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- Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
Become a Professional Cloud Architect by exploring essential concepts, tools, and services in GCP and working through tests designed to help you get certified
Key Features
- Plan and design a GCP cloud solution architecture
- Ensure the security and reliability of your cloud solutions and operations
- Test yourself by taking mock tests with up-to-date exam questions
Book Description
Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is one of the leading cloud service suites and offers solutions for storage, analytics, big data, machine learning, and application development. It features an array of services that can help organizations to get the best out of their infrastructure. This comprehensive guide covers a variety of topics specific to Google's Professional Cloud Architect official exam syllabus and guides you in using the right methods for effective use of GCP services.
You'll start by exploring GCP, understanding the benefits of becoming a certified architect, and learning how to register for the exam. You'll then delve into the core services that GCP offers such as computing, storage, and security. As you advance, this GCP book will help you get up to speed with methods to scale and automate your cloud infrastructure and delve into containers and services. In the concluding chapters, you'll discover security best practices and even gain insights into designing applications with GCP services and monitoring your infrastructure as a GCP architect.
By the end of this book, you will be well versed in all the topics required to pass Google's Professional Cloud Architect exam and use GCP services effectively.
What you will learn
- Manage your GCP infrastructure with Google Cloud management options such as CloudShell and SDK
- Understand the use cases for different storage options
- Design a solution with security and compliance in mind
- Monitor GCP compute options
- Discover machine learning and the different machine learning models offered by GCP
- Understand what services need to be used when planning and designing your architecture
Who this book is for
If you are a cloud architect, cloud engineer, administrator, or any IT professional who wants to learn how to implement Google Cloud services in your organization and become a GCP Certified Professional Cloud Architect, this book is for you. Basic knowledge of server infrastructure, including Linux and Windows Servers, is assumed. Knowledge of network and storage will also be helpful.
Konrad Cłapa is a lead cloud automation architect working for Atos R&D. He has over 10 years' experience in the IT industry. He holds over 30 IT certifications, including all 6 Google Cloud Platform certifications. He is also listed among 30 individuals who hold double VMware Certified Design Expert certifications. Sharing knowledge has always been important to him, so he contributes to the community by acting as a leader for a local Google Cloud Developer group and an AWS user group in Poland. Brian Gerrard is a technical engineer from Scotland with over 10 years' experience in the IT industry. Currently working for Atos, he holds the Google Certified Professional Architect certification, as well as all three AWS Certified Associate certifications. In addition to this, Brian has a number of advanced certifications in infrastructure and private cloud technologies, including two VMware Certified Implementation Expert certifications. Brian is a firm believer in lifelong learning, and you will regularly find him contributing to his local user groups.Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 464
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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Professional Cloud Architect – Google Cloud Certification Guide
Copyright © 2020 Packt Publishing
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Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
Commissioning Editor: Karan SadawanaAcquisition Editor:Rahul NairContent Development Editor:Ronn KurienSenior Editor: Rahul DsouzaTechnical Editor: Mohd Riyan KhanCopy Editor: Safis EditingProject Coordinator:Vaidehi SawantProofreader: Safis EditingIndexer:Priyanka DhadkeProduction Designer:Arvindkumar Gupta
First published: April 2020
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ISBN 978-1-83855-527-6
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Foreword
In 2016, the year in which I obtained all of my Amazon Web Services certificates, I heard the news about Google launching a certification program. Believing that the future is multi-cloud, I wanted to learn Google Cloud Platform. After attending the Google Cloud Next conference in San Francisco, I decided to become a certified Google Cloud Architect. Whilst preparing for the certification, I found that there were no books on the topic, and online documentations were the only source available. Three years later, I finally had this book in my hands. I wish I’d had this book when I was starting my journey!
Having passed all 6 Google Cloud Profession exams and being an author myself, I understand what it takes to pass this professional level certification. Having all of your resources in one place is irreplaceable when preparing for the certification. By buying this book, you can seize the opportunity to have all you need at your fingertips.
If you are still wondering whether you should start your journey with the help of Brian and Konrad, do not hesitate. I can assure you that the Google Cloud Architect certification is becoming one of the hottest on the market. Once a niche platform, Google Cloud is now on a path to truly shine, and is thus attracting more and more companies. With Google Cloud’s focus on Machine Learning, Cloud Native applications development, and Data Processing services, the demand for certified specialists is growing by the day.
Don't wait any longer. Read this book, start using Google Cloud, and get certified.
A bright future is waiting for you!
Yujun LiangGoogle Certified Cloud Architect
Contributors
About the authors
Konrad Cłapa is a lead cloud automation architect working for Atos R&D. He has over 10 years' experience in the IT industry. He holds over 30 IT certifications and is officially the first in the world to pass all 10 Google Cloud Platform certifications. He is also listed among 20 individuals awarded with Google Cloud Certified Fellow title. Sharing knowledge has always been important to him, so he contributes to the community by acting as a leader for a local Google Cloud Developer group and an AWS user group in Poland.
