Huawei Cloud vs AWS vs Azure vs GCP: The Service Equivalents Cheat Sheet

One Table, Four Clouds

Most engineers know one cloud well and then have to map that knowledge onto another. The concepts are the same across providers. Only the service names change. This cheat sheet lines up Huawei Cloud first, then AWS, Azure, and GCP side by side, so if you know one column, you can read the rest.

Compute

For virtual machines, Huawei Cloud has ECS (Elastic Cloud Server), which maps to EC2 on AWS, Virtual Machines on Azure, and Compute Engine on GCP. For serverless functions, Huawei Cloud FunctionGraph lines up with Lambda, Functions, and Cloud Run Functions.

Containers

Managed Kubernetes on Huawei Cloud is CCE (Cloud Container Engine), the equivalent of EKS, AKS, and GKE. For serverless containers, Huawei Cloud CCI (Cloud Container Instance) matches Fargate, Container Apps, and Cloud Run.

Storage

Object storage on Huawei Cloud is OBS (Object Storage Service), which corresponds to S3, Blob Storage, and Cloud Storage. Block storage for your VMs is EVS (Elastic Volume Service), matching EBS, Managed Disks, and Persistent Disk.

Databases

Managed relational databases run as RDS on Huawei Cloud, the same naming as AWS RDS, and equivalent to Azure SQL Database and Cloud SQL. On the NoSQL side, Huawei Cloud GeminiDB lines up with DynamoDB, Cosmos DB, and Firestore.

AI and Machine Learning

The managed ML platform on Huawei Cloud is ModelArts, the counterpart to SageMaker, Azure ML, and Vertex AI. For generative and foundation models, Huawei Cloud Pangu Models sit alongside Bedrock, Azure OpenAI, and the Gemini API.

DevOps

For CI/CD pipelines, Huawei Cloud CodeArts Pipeline maps to CodePipeline, Azure Pipelines, and Cloud Build. For monitoring, Huawei Cloud Cloud Eye is the equivalent of CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, and Cloud Monitoring.

Security

Identity and access management on Huawei Cloud is IAM, the same as AWS IAM, and equivalent to Entra ID and Cloud IAM. For secrets, Huawei Cloud CSMS (Cloud Secret Management Service) matches Secrets Manager, Key Vault, and Secret Manager.

The Takeaway

Cloud skills transfer. Once you understand what a service does, moving between providers is mostly a matter of learning the new names and a few behavioural differences. Save this table as a quick reference when you are planning a migration or comparing options across providers.