Cloud
Google Cloud
Google's cloud with strong data, analytics, Kubernetes (GKE) and ML services.
What it is
Google Cloud (GCP) started in 2008 with App Engine and later added Compute Engine, Cloud Storage and BigQuery. The services run on the same infrastructure as Google Search and YouTube.
Its strongest points are GKE (managed Kubernetes, Google created Kubernetes), BigQuery (a serverless analytics data warehouse), Vertex AI and Cloud Run for containers.
Resources are organized into projects, which are the boundary for billing, access and quotas. IAM works at the organization, folder and project levels.
Use it when
- The main workload is analytics and big data (BigQuery).
- You need high-quality managed Kubernetes (GKE).
- The project is tied to ML and Google services (Vertex AI, Firebase, Workspace).
- You want to run containers without servers (Cloud Run).
Avoid it when
- The team is already deep in AWS or Azure and migration brings no gain.
- You need the widest catalog of niche services: AWS has more of them.
- A very small project: VPS providers are simpler and cheaper.
Key concepts
- Project
- The basic unit of organization: resources, billing, APIs and access live inside it.
- GKE
- Managed Kubernetes with an Autopilot mode where Google manages the nodes.
- BigQuery
- A serverless warehouse for SQL analytics over terabytes of data, billed per query or slots.
- Service account
- An identity for an application rather than a person. Workload Identity is better than JSON keys.
- VPC
- In GCP a VPC network is global with regional subnets, unlike regional VPCs in AWS.
Example
Interview questions
1. What is BigQuery for and how does it differ from a regular database?
BigQuery is a serverless columnar analytics warehouse that runs SQL over huge data volumes. It is not meant for frequent small writes and transactions, which is what Cloud SQL or Spanner are for.
2. What is Workload Identity?
It is a way to give a pod or service the permissions of a service account without key files. The platform issues short-lived tokens, which lowers the leak risk.
3. How does GKE Autopilot differ from Standard?
In Autopilot Google manages the nodes and you pay for pod resources. In Standard you choose node types and manage them yourself, which gives more control and more responsibility.
Comparisons with this technology
Related technologies
- AWSThe largest cloud platform, with hundreds of services from virtual machines and storage to databases, queues and ML.
- Microsoft AzureMicrosoft's cloud, most convenient for .NET, Windows environments and companies on Microsoft 365 and Entra ID.
- Google Cloud RunManaged container hosting that autoscales to zero and bills per use.
- KubernetesKubernetes is a container orchestration system that deploys, scales and heals applications across a cluster of servers.
- Google Pub/SubGoogle Pub/Sub is a global managed messaging service with a publish/subscribe model that scales automatically.
- FirebaseA backend as a service from Google: Firestore, auth, hosting, Cloud Functions and push messaging.
- TerraformTerraform is an infrastructure as code tool: you describe cloud resources in configuration and it creates and changes them.
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