Brian Gerrard is a technical engineer from Scotland with over 10 years' experience in the IT industry. Currently working for Atos, he holds the Google Certified Professional Architect certification, as well as all three AWS Certified Associate certifications. In addition to this, Brian has a number of advanced certifications in infrastructure and private cloud technologies, including two VMware Certified Implementation Expert certifications. Brian is a firm believer in lifelong learning, and you will regularly find him contributing to his local user groups.
About the reviewers
Antonio Gulli has a passion for establishing and managing global technological talent for innovation and execution. His core expertise is in cloud computing, deep learning, and search engines. Currently, he serves as the Engineer Director for the Office of the CTO, Google Cloud. Previously, he served as the Google Warsaw site leader, doubling the size of the engineering site.
So far, Antonio has been lucky enough to gain professional experience in four countries in Europe and has managed teams in six countries in EMEA and the US. In Amsterdam, he was the vice president for Elsevier, a leading scientific publisher; in London, he was a site lead for Microsoft, working on Bing, Search; in Italy and the UK, he was the CTO, Europe and UK, for Ask.com and also worked in several co-funded start-ups, including one of the first web search companies in Europe.
Antonio has co-invented a number of technologies for searching, smart energy, and AI, with more than 20 patents issued/applied for. Additionally, he has published several books about coding and machine learning, which have been translated into Japanese and Chinese. Antonio speaks Spanish, English, and Italian, and he is currently learning Polish and French. Antonio is the proud father of two boys, Lorenzo, who's 18, and Leonardo, who's 13; and a little queen, Aurora, who's 9 years old.
Jaroslaw Gajewski holds a technical lead architect position at Atos. He is responsible for designing private and multi-cloud solutions for cloud-agnostic and cloud-native services. His technical knowledge is backed by multiple industry-standard certificates. He is already a Google Cloud Certified Professional and VMware, DELL, Microsoft, and AWS certified, and is also recognized by Atos as a senior expert in the cloud and automation domain. Being passionate about the cloud, outside work, he is an active community speaker and one of the Google Developer Group leads for GDG Bydgoszcz.
In his spare time, he loves spending time with his wife, two daughters, and one son; he enjoys board games and is constantly striving to further his knowledge.
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Professional Cloud Architect – Google Cloud Certification Guide
Dedication
About Packt
Why subscribe?
Foreword
Contributors
About the authors
About the reviewers
Packt is searching for authors like you
Preface
Who this book is for
What this book covers
To get the most out of this book
Download the color images
Conventions used
Get in touch
Reviews
Section 1: Introduction to GCP
GCP Cloud Architect Professional
The benefits of being a certified architect
Registering for the exam
What to expect from the exam
Some tips
Summary
Further reading
Getting Started with Google Cloud Platform
Introducing the cloud
Understanding GCP
GCP differentiators
GCP locations
Resource manager
Organizations
Folders
Projects
Resources scope
Global resources
Regional resources
Zonal resources
Managing projects
Granting permissions
Billing
Managing billing accounts
Assigning a project to a billing account
Exporting billing
Budgets and alerts
Billing account roles
Summary
Further reading
Google Cloud Platform Core Services
Computing and hosting services
Storage services
Networking services
Big data services
ML services
Identity services
Summary
Further reading
Section 2: Managing, Designing, and Planning a Cloud Solution Architecture
Working with Google Compute Engine
Deploying our first GCE instance
Deployment options
Region
Zone
Boot disk
Application images
Snapshots
Existing disks
Labels
Deletion protection
Metadata
Startup scripts
Preemptibilty
Availability policy
Automatic restart
Shielded VM
Deletion rule
Node affinity labels
GPUs and TPUs
Instance templates and instance groups
Setting the location
Port name mapping
Autoscaling 
Autohealing
Quotas and limits
IAM roles
Pricing
Summary
Further reading
Managing Kubernetes Clusters with Google Kubernetes Engine
An introduction to microservices 
Containers
Docker
Kubernetes
Kubernetes architecture
The master node
Worker nodes
Kubernetes objects
Pods
ReplicaSets
Deployments
Namespaces
Services 
Types of services
Google Kubernetes Engine
Node pools
Container-Optimized OS
Storage
GKE cluster management
Creating a GKE cluster
Advanced configuration
Networking
Security
Stackdriver
Additional features
Deploying our first application
Cluster second-day operations
Upgrading the cluster
Auto-upgrades
Auto-repair
Resizing the cluster
Autoscaling a cluster 
Rotating the master IP
IAM
Kubernetes role-based access control
Container Registry
Cloud Build
Quotas and limits
Pricing
Summary
Further reading
Exploring Google App Engine as a Compute Option
App Engine components
Choosing the right location
Working with App Engine
Environment types
