GSP219

Overview

In this lab, you create one VM in the Premium network service tier (default) and one VM in the Standard network service tier. Then you compare the latency and network paths for each VM instance.

With Network Service Tiers, Google Cloud enables you to optimize your cloud network for performance by choosing the Premium Tier or for cost with the new Standard Tier.

Premium Tier

Premium Tier delivers traffic over Google’s well-provisioned, low latency, highly reliable global network. This network consists of an extensive global private fiber network with over 100 points of presence (POPs) across the globe.

Standard Tier

Standard Tier is a new lower-cost offering. This tier provides network quality that is comparable to other public cloud providers (but lower than Premium Tier) and regional network services such as Regional Load Balancing with one VIP per region.

Standard tier is priced lower than Premium because your traffic between Google Cloud and your end-user (Internet) is delivered over transit (ISP) networks instead of Google’s network.

Objectives

In this lab, you learn how to perform the following tasks:

• Create a VM using the Premium network service tier
• Create a VM using the Standard network service tier
• Explore the latency and network paths for VMs on different network service tiers

Setup

Before you click the Start Lab button

Read these instructions. Labs are timed and you cannot pause them. The timer, which starts when you click Start Lab, shows how long Google Cloud resources are made available to you.

This hands-on lab lets you do the lab activities in a real cloud environment, not in a simulation or demo environment. It does so by giving you new, temporary credentials you use to sign in and access Google Cloud for the duration of the lab.

To complete this lab, you need:

• Access to a standard internet browser (Chrome browser recommended).

• Time to complete the lab—remember, once you start, you cannot pause a lab.

How to start your lab and sign in to the Google Cloud console

1. Click the Start Lab button. If you need to pay for the lab, a dialog opens for you to select your payment method. On the left is the Lab Details pane with the following:

   • The Open Google Cloud console button
   • Time remaining
   • The temporary credentials that you must use for this lab
   • Other information, if needed, to step through this lab

2. Click Open Google Cloud console (or right-click and select Open Link in Incognito Window if you are running the Chrome browser).

   The lab spins up resources, and then opens another tab that shows the Sign in page.

   Tip: Arrange the tabs in separate windows, side-by-side.

   Note: If you see the Choose an account dialog, click Use Another Account.

3. If necessary, copy the Username below and paste it into the Sign in dialog.

   {{{user_0.username | "Username"}}}

   You can also find the Username in the Lab Details pane.

4. Click Next.

5. Copy the Password below and paste it into the Welcome dialog.

   {{{user_0.password | "Password"}}}

   You can also find the Password in the Lab Details pane.

6. Click Next.

   Important: You must use the credentials the lab provides you. Do not use your Google Cloud account credentials. Note: Using your own Google Cloud account for this lab may incur extra charges.

7. Click through the subsequent pages:

   • Accept the terms and conditions.
   • Do not add recovery options or two-factor authentication (because this is a temporary account).
   • Do not sign up for free trials.

After a few moments, the Google Cloud console opens in this tab.

Note: To access Google Cloud products and services, click the Navigation menu or type the service or product name in the Search field.

Task 1. Create the VM instances

You can configure the network tier for your VM instances at the project-level or at the resource-level. In this lab, you create two VM instances and define their network service tier during the instance creation.

Create the Premium tier VM

Create a VM instance using the Premium service tier, which is the default.

1. In the Console, navigate to Navigation menu () > Compute Engine > VM instances.

2. Click Create Instance.

3. In the Machine configuration.

   Set the following property values, leave all other values at their defaults:

   Property	Value (type value or select option as specified)
   Name	vm-premium
   Region
   Zone
   Series	E2
   Machine Type	2 vCPU (e2-medium)

4. Click Networking.

   • For Network interfaces, click default network dropdown.

   • Verify that Network Service Tier is set to Premium.

5. Click Done, and then click Create.

Create the Standard tier VM

Create a VM instance of the same machine type and in the same zone but use the Standard service tier.

