancements have significantly expanded the scope and applicability of serverless computing within projects.
https://cloud.google.com/functions/docs/concepts/version-comparison
6. Cloud Run: Expanding Horizons
Beyond the core Cloud Run Functions enhancements, a number of exciting features have been added to Cloud Run throughout the year, unlocking new possibilities:
- NFS file shares: Enhanced data sharing and integration capabilities.
- Firestore connectivity: Seamless integration with NoSQL databases.
- Direct VPC: Enhanced connectivity and reduced latency.
- Vertex AI connectivity: Simplified integration with AI/ML services.
- GPU machine type support: Accelerated compute-intensive workloads.
These additions have broadened the range of use cases for Cloud Run, making it an even more versatile and powerful platform for our engineering teams.
Conclusion
This list highlights some practical, often overlooked, advancements that have truly empowered our projects and workflow in 2024.