App Engine Standard environment
Flexible environment
Deploying an App Engine application
Versions
Splitting traffic
Migrating traffic
Firewall rules
Settings
Custom domain
SSL certificates
Scaling
Cron jobs
Memcache
IAM
Quotas and limits
Pricing
Summary
Further reading
Running Serverless Functions with Google Cloud Functions
Main Cloud Functions characteristics
Use cases
Application backends
Real-time data processing systems
Smart applications
Runtime environments
Types of Cloud Functions
HTTP functions
Background functions
Events
Triggers
Other considerations
Cloud SQL connectivity
Connecting to internal resources in a VPC network
Environmental variables
Cold start
Local emulator
Deploying Cloud Functions
Deploying Cloud Functions with the Google Cloud Console
Deploying functions with the gcloud command 
Triggers
IAM
Quotas and limits
Pricing
Cloud Run 
Summary 
Further reading
Networking Options in GCP
Exploring GCP networking
Understanding Virtual Private Cloud
Connectivity
Cost
VPC Flow Logs
Cross-VPC connectivity
Shared VPC
VPC peering
Choosing between shared VPC and VPC peering
Load balancing
Global versus regional load balancing
External versus internal
Proxy versus load balancer
Load balancer types
Comparison
Choosing the right load balancer
NAT
NAT gateway
Cloud NAT
Hybrid connectivity
VPN
Interconnects
Peering
Choosing the right connectivity method
DNS
DNS resolution
Cloud DNS
DNSSEC
Firewall rules
Default rules
Implied rules
Always allowed traffic rules
Always denied rules
User-defined rules
Firewall logging
Private access
Summary
Further reading
Exploring Storage Options in GCP - Part 1
Choosing the right storage option
Data consistency
Understanding Cloud Storage
Bucket locations
Storage classes
Legacy storage classes
Data consistency
Cloud Storage FUSE
Creating and using a bucket
Versioning and lifecycle management
Versioning
Lifecycle management
Transferring data
Cloud Storage Transfer Service
Google Transfer Appliance
Understanding IAM
Quotas and limits
Pricing
Understanding Cloud Datastore
Data consistency
Creating and using Cloud Datastore
Datastore versus Firestore
IAM
Quotas and limits
Pricing
Understanding Cloud SQL
Data consistency
Creating and managing Cloud SQL
Read Replicas
Failover Replica
Backup and recovery
Migrating data
Instance cloning
IAM
Quotas and limits
Pricing
Summary
Further reading
Exploring Storage Options in GCP - Part 2
Cloud Spanner
Instances configuration
Node count
Replication
TrueTime
Data consistency
Creating a Cloud Spanner instance
IAM
Quotas and limits
Pricing
Bigtable
Bigtable configuration
Instances
Clusters
Nodes
Schema
Replication
Application profiles
Data consistency
Creating a Bigtable instance and table
IAM
Quotas and limits
Pricing
Summary
Further reading
Analyzing Big Data Options
End-to-end big data solution
Cloud Pub/Sub
Creating a topic and subscription
IAM
Quotas and limits
Pricing
Cloud Dataflow
IAM
Quotas and limits
Pricing
BigQuery
BigQuery features
Datasets
Tables
Using BigQuery
Importing and exporting data
Storage
IAM
Quotas and limits
Pricing
Dataproc
Architecture
IAM
Quotas and limits
Cloud IoT Core
IAM
Quotas and limits
Pricing
Additional considerations
Summary
Further reading
Putting Machine Learning to Work
An introduction to AI and ML
The seven steps of ML
Gathering and preparing the data 
Choosing a model
Training
Evaluation
Hyperparameter tuning
Prediction
Learning models
GCP ML options
TensorFlow
Cloud ML Engine
Using ML Engine
Interacting with ML Engine
ML Engine scale tiers
Cloud Tensor Processing Units (TPUs)
Submitting a training job
Deploying the model
Predictions
Submitting predictions
Pretrained ML models 
The Cloud Speech-to-Text API
The Cloud Text-To-Speech API
The Cloud Translation API 
The Cloud Natural Language API
The Cloud Vision API
The Google Cloud Video Intelligence API
Dialogflow
AutoML
Summary
Further reading
Section 3: Designing for Security and Compliance
Security and Compliance
Introduction to security
Cloud Identity
Resource Manager
Identity and Access Management (IAM)
Service accounts
Cloud Storage access management
Firewall rules and load balancers
Cloud Security Scanner
Monitoring and logging
Encryption
Data encryption keys versus key encryption keys
CMEKs versus CSEKs
Industry regulations
PCI compliance
Shared responsibility model
Data Loss Prevention (DLP)
Penetration testing in GCP
Additional security services
Cloud Identity-Aware Proxy (IAP)
Security Command Center (SCC)
Forseti
Cloud Armor
Summary
Further reading
Section 4: Managing Implementation
Google Cloud Management Options
Using APIs
Google Cloud Shell
The GCP SDK
gcloud
gsutil
bq
cbt
Cloud Deployment Manager
Pricing Calculator
Additional things to consider
Summary
Further reading
Section 5: Ensuring Solution and Operations Reliability
Monitoring Your Infrastructure
Technical requirements
Introduction to Stackdriver
Cost
Configuring Stackdriver
Stackdriver Monitoring
Groups
Dashboards
Alerting policies
Uptime checks
Monitoring agents
Stackdriver Logging
Logs Viewer
Basic log filtering
Advanced filtering
Exporting logs
Logging agent
Log-based metrics
Cloud audit logs
ACTIVITY
Retention
APM
Trace
Debugger
Profiler
Error Reporting
Summary
Further reading
Section 6: Exam Focus
Case Studies
Understanding how to approach exam case studies
What are they looking for in the case studies?
