1

My WordPress site is currently hosted in a dedicated server. Now I want to use Google Cloud CDN for my site.

  1. Google offers the solution officially at https://cloud.google.com/wordpress, which requires to use their GCE to host the WordPress site.

  2. But I also find article at https://www.albinsblog.com/2020/06/how-to-enable-google-cdn-for-custom-origin-websites.html#.YPJ3Pqb7SM8, which allows me not to use GCE but can also utilize Google Cloud CDN.

  3. Also there are articles introducing to create a VM works as a reverse proxy to the external website, which can also utilize Google Cloud CDN on external website.

My question is, what is the difference between these methods? If one can use external website, why we will still need to use Google Computing Engine? Are there any performance advantage in using Google Computing Engine?

alancc
  • 487
  • 2
  • 24
  • 68
  • Google Cloud supports a number of backend types for load balancers. Without details on your system's design, we can only offer opinions. The term "performance" is too broad. There are many types of performance (network, CPU, I/O, database, client response, etc). Review each backend type and do your own research on which is better (more advantageous) for your architecture. Start with reading about the various backend types, their supported features, and their limitations. https://cloud.google.com/load-balancing/docs/backend-service – John Hanley Jul 18 '21 at 22:36

1 Answers1

1

Cloud CDN is not an hosting solution per se, it allows you to leverage Google's extended network infrastructure to cache your public content as close as possible to your end users.

Cloud CDN can be enabled on an HTTPS Load Balancer, which itself points to your actual backend - i.e. where your website is hosted. On GCP this can be any compute service such as Compute Engine, Kubernetes Engine, Cloud Run, or even Cloud Storage directly for static websites.

So first you need to host your website somewhere, expose it through an HTTPS Load Balancer, and then you can enable Cloud CDN if it makes sense for your use case.

See more details on Cloud CDN here: https://cloud.google.com/cdn/docs/overview

Thomas Laporte
  • 313
  • 2
  • 7
  • Thank you. I understand that we can use different backends for Cloud CDN. My question is, what is the difference between these, I.e, using my own server, or use GCE, etc. – alancc Jul 18 '21 at 22:22
  • 1
    The page you mentioned suggests 3 solutions to run a WordPress site on GCP. The best one for you will depend on various factors (scalability, cost, portability, maintenance, etc.). # GCE would be the closest to what you are used to if you already installed a WordPress site on standard VMs, but reaching high scalability can become a challenge. # GKE could bring you higher scalability but requires being familiar with running containers on Kubernetes. # GAE is fully managed and can automatically scale up and down but your deployment will be a bit more specific to GCP - so less portability. – Thomas Laporte Jul 20 '21 at 15:12