Cloud Run

Google Cloud Run is a fully managed serverless platform that lets you run stateless containers that scale automatically. It abstracts away all infrastructure management so you can focus on writing code in any language.

Key Features:

1. Any language/framework - Deploy any containerized application.

2. Scale to zero - Scales down to zero when idle, reducing costs.

3. Pay per use - Billed only for actual request processing time.

4. Concurrency - Each instance handles up to 1000 concurrent requests.

5. Cloud Run Jobs - Run batch workloads to completion without HTTP endpoints.

The below example shows a Dockerfile and Node.js app deployed to Cloud Run.

server.js,

Build and deploy,

It gives the following output,

Service URL: https://my-app-abc123-uc.a.run.app
{"message": "Hello from Cloud Run!", "revision": "my-app-00001-abc"}

Cloud Run vs Cloud Functions:

Cloud Run - Full container control, any port, longer timeouts (60 min), concurrency. Best for microservices and REST APIs.

Cloud Functions - Simpler deployment (just code), event-driven triggers. Best for lightweight event handlers.