Company overview
Solution concept
Business requirements
Technical requirements
Executive summary
Forming a solution
The analytics platform
The backend platform
Summary of Mountkirk
Additional case studies
TerramEarth
Analysis
Dress4Win
Analysis
Summary
Further reading
Test Your Knowledge
Mock test 1
Mock test 2
Assessments
Answers to Mock Test 1
Answers to Mock Test 2
Other Books You May Enjoy
Leave a review - let other readers know what you think
Preface
Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is a leading cloud offering that has grown exponentially year on year. GCP offers an array of services that can be leveraged by various organizations in order to bring the best out of their infrastructure. This book is a complete guide to GCP and will teach you various methods of how to effectively utilize GCP services for your business needs. You will also become acquainted with the topics required to pass Google's Professional Cloud Architect certification exam.
Following the Professional Cloud Architect certification's official exam syllabus, first, you will be introduced to GCP. You will then be taught about the core services that GCP offers, such as computing, storage, and network. Additionally, you will learn methods of how to scale and automate your cloud infrastructure and make it compliant and secure. Finally, you will also learn how to process big data and embrace machine learning (ML) services.
By the end of this book, you will have all the information required to ace Google's Professional Cloud Architect exam and become an expert in GCP services.
Who this book is for
If you are a cloud architect, cloud engineer, administrator, or anyone who would like to learn different ways to implement Google Cloud services in your organization, as well as get yourself certified with the Professional Cloud Architect's certificate, then this is the book for you.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, GCP Cloud Architect Professional, discusses the benefits of becoming a certified architect, how to register for the exam, and what to expect when you are in the test center.
Chapter 2, Getting Started with Google Cloud Platform, covers the basics of GCP and how it positions itself on the market. You will learn about all the major GCP services that are available.
Chapter 3, Google Cloud Platform Core Services, examines the most important GCP services, including computing, storage, networking, big data, and machine learning.
Chapter 4, Working with Google Compute Engine, examines how to create and run virtual machine instances on top of the Google Compute Engine (GCE) service.
Chapter 5, Managing Kubernetes Clusters with Google Kubernetes Engine, explains the basis of containers and microservices. It looks at running and managing Kubernetes clusters on the Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) service.
Chapter 6,Exploring Google App Engine as a Compute Option, discusses how to define and run applications on Google App Engine.
Chapter 7,Running Serverless Functions with Google Cloud Functions, looks into running serverless functions on Google Cloud Functions.
Chapter 8, Networking Options in GCP, discusses Google's networking services. Understanding networking is key to successfully completing the architect exam. We will introduce you to concepts such as Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), before diving further into other concepts such as Virtual Private Network (VPN), networks, subnetworks, and routes.
Chapter 9, Exploring Storage Options in GCP – Part 1, considers different storage options. This will allow us to choose the right storage for a given use case. We will discuss object storage alongside relational and non-relational databases.
Chapter 10, Exploring Storage Options in GCP – Part 2, looks at storage options such as Cloud Spanner and Bigtable.
Chapter 11, Analyzing Big Data Options, discusses how big data is another key topic in the architect exam. Understanding what big data is, and what services GCP offers to handle the complexities of data analytics, will really help you in the test center when taking the exam. In this chapter, we will look at the various services that are available, and when we might choose one over the other.
Chapter 12, Putting Machine Learning to Work, examines machine learning in general as well as GCP-related services. This will allow us to understand the use cases and possible implementations of ML using Google Cloud.
Chapter 13, Security and Compliance, covers security, which is a feature of all GCP services. In this chapter, we will cover IAM in more detail than we have in previous chapters, to allow you to understand custom roles and service accounts. Additionally, we will look at Google's commitments to compliance; for example, through the Payment Card Industry (PCI) regulations.
Chapter 14, Google Cloud Management Options, shows you that there are a number of ways to manage your GCP infrastructure and its services. In this chapter, we will look at how to manage your GCP infrastructure and the key management options that are available, including Cloud Shell, SDK, and gcloud, and the steps that are needed to access or install these tools.
Chapter 15, Monitoring Your Infrastructure, looks at monitoring your infrastructure using Stackdriver.
Chapter 16,Case Studies, discusses how, in the exam, some questions may refer you to several case studies. You should be familiar with these case studies before you take the exam. These involve hypothetical business and solution concepts. In this chapter, we will cover how to find these case studies; additionally, we will also take a look at an example case study and analyze it in order to design an appropriate solution.
Chapter 17, Test your Knowledge, goes through exam tips and sample tests.
To get the most out of this book
As the practical examples throughout the book involve the use of GCP, a GCP free-tier account is required.
If you are using the digital version of this book, we advise you to type the code yourself. Doing so will help you avoid any potential errors related to the copying and pasting of code.
Download the color images
We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: https://static.packt-cdn.com/downloads/9781838555276_ColorImages.pdf.
Conventions used
There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.
CodeInText: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: "It automaticallycreates one subnet per region with predefined IP ranges with the /20 mask from the 10.128.0.0/9 CIDR block."
A block of code is set as follows:
<INSTANCE_NAME>.c.<PROJECT_ID>.internal
When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:
resources:- name:
{{ properties["name"] }}
type: compute.v1.instance
Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
gcloud deployment-manager deployments create networking --config config.yaml
Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see on screen. For example, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in the text like this. Here is an example: "Navigate to Network Services and then Load Balancing."
