[jonwayne]

> I tried to move beyond archaic Java with managed VMs when they were first announced.

Please keep in mind that Managed VMs is still in beta, however, there are other parts of Google Cloud Platform that are in GA, including Compute Engine (IaaS), and Container Engine (somewhere between PaaS and IaaS). In fact, depending on how much control you want, Container Engine can be a better fit than App Engine.