1. Click Create Instance.

2. In the Machine configuration.

   Set the following property values, leave all other values at their defaults:

   Property	Value (type value or select option as specified)
   Name	vm-standard
   Region
   Zone
   Series	E2
   Machine Type	2 vCPU (e2-medium)

3. Click Networking.

   • For Network interfaces, click default network dropdown.

   • Set the Network Service Tier to Standard.

4. Click Done, and then click Create.

6. Wait for both instances to be created, which will be indicated by a green check mark next to each instance's name.
7. Note the External IP Addresses of vm-premium and vm-standard. They will be referred to as [premium-IP] and [standard-IP], respectively.

Click Check my progress to verify the objective. Create the VM instances

Task 2. Explore the latency and network paths

Explore some of the network performance differences between the Premium and Standard tier.

Explore the latency for both VM instance

First, explore the latency from a third party service in Europe to your VM instances in . Latency is defined as the Round Trip Time (RTT) network packets take to get from one host to the other and back. Lower latency improves user experience and also improves transfer speeds.

In this lab, you use Ping to demonstrate the latency a user in Europe might experience when accessing your server in .

1. Open a new tab and go to Ping.
2. Enter the [premium-IP] in the IP address or host name: field.
3. Type the security code and click Go. Then wait for the 4 consecutive pings to complete.

The output should look like this:

4. Enter the [standard-IP] in the IP address or host name: field.
5. Type the security code and click Go. Then wait for the 4 consecutive pings to complete.

The output should look like this:

In the example output, the average latency of the Standard tier VM is 127.986 milliseconds. Therefore, the Premium tier VM has a 5% lower latency than the Standard tier VM.

This is a very basic test. Passing real application traffic is always the best indicator of latency and performance. Feel free to examine this Google Cloud blog on Network Service Tiers to learn more about performance differences between network tiers.

Explore the networks paths for both VM instances

Explore the network paths between a third party service in Europe and your VM instances in using traceroute. Traceroute shows all Layer 3 (routing layer) hops between hosts; therefore, it can illustrate a network path between hosts.

In this lab, you use Traceroute to visualize a network path that traffic from a user in Europe might take when accessing your server in .

1. Open a new tab and go to Traceroute.
2. Enter the [premium-IP] in the IP address or host name: field.
3. Type the security code and click Go. Then wait for the 4 consecutive pings to complete.

The output should look like this:

In the example output, the traffic destined for the Premium tier VM reached Google Cloud's network after the 5th hop. The IP address on hop 4 is listed in Bavaria, Germany which is the same state as the origin server and an Edge Point of Presence (PoPs). Therefore, the Premium network tier traffic entered the Google Cloud network very close to the user, as expected.

4. Enter the [standard-IP] in the IP address or host name: field.
5. Type the security code and click Go. Then wait for the 4 consecutive pings to complete.

The output should look like this:

In the example output, the traffic destined for the Standard tier VM reached Google Cloud's network after the 12th hop. The IP address on hop 11 is listed in Chicago, USA, which has an Edge Point of Presence (PoPs) and is close to Iowa, USA (). This demonstrates that Premium network tier traffic enters the Google Cloud network much closer to the user than Standard network tier traffic.

Congratulations!

In this lab you created one VM in the Premium network service tier (default) and one VM in the Standard network service tier. Then you used a 3rd party service to visualize the differences in latency and network paths for each VM instance. The Premium tier VM had a lower latency and its traffic entered Google Cloud's network sooner than the Standard tier VM.

With Network Service Tiers, Google Cloud offers the flexibility to configure your resources for performance or cost by introducing the Standard Tier of networking. To learn more about the pricing differences between both network tiers, refer to the pricing documentation.

Take your next lab

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Next steps / Learn more

For information on the Network Tiers, see Network Service Tiers.

Manual Last Updated December 11, 2024

Lab Last Tested October 22, 2024

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