Improving GCE boot times with custom images

tl;dr: not installing dependencies and skipping repetitive, complex and time consuming bootstrapping every time a machine is initially provisioned reduces the time it takes for the server to be operational.

Interesting graphs though.

We've accomplished much of the same by using GKE and making artifacts out of containers. New instances scale up within a few seconds (and less than a second if we pre-pull the image).

It's pretty amazing.

What's worked for me: 1. Base OS is core OS or GCE container optimised OS. Striped down, ultra fast, low ram (~200MB) and CPU footprint, ready to run docker containers/images out of the box. 2. Docker Image choice - base Alpine image + {compiled grpc binaries [1] OR compiled C based server for rest APIs [2]} c based rest server size is undeR 8MB, including a couple static assets of~2MB!! Host on gke for faster pull times, or create an instance template for blazing fast boot Times

[1] : https://github.com/mankash/grpc-alpine-server image: https://hub.docker.com/r/mankash/grpc-alpine-server/ [2] : https://github.com/mankash/alpine-kore-build image: https://hub.docker.com/r/mankash/alpine-kore-build/