Welcome to the third chapter. In this chapter, we will focus on planning and managing GCP resources. Our focus lies mainly on planning Google Cloud resources, describing use cases for specific solutions, and learning what the benefits of the different application types are. We will dive into billing and budgets, which are essential in terms of the financial aspect of Google Cloud and a reporting point of view. The last topics covered in this chapter are API and quota management.
We are going to cover the following main topics:
- Planning Google Cloud resources
- Billing and budgets
- API management
- Quota management
Planning Google Cloud resources
The configuration and implementation of Google Cloud resources is an easy process. You create a project, enable an API, deploy virtual machines (VMs), and complete the task. This process is simple and looks like it is easy to implement. But is it really?
Did you consider all the possible options for your use case? Did you configure your VM or resource optimally? Is your deployment secure?
We could explore these questions in different dimensions and we can end up discussing this for a long time. However, there is a reason we brought them up here. It’s because planning is far more important than implementation.
If a cloud deployment is planned and architected well, its implementation and extension are faster, repeatable, easier to maintain, secure, and optimized.
The architecture of Google Cloud isn’t the main topic of the Associate Cloud Engineer (ACE) certification, but it is important to remember it. Perhaps after passing the ACE exam, you might want to pursue the Professional Cloud Architect exam, and that exam covers the architecting of Google Cloud resources.
The book Professional Cloud Architect – Google Cloud Certification Guide, by Konrad Cłapa and Brian Gerrard, Packt Publishing, is an excellent resource for learning more about Google Cloud architecture and deploying and configuring Google Cloud resources.
Google Cloud has prepared excellent resources for all those interested in planning and configuring.
The Google Cloud setup checklist is a step-by-step guide for anyone who wants to have scalable, well-architected production and enterprise-ready workloads. It is essential to mention that like identity configuration, role and permission assignment, or resource hierarchy organization, some tasks can be done differently, as every company and environment is different.
The following link covers the initial aspects of the Google Cloud setup checklist – https://cloud.google.com/docs/enterprise/setup-checklist. You should be able to see the following list items:
- Cloud identity and organization
- Users and groups
- Administrative access
- Set up billing
- Resource hierarchy
- Access
- Networking
- Monitoring and logging
- Security
- Support
The checklist consists of various tasks that have step-by-step procedures. Some tasks can be accomplished in multiple ways depending on the desired way to implement them – be it programmatically or in Cloud Console.
Checklists help with following Google Cloud’s best practices but feel free to use them according to your needs.