Get in touch
Feedback from our readers is always welcome.
General feedback: If you have questions about any aspect of this book, mention the book title in the subject of your message and email us at [email protected].
Errata: Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you have found a mistake in this book, we would be grateful if you would report this to us. Please visit www.packtpub.com/support/errata, selecting your book, clicking on the Errata Submission Form link, and entering the details.
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Section 1: Introduction to GCP
This section will introduce you to the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and outline the Professional Cloud Architect exam.
This section contains the following chapters:
Chapter 1
,
GCP Cloud Architect Professional
Chapter 2
,
Getting Started with Google Cloud Platform
Chapter 3
,
Google Cloud Platform Core Services
GCP Cloud Architect Professional
The shift to the cloud is not a new thing, and for many years, companies have been utilizing cost-effective solutions from public cloud vendors to move away from traditional on-premises architecture. The speed at which technology is moving now makes it increasingly difficult for companies managing their own infrastructure to get the most out of their IT systems.
While Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure currently lead the race with enterprise-scale companies, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is emerging as one of the most popular solutions among IT professionals, and interest is steadily increasing. It seems that Google is playing the long game very well. In Q3 2018, ex-CEO of Google Cloud, Diane Greene, estimated that only 10% of workloads are in the public cloud, showing the massive scope for market share still available. Furthermore, in Q4 2018, CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai, said that GCP was the fastest-growing major public cloud provider in the world. Given that companies are continuously moving to split cloud solutions, this means that IT cloud architects and engineers need to understand more than just the current top two providers.
This book, of course, will focus on Google technologies. Many of our readers may have experience of other public cloud vendors—for example, AWS or Microsoft Azure; however, we also cater to those who are new to the public cloud. The ultimate goal of this book is to help you to pass the Google Professional Cloud Architect exam. This book is suitable for both levels of experience. In this chapter, we will look at why you would take this exam, inform you about how to register for the exam, and brief you on what to expect from the exam.
We will cover the following topics in this chapter:
The benefits of being a certified architect
Registering for the exam
What to expect from the exam
Some tips
The benefits of being a certified architect
Studying for an exam can be a daunting prospect. Many hours need to be spent to achieve a certification, and it's not always an easy decision to dedicate a lot of personal time to achieve this goal. That said, if you currently work in the IT industry, you will know that the landscape has changed over several years. The public cloud is no longer something that worries companies, and more enterprises are shifting away from traditional on-premises solutions, meaning that the time you invest in learning new technologies will only be beneficial to your career.
But why take the exam? There are several reasons why you would take this exam, such as the following:
You have used GCP for some time and want to have an industry-recognized certification that reflects your current skillset
You want to achieve a new role or promotion and show that you can dedicate your own time to learning new skills that you don't get to use day to day
There is no better way to showcase your skills than having industry-led certifications
You want to get acquainted with modern stack development technologies
Whatever your reason for taking the exam, it is important to be realistic about your expectations.
Registering for the exam
The cost of the GCP Professional Architect exam is 200 USD, and it can be booked in several languages, such as English, Japanese, Spanish, and Portuguese. You can register for the exam by going through the following steps:
The first step is to visit the Google certification web page at
https://cloud.google.com/certification/
.
You will see that there are many certification paths you can take. Click on the
REGISTER
link under
Professional Cloud Architect
, as highlighted in the following screenshot:
Next, you will need a Webassessor account to book the exam. You can create a new account using the hyperlink in the
WELCOME
page:
Next, click on
REGISTER FOR AN EXAM
, as shown in the following screenshot:
Select your testing center, as shown in the following screenshot:
Next, select a date, as shown in the following screenshot:
Finally, review and click
Check Out
. Pay for the exam and you are ready to go. Submit the coupon or voucher code
if you have one:
Please bear in mind that you can change the selected date after the exam is booked up to 72 hours before the scheduled date at no extra cost. Note that a rescheduling fee will be charged for any changes made within 72 hours of your scheduled exam time.
What to expect from the exam
There are several resources that Google advises you to take advantage of to prepare for the exam. These consist of online training courses, instructor-led training, and practical labs. All of this information can be found on the cloud architect web page at https://cloud.google.com/certification/cloud-architect.
In addition, by visiting the exam guide web page at https://cloud.google.com/certification/guides/professional-cloud-architect/, you can see the expected subject knowledge of the exam applicants. The exam blueprint is critical for any exam, and GCP Architect is no different. You should review this guide and make sure you understand each section.
Like most exams, some real-life experience will also help you. The exam is created with cloud architects in mind who have experience with software development and multi-cloud/hybrid-cloud environments. That being said, there is no reason that you cannot pass this exam with the correct amount of study, even if you don't have practical, hands-on experience.
