ArcGIS systems are built across a variety of cloud services and providers. Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and other Google services and tools are often used as part of ArcGIS systems or as integration points between two business systems.
Customers can design and implement ArcGIS systems based on GCP virtual machines, which support a variety of virtual hardware profiles, configurations and price models. Virtual machines can also be deployed to support user or client workflows with ArcGIS Pro, though performance considerations and recommendations related to VDI with ArcGIS Pro should be followed in any such scenario.
Organizations working with ArcGIS Enterprise on Kubernetes can use Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) as a hosting environment for this software. GKE includes a variety of Kubernetes helper services and constructs to assist with a deployment. See Deploy ArcGIS Enterprise on Kubernetes on Google Kubernetes Engine for high level steps.
Google Cloud Dataproc is a massively scalable analytics system for working with big data storage. ArcGIS GeoAnalytics Engine can be used in Cloud Dataproc as it supports a Spark interaction pattern, which can bring ArcGIS spatial functions and tools to existing workflows or allow new analyses to be completed.
GCP provides a wide variety of data storage options for different types and volumes of data or data storage workloads.
Google Cloud SQL is a managed relational database offering that supports several flavors of relational database that can be used with ArcGIS. See the latest system requirements for more information on which Google Cloud SQL offerings are currently supported. Cloud SQL can also be configured as a relational store for ArcGIS Enterprise on Kubernetes.
File and object storage provided by the Google Cloud Storage service is often used with ArcGIS to host raster datasets, which can be accessed through cloud connection files. In most scenarios, direct-read of vector data in S3 is not supported for mapping workflows, but use of those vector datasets in analytical inputs is common for geoanalytics workflows using ArcGIS Pro or ArcGIS GeoAnalytics Engine running in a Spark environment within or adjacent to AWS. ArcGIS Pro can also connect to and read Apache Parquet files from cloud storage connections.
Google BigQuery is a robust cloud data warehouse that can be used to combine and analyze datasets from across an organization. The summarization and analysis focus of BigQuery is supported by ArcGIS through query layers authored in ArcGIS Pro, which can connect to BigQuery, display data on a map or in a table, and then be published to ArcGIS Enterprise to create dynamic map services and feature layers. For best practices in this area, refer to the data lakes and data warehouses content. ArcGIS Data Pipelines can also connect to and read tables from Google BigQuery.
Systems designed in Google Cloud use common concepts of virtual networks, connectivity and firewalls. One relevant Google service is Google Cloud Load Balancing, a software-based load balancer that can be deployed to forward or proxy traffic from users to backend ArcGIS components, or balance load across multi-machine sites or a highly-available architecture.
Optionally, some organizations enable the Google Identity-Aware Proxy capability on a load balancer. This technology provides a pre-authentication step, requiring any user accessing the proxy to prove access to the application in GCP before they can reach a backend service. Google IAP is an example of an identity-aware-proxy, and best practices and areas of concern for IAPs are provided in that section of this website.
Users who store datasets in Google Drive can add them to ArcGIS Online maps and content to access and create hosted content from those files. In general, using Google drive for file storage for personal use works well with ArcGIS, but any use of a shared folder to store data or ArcGIS Pro project files should be carefully reviewed to ensure that the data replication and sync capabilities of Google Drive do not introduce file corruption or issues.
Many organizations that are large GCP users are also using Google for Work and manage user identities and email or calendaring through this Google service. Google identities can be used to provide enterprise login capabilities for ArcGIS Online or ArcGIS Enterprise, either through SAML federation or an OIDC configuration. This allows users to benefit from a single sign-on experience where their Google account provides them with direct access to ArcGIS Enterprise or ArcGIS Online, without a need to remember an additional password or credential.