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Drupal on Google App Engine
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
Today's guest post is from Felipe Rubim, Head of Technology at
CI&T
. A Top Google Cloud Platform Partner, CI&T builds scalable predictive applications and custom software for fortune 500 companies. As far as PHP and Drupal applications, CI&T has built and maintains more than 400 Drupal enterprise websites globally with an army of 300+ Drupal developers. In this post, Felipe introduces a white paper detailing a test CI&T conducted on Google Cloud Platform and the potential for Drupal Enterprise apps running on Google App Engine PHP. The link to the complete methodology and findings can be found
here
.
Is Google App Engine ready for Drupal and if it is, can it be used for enterprise class applications?
Based on our experience working with Drupal and Google App Engine, we felt confident that the combination of the two would have the potential to cause a major shift in the content management portfolio of enterprises. Our goal was to test to see if App Engine was indeed ready to run Drupal for world class Enterprises. First, we tested features frequently requested by our customers, especially in the digital marketing arena: consumer-facing websites, portals for sales teams, doctors and healthcare professionals and intranets.
Methodology:
We evaluated the last three major releases of Drupal, and determined that Drupal 7 was optimally suited for use with App Engine and suitable for enterprise workloads. Drupal 8 was assessed as promising but at present not sufficiently mature, and Drupal 6 deployments on App Engine were not recommended as detailed in the white paper.
Findings:
Scalability
- We determined that Drupal websites running on top of App Engine scale beautifully. This is especially useful for digital marketing campaigns.
Security
- We found App Engine to be in good shape for web portals handling sensitive data.
Versioning
- We determined having different versions of your site without going through extra infrastructure set up to be a big game changer.
Drupal Multisite
- We concluded this was easy to set up and that it works as expected.
Drush
- We found that in order to make Drush work with App Engine, some tweaks are needed when connecting to CloudSQL from another set up (e.g. Google Compute Engine - GCE).
Search
- We concluded that installing and configuring Apache Solr in a GCE instance is the way to go for implementing enterprise Drupal search. We created a tutorial for that.
SSO
- We also tested SSO with Google Apps and provided a code snippet/tutorial
Is Google App Engine ready for Drupal and if it is, can it be used for enterprise class applications?
Our tests showed that App Engine PHP is a powerful alternative for Drupal deployments and is moving fast towards being a solid platform for Drupal Enterprise class sites and portals, particularly with Drupal 7.
In our experiments we identified that components from Drupal, App Engine, GCE and Google Apps could be synergically valuable in several scenarios, like:
Google Drive and Drupal Workflow
- leveraging Drupal custom workflows and auditing/logging capabilities vastly improves Google Drive and Drupal Content/Files Workflow/authoring with automatic publishing of approved documents,
App Engine Task Queue
- to replace scheduled cron tasks with App Engine Task Queue, and then execute background work (export data from a Drupal user table, campaign/contest registration, etc.) and leverage App Engine interface for management, debugging and logging;
Flexible and extensible stack with an integrated Google Compute Engine approach
- The usage of Compute Engine as a complementary component of the solution allows better flexibility to add more features and integration, as well as increased automation for the site management. More details on these features and benefits described below;
We believe Enterprises can reap multiple benefits by moving their Drupal sites to Google App Engine/Google Cloud Platform. Here are the key features and benefits, higher value first:
Auto-scale
: By far, the number one benefit. This is particularly critical for Drupal digital marketing/campaign web sites, where unexpected traffic can easily break ill-prepared hosting setups.
Worry-free infrastructure
: No need to remove/add servers, configuration or load balance management. Big headaches averted.
Integration with Google Apps
: The potential to leverage the integration with Google products family in a number of use cases, is a big plus.
Application Managemen
t: By leveraging the Google SDKs along with its simple but powerful application configuration and management dashboard.
Potential cost savings
: Considering you pay only for the resources you use, this is a great benefit. This is especially true when moving from an IaaS or traditional hosting model, where resources are needed to maintain the infrastructure portfolio.
Enterprise to Enterprise
: GCP/App Engine are based on Google’s infrastructure, which also host Google Products. That means all the features and measures applicable to Google Products (such as security requirements) will also apply to your Drupal Site.
For the complete study, please see the link below:
http://www.ciandt.com/us-en/card/is-google-app-engine-PHP-ready-for-drupal
-Contributed by Felipe Rubim, Head of Technology at CI&T
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