Google offers Qwiklabs that can be used to gain experience in the services offered. It is recommended that you sign up to these to familiarize yourself with the GCP layout and services. Qwiklabs can be paid for either through a monthly subscription, which will give you unlimited access to the labs, or by purchasing credits. Each lab will have a certain number of credits depending on the complexity of the lab. The typical cost of 10 credits is 10 USD. GCP Essentials gives a great introduction to GCP and can be found at https://google.qwiklabs.com/quests/23?utm_source=gcp&utm_medium=site&utm_campaign=certification. It takes around five hours to complete this lab.
Once you are prepared for the exam and have successfully scheduled it, you will need to visit one of the registered test centers. You will be expected to arrive around 15 minutes before the exam and take two forms of identification with you. All of this will be explained in your exam confirmation email. The exam itself will consist of multiple-choice questions that will require one or more answers to be selected. In addition to this, you will be quizzed on case studies of fictional companies. You will, however, have access to these case studies before the exam, and you can refer to them during the exam. In Chapter 16, Case Studies, we will go over these in more detail. There will be around 60 questions in the exam, and you will have two hours to complete them. You will receive only a pass or fail, with no indication of your score.
Some tips
In the exam, we recommend that you make use of the fact that you can mark questions for review and come back to them later. It is a personal preference, of course, but we suggest that you don't puzzle over a question for too long. You will have around two minutes per question to provide an answer. Some of the answers to the questions will jump straight out of the screen at you, and others will take you more time to determine the correct answer. If you are spending too long on a question, then mark it for review and move on, as it's important to get to the end of the test to ensure that the maximum number of marks are scored.
We also recommend booking the exam to give you an incentive. It is easy to procrastinate or worry too much that you are not fully prepared. This is a natural feeling, but having an end date in sight gives you focus and determination. We recommend that you print out the exam guide and work through these points to ensure that you have an understanding of each objective.
Additionally, two hours is a long time to be in the exam center. Ensure that you book the exam at a time of day that you are most alert, to give yourself the best chance of success.
Summary
In this chapter, we covered what to expect from the exam and how to actually register for the exam, as well as the benefits of being a GCP. Throughout this book, we will introduce you to the services that are needed for a successful outcome. This book's ultimate goal is to assist you in passing the exam; however, we encourage you to do more reading if you wish to deep dive into a particular topic or service that you encounter while reading this book.
In the next chapter, we will get started with the GCP.
Further reading
Read the following article for more information:
Google Cloud Certificate
:
https://cloud.google.com/certification
Getting Started with Google Cloud Platform
In this chapter, we will introduce the concept of cloud computing to better understand what Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is. We will take a look at GCP resources and their hierarchy. After that, we will create our first account and set up a project. The billing options will be discussed. We will see how to create a billing account and associate it with the project. Finally, we will take a look at how to export the billing information. It is important to have this introduction before we start talking about GCP services. This will both help you to pass the exam and to perform the basic setup of GCP for real-life scenarios before you can even use the services.
We will cover the following topics in this chapter:
Introducing the cloud
Understanding GCP
Understanding GCP infrastructure
Basic GCP configuration
Introducing the cloud
Before we jump into GCP, let's first learn what the cloud is:
It is true—there is no cloud: it's just someone else's computer. With the cloud, what we are actually doing is accessing resources and consuming services that are hosted on someone else's computer. If we want to be more precise, the cloud is a pool of computers.
Now, let's look at a more accurate and professional definition used by Google that comes from the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology (https://csrc.nist.gov/publications/detail/sp/800-145/final):
The five essential characteristics of the cloud are as follows:
On-demand self-service
: Services are provisioned automatically without manual provider intervention.
Broad network access
: Resources are available through the network.
Resource pooling
: Resources are pooled from a shared pool, giving the user a sense of location independence. For some of the resources, the location might be restricted.
Rapid elasticity
: Services can be elastically provisioned and deprovisioned with capacity being managed by the provider.
Measured service
: Resource usage is monitored and can be reported on.
The four deployment models are as follows:
Private cloud
: Used by specific organizations, but can be managed by third parties
Public cloud
: Used by the general public
Community cloud
: Used by specific communities
Hybrid cloud
: Composed of two or more different clouds
When we look at GCP, it fulfills all of the five characteristics and fits into the public cloud deployment model. In the next section, we will have a look at GCP itself.
Understanding GCP
Google has been developing its own tools to deliver services such as Gmail, YouTube, Google Drive, and Google+ for years. These tools have been converted into services that can be consumed by others. Consumers are given the amazing scalability that Google has to use for their own purposes. GCP lets you choose from computing, storage, networking, big data, and machine learning (ML) services to build your application on top of them. The number of services is growing constantly, and new announcements are made on an almost weekly basis. New services and features are released, first as alpha then as beta versions, and finally, are made available globally. The early releases are available even earlier for selected customers and partners. This allows the services to be tested by external parties even before the official release!
Google supports several service models, including the following:
Infrastructure as a Service
(
IaaS
)
Platform as a Service
(
PaaS
)
Container as a Service
(
CaaS
)
Function as a Service
(
FaaS
)
Managed services
As we can see, the range of services in GCP is very broad. Looking at the following diagram, we will analyze this range of services offered by GCP:
We can start from very simple IaaS, such as a traditional data center, and end up using functions as services and managed services. The choice of service depends on our requirements. To put it simply, if we need flexibility and control over our virtual machines (VMs), we would simply use Compute Engine. This service allows us to provision VM instances or simply lift and shift machines from our existing environment. The trade-off, however, that is you are responsible for managing all of the layers above the VM container. That includes the operating system, any middleware, and any applications on top of it.
