Advantages of Compute Engine for PHP

  • Easy to spin up apps like WordPress (via cloud launcher)
  • Easy to spin up LAMP stack (via cloud launcher)
  • Low barrier of entry (it’s just VMs people!)
  • Autoscaling instance groups
  • Easy SSL firewall

Advantages of using the PHP base image

  • Automatic composer installation
  • PHP 5.6, 7.0 and 7.1
  • Logging integration with Google Cloud Logging
  • Error handling integration with Google Stack Driver
  • NGINX
  • Easy php.ini configuration
  • Easy web server configuration
  • Pre-installed shared extension which can be activated in php.ini

Security Advantages

  • PHP and extensions are kept up to date
  • Security patches
  • Suhosin security logging
  • No .htaccess
  • Appropriate file permissions

App Engine Advantages

  • Versioning with containers and URLs
  • Autoscaling
  • SSL by default on *.appspot.com