IaaS

Compute Engine is generally referred to as Google's IaaS offering. By exposing direct control over the underlying infrastructure, IaaS provides an unparalleled level of control and flexibility for building cloud solutions. Although most IaaS services are generally considered low-level, in reality these services provide a fairly high level of abstraction. For example, users request Compute Engine VMs run a given image with a set amount of vCPUs and RAM, and Google Cloud abstracts away the process of securing these resources and creating virtual machines that runs the given image. This level of abstraction over the underlying infrastructure maintains most of the power of direct infrastructure control, while providing a rich control plane that speeds up operational efforts and facilitates best practices such as Infrastructure as Code.