When we move to the left of the diagram, the burden of maintaining the infrastructure is taken away from us. With Cloud Functions, all we really care about is the coding of a function in a language supported by GCP. Once it's done and published, we access it through the HTTP protocol.
Finally, as we move to managed services, we start to simply consume services that bring us particular business value without having to worry about any underlying parts. They can be used in Software as a Service (SaaS) models and consumed through APIs. An example of this Dataprep, which is a data service that allows you to clean up and prepare your data for further analysis. Another example is the pretrained ML model, Vision API. Developers can consume this service using the RESTful API to analyze images without having to write any code, except for the call itself.
Hopefully, now you understand that GCP is much more than just a hosting service. It provides you with sets of tools, services, and resources that will help you to develop and deliver your applications. The choice of the services you will use depends entirely on the set of requirements you have. If that feels overwhelming, don't worry. This book is written to help you to go through GCP step by step.
In Chapter 3, Google Cloud Platform Core Services, you will get an overview of the most important GCP services. In the following chapters, we will dive into each of them in more detail to get you prepared for the exam.
GCP differentiators
Every cloud provider has something that differentiates it from others. Each provider has its own strategy for how to deliver value to customers, and the same is true for GCP. Let's have a look at what the key GCP features are that make it stand out from the crowd:
Developer focused
: GCP was built with a focus on developers. If you look at the history of GCP, it started in 2008 with a preview release of App Engine, which is a fully serverless platform, allowing developers to run their applications written in languages such as Python, Java, and Go. It provides out-of-the-box load balancing and autoscaling. Developers just need to choose the platform they want to develop on and they can start coding. Also, if you look at
Stackdriver
(a GCP monitoring tool) itself, it provides several tools that can be directly integrated with an application. This allows the developer to use them to monitor and debug their application. Google makes it very clear that GCP was created for developers to help them with their challenges. Having achieved this goal, they are now aiming at large enterprises.
The Google Network
: The Google Network is something that differentiates GCP from other cloud providers. Google claims that around 40% of the world's internet traffic is carried by the Google Network, making it the largest network on the globe. This allows the
Google Network
to provide responses with very low latency as close to the end user as possible.
Global scope
: GCP was developed with global availability in mind. You will see services such as load balancing available globally rather than regionally, unlike other providers. This allows the client to concentrate on development and embrace out-of-the-box high availability and elasticity.
ML
: GCP offers a great number of ML services for
both
data scientists and regular developers who have limited knowledge of the topic. ML allows pretrained models to be used, as well as offering AutoML services. The latter allows you to train ML models without knowing how they are actually created. The portfolio of these services is growing very quickly. The key goal of Google is to enable enterprises with ML to make faster and smarter decisions.
Pricing
: The VM instances are priced per second with a minimum run time of one minute. This allows you to run the machines for short tests and not have to pay for a full hour of use.
Service-level agreement (SLA)
: GCP services provide monthly uptime percentage
Service-level objectives
(
SLOs
). If the SLO is not met, the customer is eligible for financial credits. Note that this percentage depends on the service and that alpha and beta features are not included with any SLA.
Security
: Google uses its 15 years of experience in running services such as Gmail in GCP. Your data is always encrypted with a choice of Google or customer-managed keys.
Carbon neutral
: This might not be the most important feature when it comes to functionality, but it is worth knowing. Google data centers are carbon neutral, meaning that 100% of the energy used to power them comes from renewable energy. This includes the GCP data centers.
GCP locations
As we have already mentioned, GCP has a global footprint that includes North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. The locations are further split into regions and zones.
It is your decision where your application should be located to provide low latency and high availability:
A region
is defined by Google as an independent geographic area that is divided into multiple zones. Locations within regions should have round-trip network latencies of under 1 ms in 95% of cases.
A zone
is a deployment area for GCP resources. Note that a zone does not correspond to a single data center; it can consist of multiple buildings. Even though a zone provides a certain amount of fault protections, a zone is considered a
single point of failure
(
SPOF
). Therefore, you should consider placing your application across multiple zones to provide fault tolerance.
Network edge locations
are
connections to GCP services located in a particular metropolitan area.
At the time of writing, GCP has the following:
22 regions
67 zones
140 network edge locations
These numbers are quickly growing and, while this book was being written, Google announced an additional two regions at the Google Cloud Next conference. For the most up-to-date information, refer to https://cloud.google.com/about/locations. The following map shows the current and future regions and zones across the globe:
The preceding map shows current regions in blue and planned regions in white. It should also be noted that not all services are available in each region. As an example, Cloud Functions, after being made available globally, was introduced only to a limited number of locations.
Resource manager
GCP consists of containers such as organizations, folders, and projects to hierarchically group your resources. This allows you to manage their configuration and access control. The resources can be managed programmatically using APIs. Google also provides tools such as Google Cloud Console and command-line utilities, which are wrappers around the API calls. Let's now have a look at the hierarchy presented in the following diagram and familiarize ourselves with each of the resources:
The preceding diagram shows the resource manager hierarchy. Starting from the top, we have an Organization that can be mapped to a company. Next, we have Folders that can represent a company's departments. Next, we have Projects, which further divide the actual company projects or environments, such as development and production. Finally, under Projects, we have GCP Resources.
