Google Cloud Fundamentals
Google Cloud is a cloud computing platform that provides on-demand compute, storage, networking, data, security, and managed application services. You use its projects, APIs, and global infrastructure to build and operate workloads without owning the underlying data centers.
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Intro
Google Cloud Fundamentals
Google Cloud is a cloud computing platform. It exposes infrastructure and managed capabilities as services. You use those services to run applications, store data, connect systems, analyze information, manage access, and observe workloads.
Do not begin by memorizing product names. Begin with the operating model. A project contains resources and connects usage to billing. A service exposes capabilities through an API. A principal requests an action. Identity and Access Management decides whether the action is allowed. A location determines where a regional or zonal resource runs.
This course gives you that map. It stays broad because compute, identity, networking, and storage each have their own follow-on course.
What the cloud changes
You can create Google Cloud resources through the console, the Google Cloud CLI, client libraries, or service APIs. Provisioning is quick and repeatable. It can also create cost, exposure, and operational work in minutes.
Google operates the physical infrastructure and the managed service platform. You remain responsible for your data, identities, access choices, workload configuration, and application behavior. The exact division changes with the service. A virtual machine leaves more work with you than a fully managed application service.
This division is the shared responsibility model. Treat it as a design input. A managed service reduces some operational tasks. It does not make access, data protection, reliability, or cost someone else's problem.
The resource model
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Where this skill leads
Relevant careers
See how this topic contributes to broader role-level skill maps.
Sources
- https://docs.cloud.google.com/docs/overview
Supports
- Google Cloud provides services that applications combine into infrastructure and managed capabilities
- Projects contain resources, settings, permissions, and metadata and are associated with billing accounts
- Projects have a name, project ID, and Google-assigned project number
- Google Cloud exposes console, CLI, client library, and API interfaces
- Regions contain zones and resources can have global, regional, or zonal scope
- https://cloud.google.com/products
Supports
- Google Cloud groups products across compute, storage, databases, analytics, networking, security, developer tools, operations, and artificial intelligence
- Compute Engine, Google Kubernetes Engine, Cloud Run, Cloud Storage, Cloud SQL, and BigQuery represent different service families
- https://docs.cloud.google.com/docs/geography-and-regions
Supports
- Regions are independent geographic areas containing zones, and a zone is a deployment area and failure domain within a region
- Applications can be distributed across zones to tolerate a zonal failure
- Location choice affects latency, availability, durability, data handling, and disaster recovery
- Services and resources can be zonal, regional, or managed across multiple regions
- https://docs.cloud.google.com/resource-manager/docs/cloud-platform-resource-hierarchy
Supports
- The hierarchy uses organization, optional folders, projects, and service resources
- Each resource except the hierarchy root has one parent
- Access and organization policies can inherit through the hierarchy
- Projects are fundamental organizing entities for service resources
- https://docs.cloud.google.com/service-usage/docs/overview
Supports
- Service Usage lists and manages APIs and services for projects
- Most Google APIs must be enabled in a project before use
- Services can be managed through the console, Google Cloud CLI, or API
- https://docs.cloud.google.com/service-usage/docs/enabled-service
Supports
- Enabling a service associates it with the project and can enable billing
- Using a service requires a project, an enabled API, and authentication credentials
- Service enablement and IAM authorization are separate controls
- https://docs.cloud.google.com/iam/docs/overview
Supports
- IAM controls who can do what on which resources
- Principals receive roles containing permissions on resources through allow policies
- Container resource policies can be inherited by descendants
- https://docs.cloud.google.com/docs/authentication
Supports
- Authentication establishes identity and authorization determines allowed access
- Service accounts represent workloads rather than people
- Attaching a user-managed service account is recommended for production code running on Google Cloud where supported
- Application Default Credentials lets libraries discover credentials from the environment
- Service account keys create security and lifecycle risk
- https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/concepts
Supports
- Cloud Billing tracks, explains, pays, and helps optimize Google Cloud spending
- Billing tools include reports, forecasts, anomalies, budgets, and optimization views
- https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/budgets
Supports
- Budgets compare actual or forecasted cost with a configured amount
- Threshold rules trigger notifications
- A budget does not automatically cap usage or spending
- https://docs.cloud.google.com/monitoring/docs/monitoring-overview
Supports
- Cloud Monitoring provides metrics, dashboards, alerting, uptime checks, and synthetic monitoring
- Monitoring helps expose application and service health, behavior, and performance
- https://docs.cloud.google.com/logging/docs/audit
Supports
- Cloud Audit Logs helps answer who did what, where, and when
- Audit log types include Admin Activity, Data Access, System Event, and Policy Denied
- Admin Activity logs are always written
- Data Access logs other than BigQuery are generally disabled by default
- https://docs.cloud.google.com/docs/security/overview/whitepaper
Supports
- Google protects the underlying cloud infrastructure
- Customers remain responsible for their data and for responsibilities that follow from service configuration and use
- The responsibility boundary varies across infrastructure, platform, and software service models
- https://docs.cloud.google.com/architecture/framework
Supports
- The framework addresses operational excellence, security, reliability, cost, performance, and sustainability
- The framework applies to cloud-native, migrated, hybrid, and multicloud workloads
- Managed services can reduce operational complexity
- https://docs.cloud.google.com/shell/docs
Supports
- Cloud Shell provides a browser-based shell with the Google Cloud CLI and common tools installed
- Cloud Shell provides authenticated access for interactive work