Recently, Google released an Architecture Diagramming Tool allowing the creation of architectural diagram of solution architecture with the available Google Cloud Platform (GCP) services.
The diagramming tool provides a browser-based user interface list of all the Google Cloud products and services organized by category. The specific Google Cloud functionality is built upon the foundation of the Exclaidraw project, in which the company utilized the foundational elements.
A user can create a diagram from scratch or leverage a few available examples like deploying a Compute Engine application behind Load Balancer. In addition, the diagramming tool is integrated with the Google Cloud Developer Cheat Sheet allowing users to quickly check out the four-word descriptions and documentation linked to each component of their diagram.
Furthermore, users can also use the interface to share their diagram with their team and colleagues and add it to documentation. Moreover, the tool comes with 10+ prebuilt reference architectures for everyday use cases such as data science, machine learning, websites, CI/CD, microservices, compute, and more.
Forrest Brazeal, a cloud bard at Google, tweeted:
OK, this new architecture diagramming tool, from @pvergadia and team, is very slick. You can pop open a Cloud Shell and 1-click deploy the architecture in Google Cloud as soon as you're done drawing it. Talk about rapid prototyping!
Regarding the one-click deployment, Dave Sugden, a site reliability engineer at Equifax, explained in a Medium blog post:
This feature is available for a couple of the reference architectures rather than for your own diagrams. And be warned that if you make changes, it does not reflect your changes. That is because it hooks into some prepared git repositories with the install and build processes created for you — from here, you clone the repository and run an install script.
Other public cloud providers such as Microsoft and AWS lack a diagramming tool that Google now offers for its cloud platform - that is, they do not provide one themselves. However, third-party tooling is available to create diagrams for Azure and AWS, such as Lucidscale. For example, one could also use AWS icons and Azure icons to create diagrams in Microsoft Visio - yet there are no ties to a repository.
Ashish Desai, a cloud security architect at DataRobot, tweeted:
This is a game-changer. GCP just set the bar very high. @aws @azure your turn……
Lastly, more details of Google cloud architectures are available on the Cloud Architecture Center page.