Organizations
At the top of the hierarchy, we have the organization. You need to note, however, that this is an optional resource and you can use GCP very well without it. The organization is only available to users of G Suite and Cloud Identity, which are products outside of GCP.
To provide some context, G Suite is a bundle of collaboration tools including Gmail, Google Drive, Hangouts, and Google Docs. Users use these tools, which are stored in the G Suite Domain.
Cloud Identity is an Identity-as-a-Service (IDaaS) offering. It similarly allows you to create a domain and to manage your users, applications, and device accounts from a single point. You can learn more about Cloud Identity in Chapter 13, Security and Compliance.
A single G Suite or Cloud Identity account can be associated only with a single organization. This implies that the organization is bound to one domain only. In both G Suite and Cloud Identity, there is a defined role of super administrators. When you create the organization, those users will have very high privileges in the organization and underlying resources. Make sure that this account is not used for day-to-day operations.
Instead, the super admin should assign the role of organization administrator to designated users. This role is further used to define IAM policies, resource hierarchy, and delegate permissions using IAM roles.
Folders
Folders are logical containers that can group projects or other folders. They can be used to assign IAM policies. Again, the use of folders is optional and is available only when an organization resource exists. The use case for using folders is to group projects that will use the same IAM policies.
Projects
Projects are the smallest logical containers that group resources. Every resource within GCP needs to belong to exactly one project. Each project is managed separately, and IAM roles can be assigned per project to control the access in a fine-grained way.
Projects have three identification attributes:
Project ID
: A globally unique immutable ID generated by Google
Project name
: A unique name provided
by a user
Project number
: A globally unique number generated by Google
In most cases, you will use the project ID to identify your project. To manage resources within GCP, you will always need to identify which project they belong to by either project ID or project number. You can create multiple projects, but there is a quota that limits the number of projects per account. If you reach the quota, you will need to submit a request to extend it.
Resources scope
Now that we know the physical and logical separation of GCP resources, let's have a look at their scope. The resources can be either global, regional, or zonal. That indicates how accessible the resource is for other resources. For example, a global image can be used in any region to provision VMs. On the other hand, a VM that needs to belong to a particular subnet must reside in the same region for which the subnet was configured.
Even though the resources have a narrow scope, keep in mind that they still need to have unique names within the project, meaning you can't have two VMs with the same name within one project.
OK, let's have a look at the resources and their scope. You might not be fully familiar with the following resources, but don't worry: they will be explained in more detail in the coming chapters.
Global resources
Global resources are globally available within the same project and can be accessed from any zone. These include the following objects:
Addresses
: These are reserved external IP addresses and can be used by global load balancers.
Images
: These are either predefined or user customized. They can be used for provisioning VMs.
Snapshots
: Snapshots of a persistent disk allow the creation of new disks and VMs. Note that you can also expose a snapshot to a different project.
Instance templates
: These can be used for the creation of managed instance groups.
Virtual Private Cloud
(
VPC
)
networks
: These are virtual networks that you can connect your workloads to.
Firewall
: These are, in fact, defined per VPC, but are accessible globally.
Routes
: Routes allow you to direct your network traffic and are assigned to VPCs, but are also considered global.
Regional resources
Regional resources are accessible by other resources only within the same region. These include the following objects:
Addresses
: Static, external IP addresses can only be used by instances that are in the same region.
Subnets
: These are associated with VPC networks and allow the assignment of IP addresses to VMs.
Regional managed instance groups
: These allow you to scale groups of instances. The scope can be set to either regions or zones.
Regional persistent disks
: These provide replicated, persistent storage to VM instances. They can
also
be shared between projects for the creation of snapshots and images, but not disk attachments.
Zonal resources
Zonal resources are only accessible by other resources within the same zone. These include the following objects:
VM instances
: These reside in a particular zone.
Zonal persistent disks
: These provide persistent storage to VM instances. They can also
be
shared as disks between projects for the creation of snapshots and images, but not disk attachments.
Machine types
: These define the hardware configuration for your VM instances and are defined for any particular zone.
Zonal managed instance groups
: These allow you to autoscale groups of instances. The scope can be set to either regions or zones.
Now that we understand the theory, let's have a look at how we create a project.
Managing projects
To create a new project, follow these steps:
Log in to the GCP console at
https://console.cloud.google.com
and click on the drop-down arrow next to the name of the project you are currently logged into. A
Select a project
window will pop up. Click on
NEW PROJECT
in the top-right corner:
Fill in the name and choose the billing account. You can attach the project to an organization or a folder. Choose the default billing account. In the following steps, we will show you how to create a new billing account and associate it with the project we are now creating. Click on the
CREATE
button, as shown in the following screenshot:
The new project has been created. You can now manage it from the GCP console:
To start using the GCP services, click on the hamburger icon. A menu will pop up. You can access all GCP services from here, as shown in the following screenshot:
