Certain Compute Engine resources live in regions or zones. A region is a specific geographical location where you can run your resources. Each region has one or more zones; most regions have three or more zones. For example, the us-central1 region denotes a region in the Central United States that has zones us-central1-a, us-central1-b, us-central1-c, and us-central1-f.

The Cloud Billing Reports page lets you view your Google Cloud Platform (GCP) usage costs at a glance and discover and analyze trends. The Reports page gives you a chart that plots usage costs for all projects linked to a billing account. To help you view the cost trends that are important to you, you can select the data range of interest and configure the chart filter and group by date range, project, product, and SKU.

Some questions that billing reports can help you answer are:

• How is my current month's GCP spending trending?
• What project cost the most last month?
• What GCP product (for example, Compute Engine or Cloud Storage) cost me the most?

The gcloud projects group lets you create and manage IAM policies for projects on the Google Cloud Platform. Resources are organized hierarchically and assigned to a particular project. A Project resource is required to use Google Cloud Platform, and forms the basis for creating, enabling and using all Cloud Platform services, managing APIs, enabling billing, adding and removing collaborators, and managing permissions.

Planning and estimating GCP product use using the Pricing Calculator.

Planning and configuring compute resources. Considerations include:

• Selecting appropriate compute choices for a given workload (e.g., Compute Engine, Kubernetes Engine, App Engine).
• Using preemptible VMs and custom machine types as appropriate.

Planning and configuring data storage options. Considerations include:

• Product choice (e.g., Cloud SQL, BigQuery, Cloud Spanner, Cloud Bigtable)
• Choosing storage options (e.g., Regional, Multi-regional, Nearline, Coldline)

Planning and configuring network resources. Tasks include:

• Differentiating load balancing options.
• Identifying resource locations in a network for availability.
• Configuring Cloud DNS.

Why are there limits to how many projects I can create?

Quotas protect the Google Cloud Community from unforeseen spikes in usage. However, as your usage of Google Cloud Platform increases, you can request an increase in your quota.

When Google Cloud allocates resources to customers, we consider a variety of factors, including resources that most legitimate customers use, customer’s previous usage and history with Google Cloud, and previous abuse penalties. Customers might have different quota based on these and other factors.

How do I request more projects?

If you attempt to exceed your project limit, the console will prompt you to fill out a request form. This happens when you try to create a project but you have already reached your quota. The form will require you to specify the number of additional projects you need, along with their corresponding email accounts, billing accounts, and intended uses.

Note that you may need to make a payment in order to increase your quota (see below).

Differentiating load balancing options in GCP  

Compute Engine– Remember some of Googles VMS are used for different purposes.  Either for an IaaS or PaaS service approach.

Cloud Functions -is geared towards a serverless approach and focused on microservices

App Engine - is focused on PaaS and can be delivered in two different solutions  (Standard or Flexible)

Container Engine (Kubernetes Engine) - Awesome solution for developers wanting a simple and lightweight container.

Note!   A Compute Engine instances can run Linux and Windows Server

Google Cloud Launcher offers ready-to-go development stacks, solutions, and services to accelerate development. So you spend less time installing and more time developing.

• check Deploy production-grade solutions in a few clicks
• check Single bill for all your GCP and 3rd party services
• check Manage solutions using Deployment Manager
• check Notifications when a security update is available
• check Direct access to partner support

Google Cloud Deployment Manager allows you to specify all the resources needed for your application in a declarative format using yaml. You can also use Python or Jinja2 templates to parameterize the configuration and allow reuse of common deployment paradigms such as a load balanced, auto-scaled instance group. Treat your configuration as code and perform repeatable deployments.

The Google Cloud Status Dashboard provides status information on services that are part of Google Cloud Platform. Status can include service disruptions, outages, or informational messages about a temporary issue.

Managing Identity and Access Management (IAM). Tasks include:

• Viewing account IAM assignments.
• Assigning IAM roles to accounts or Google Groups.
• Defining custom IAM roles.

 Managing service accounts. Tasks include:

• Managing service accounts with limited scopes.
• Assigning a service account to VM instances.
• Granting access to a service account in another project.

 Viewing audit logs for project and managed services.

Cloud Identity is an Identity as a Service (IDaaS) and enterprise mobility management (EMM) product. It offers the identity services and endpoint administration that are available in G Suite as a stand-alone product. As an administrator, you can use Cloud Identity to manage your users, apps, and devices from a central location—the Google Admin console.

A/B Testing, also known as split testing or bucket testing, is a popular technique in which you serve different versions of your web application to a different set of customers. It is particularly useful when you want to release some new features but want to test out the feedback via a selective set of users

GCP Services Crib Sheet - Download PDF

https://cloud.google.com/icons/

SOLUTION ICONS FOR ARCHITECTURAL DIAGRAMS

The official set of icons to build architectural diagrams of Google Cloud Platform

Official Icons and Sample Diagrams

Here are the official set of icons to build architectural diagrams of Google Cloud Platform.

Also included are 50 sample diagrams, viewable in Google Slides, PowerPoint, and Lucidchart. These icons and diagrams are intended to be used to accurately reference Google's technology and tools, in architectures, blog posts, whitepapers, datasheets, posters, and other technical material.

https://cloud.google.com/certification/practice-exam/cloud-engineer 

 Two Practices exam to help you prepare for the BETA Exam.May 9th until May 30th. 

  Note that the Question Pool will be fully updated Saturday 5/22.   Course release May 24 

Thank you and Good Luck on the BETA,, Its a NAIL Biter......

An Associate Cloud Engineer deploys applications, monitors operations, and manages enterprise solutions. This individual is able to use Google Cloud Console and the command-line interface to perform common platform-based tasks to maintain one or more deployed solutions that leverage Google-managed or self-managed services on Google Cloud.

The Associate Cloud Engineer exam assesses your ability to:

• check Set up a cloud solution environment
• check Plan and configure a cloud solution
• check Deploy and implement a cloud solution
• check Ensure successful operation of a cloud solution
• check Configure access and security