TechTarget – Google cloud outage highlights more than just networking failure

Google Cloud Platform went dark this week in one of the most widespread outages to ever hit a major public cloud, but the lack of outcry illustrates one of the constant knocks on the platform.

Users in all regions lost connection to Google Compute Engine for 18 minutes shortly after 7 p.m. PT on Monday, April 11. The Google cloud outage was tied to a networking failure and resulted in a black eye for a vendor trying to shed an image that it can’t compete for enterprise customers.

Networking appears to be the Achilles’ heel for Google, as problems with that layer have been a common theme in most of its cloud outages, said Lydia Leong, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. What’s different this time is that it didn’t just affect one availability zone, but all regions.

“What’s important is customers expect multiple availability zones as reasonable protection from failure,” Leong said.

More of the TechTarget post from Trevor Jones

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