Why run Linux on Google Cloud?

Enterprises in the cloud have a lot going for them: increased agility, adaptability, flexibility, and reliability—which makes staying ahead of the curve a lot easier. Combining on-premise infrastructure with cloud services can breathe new life into existing processes and increase the number of tools and technologies at your disposal. 

Sounds great, right? It is—but first, you need to consider your choice of cloud provider and operating system. Which ones would provide the best foundation on which to build your hybrid cloud environment, while still allowing you the flexibility to adopt the services and technologies you want? 

Linux and Google Cloud Platform are a strong combination with which to move your enterprise to the cloud and into the future. Let’s take a look at each one before learning what makes them stand out as a team.

Google Cloud Platform

Google Cloud Platform, like Amazon’s AWS and Microsoft Azure, is a public cloud platform and is a part of Google Cloud, which is built on Google’s global infrastructure. Google Cloud provides cloud services and management tools—via the Google Cloud console—that deliver everything needed to build effective cloud and multicloud environments, deploy applications and APIs, and support workloads across environments. 

Google Cloud Platform has the security-focused tools and capabilities to enable your enterprise to take advantage of all the benefits of cloud computing with a clear strategy (Google Cloud multicloud solutions), make decisions based on accurate and up-to-date company and inventory information (data analytics), as well as transform how teams communicate and work together (Google Workspace). 

Google Cloud includes Google Cloud Platform, as well as a suite of products and tools such as Google Cloud Storage (object storage), Google Cloud Datastore (NoSQL database), Google Cloud Functions (event-driven compute platform-as-a-service), Google Compute Engine or GCE (virtual machines running in Google’s data center), and Google App Engine (serverless application platform)—as well as a lot more.

Linux for cloud computing

Linux is an open source operating system. Because of its open source development model, Linux is ideally suited for cloud computing in that it allows enterprises to choose the platforms and technologies that best suit their needs and purposes, as well as allowing the choice of services and vendors needed, thereby avoiding unnecessary expense and vendor lock-in. With Linux for cloud computing, you get all the benefits of Linux for traditional IT deployments with the flexibility to grow using newer technologies like Kubernetes, AI/ML and edge computing. For these reasons, Linux remains the leading choice of operating system in cloud computing. 

Better together: Benefits of running Linux on Google Cloud Platform

Google Cloud Platform is built on Linux and works with a number of Linux distributions such as CentOS, Ubuntu, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The open source nature of a Linux system with Google Cloud Platform means users get the following benefits: 

• Flexibility of vendors and services
• Easier migration of applications and information
• Consistency of information and processes across footprints
• The innovation of an open source structure and community

Basically, a strong cloud provider on an established Linux foundation means your enterprise cloud strategy is headed in the right direction. 

Adopting a hybrid or multicloud approach can be challenging—especially when you’re used to legacy hardware and traditional infrastructure. But the right cloud services provider and Linux distribution provide a solid start. With Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® on Google Cloud Platform, you have the foundation for a cloud strategy that will take you wherever you want to go. And because Red Hat Enterprise Linux runs on Google, so do all the rest of Red Hat’s products. 

As Google Cloud Partner of the Year 2023, the way we work with Google Cloud isn’t just robust—it's award-winning. And this relationship scales. With Red Hat Enterprise Linux as a foundation, all our products run on Google.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Google Cloud Platform help simplify your infrastructure platform, accelerate application development and delivery, and incorporate automation for your business and management processes, so you can innovate more quickly and adapt to industry, regulatory, and global changes with an agile hybrid cloud environment.

And here’s something else—Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP Solutions on Google Cloud is a high-performance platform for database operations that includes SAP-specific content and features and allows organizations to deploy SAP across hybrid cloud environments. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is one of only two Linux distributions certified for use with SAP HANA® and SAP S/4HANA®.

With flexible configuration, an open source and security-focused foundation, global network infrastructure, and advanced data management and analytics, Red Hat and Google Cloud give you the functions and capabilities you need to build and operate hybrid and multicloud environments effectively and efficiently. Each component delivers key functionality and value and a reliable, high-performance operating environment for your workloads and applications across physical, virtualized, containerized, cloud-based, and edge infrastructure.