Google Cloud (GCP)

AlloyDB

PostgreSQL-compatible with columnar accelerator.

Google App Engine

Standard (sandboxed) vs Flex (containers). Historically GCP's entry.

Artifact Registry

Docker + Maven + npm + Python + Go + Debian.

BeyondCorp Enterprise

Google's zero-trust access model.

BigQuery

Petabyte SQL. Separate storage + compute. BQML.

BigQuery ML

Train + predict in SQL. Foundation models integrated.

BigQuery Partitioning + Clustering

Reduce scan → reduce cost. Essential BQ optimization.

BigQuery Slots + Reservations

Compute unit. Flat-rate + Editions.

BigQuery Streaming Inserts

Real-time ingest. Storage Write API modern.

Cloud Bigtable

Google's original Bigtable, managed. Analytical + operational.

Bigtable vs Spanner vs BigQuery

When to use which. Common confusion.

Chronicle

Managed SIEM at Google scale.

Cloud Armor

Rules on HTTP LB. Adaptive Protection (ML).

Google Cloud Batch

Job queues + auto-scaling. Similar to AWS Batch.

Cloud Build

Docker + K8s + Terraform + custom builds.

Cloud CDN

Integrated with HTTP LB. Google's edge network.

Cloud Composer

Managed Apache Airflow on GCP.

Cloud Deploy

Progressive delivery. Approvals + rollback.

Cloud DLP + Sensitive Data Protection

Discover + classify + protect PII.

Cloud DNS

Public + private zones. DNSSEC. Anycast.

Cloud Functions

Gen 1 (Lambda-like) + Gen 2 (Cloud Run + Eventarc).

Cloud Interconnect

Direct + Partner Interconnect. Physical + partner options.

Cloud KMS

Symmetric + asymmetric + HSM. CMEK integration.

Cloud Load Balancing

External vs internal. Global vs regional. HTTP vs TCP.

Cloud Logging

All GCP services publish. Log Router.

Cloud Monitoring

Managed metrics. Auto-discovers GCP resources.

Cloud NAT

No NAT gateways to manage. Regional service.

Cloud Profiler

Low-overhead CPU + memory profiles.

Cloud Router

BGP peering with on-prem or other clouds.

Cloud Run

Container to HTTPS URL. Autoscale from zero. Modern GCP default.

Cloud Run Jobs

Run-to-completion tasks. Cron scheduling.

Cloud Source Repositories

Git hosting on GCP. Less popular than GitHub.

Cloud SQL

Similar to AWS RDS. HA + read replicas.

Cloud SQL Insights

Query performance monitoring. Postgres + MySQL.

Cloud Storage Classes

GCS tiers. Modeled after S3 but with own nuances.

Cloud Storage FUSE

GCS as POSIX filesystem. Not for random writes.

GCS Retention Policy + Object Lock

WORM storage. Cannot delete before retention.

Cloud Trace

OpenTelemetry-based. GCP-integrated.

Cloud Vision API

Image + PDF analysis. Managed vision AI.

Google Compute Engine

N/E/C/M families. Custom machine types. Live migration.

Confidential VMs on GCP

Memory encryption via AMD SEV / Intel TDX.

Config Connector

Manage GCP via Kubernetes YAML.

Custom Images + Instance Templates

Golden images. Shared across projects.

Dataflow

Batch + streaming unified. Autoscaling.

Dataplex

Unified data governance + discovery.

Dataproc

Ephemeral clusters. Spot workers. Metastore.

Dataproc Metastore + Data Catalog

Shared Hive Metastore. Data Catalog for discovery.

Deployment Manager

GCP-native IaC. Terraform usually preferred.

Document AI

Form + invoice + ID parsers. Structured extraction.

Filestore

Basic, Enterprise, High Scale tiers.

Firestore

Firestore Native + Firestore in Datastore mode.

Firestore Scale Limits + Best Practices

1 write/sec per doc. Sharding hot docs.

GCE Instance Scheduling

Cron-based VM lifecycle. Dev/test cost savings.

AlloyDB architecture

Deep-dive on AlloyDB: Postgres compatible, compute + log-based storage, columnar engine, read replicas, AI extensions, PITR.

GCP Cloud Armor

How Cloud Armor protects against DDoS + application attacks.

GCP BigQuery

How BigQuery provides serverless SQL data warehouse at massive scale.

BigQuery architecture

Deep-dive on BigQuery internals: Dremel query engine, Capacitor columnar format, Colossus storage, slot allocation, BI Engine, materialized views.

BigQuery BI Engine

Deep-dive on BigQuery BI Engine: in-memory columnar caching and vectorized execution, automatic query routing and partial acceleration, LRU working-se…

GCP Bigtable

How Bigtable provides massive-scale wide-column storage, when to use it versus Firestore or Spanner.

Cloud Bigtable -- wide-column NoSQL at massive scale

Deep-dive on Cloud Bigtable: the sorted wide-column data model, the paramount row key design (locality, load distribution, hotspotting), tablets and a…

GCP Bigtable Deep Dive

How Cloud Bigtable provides massive-scale NoSQL.

GCP Cloud Build

How Cloud Build provides managed CI/CD with deep GCP integration.

GCP Cloud DNS

How Cloud DNS provides authoritative + resolver DNS.

GCP Cloud Functions

How Cloud Functions run code in response to GCP events, cold starts, and how they compare to AWS Lambda.

Cloud Functions -- event-driven serverless functions on GCP

Deep-dive on GCP Cloud Functions: the function-as-a-service model, triggers (HTTP/Pub/Sub/storage/Eventarc), Gen 2 on Cloud Run (container-based), aut…

GCP Cloud Run

How Cloud Run provides serverless container execution, scaling to zero.

Cloud Run architecture

Deep-dive on Cloud Run: GFE ingress, activator and concurrency-based autoscaler, gVisor/microVM sandboxes, immutable revisions, canary traffic splits,…

GCP Cloud SQL

How Cloud SQL provides managed relational databases, HA configurations, and read replicas.

Cloud SQL architecture

Deep-dive on Cloud SQL: synchronous regional persistent-disk HA and cold-standby failover, Auth Proxy and IAM-based connections, async read replicas v…

Cloud Composer architecture

Deep-dive on Cloud Composer: Airflow scheduler + workers + metadata DB, DAG lifecycle, operators, sensors, IAM, observability.

gcp_compute_engine

GCP Dataflow

How Dataflow provides managed Apache Beam for batch + streaming pipelines.

Dataflow architecture

Deep-dive on Cloud Dataflow: Beam runner, streaming engine, autoscaler, shuffle service, watermark, Flex Templates, snapshot.

GCP Firestore

How Firestore provides serverless document DB with real-time sync.

Firestore architecture

Deep-dive on Firestore: collections + documents, single/composite indexes, queries, realtime listeners, security rules, offline.

Google Cloud Storage

How Cloud Storage compares to S3, storage classes (Standard, Nearline, Coldline, Archive), and lifecycle policies.

GCP GKE

How GKE provides managed Kubernetes with autopilot mode option.

GKE architecture

Deep-dive on GKE: cluster mode, node pools, autoscaler, workload identity, VPC-native, Gateway, Binary Authorization, Config Sync.

GCP IAM

How GCP IAM works: predefined and custom roles, principals (users, service accounts, groups), and hierarchical policy inheritance.

GCP IAM Deep Dive

How GCP IAM works in detail: role hierarchy, bindings, conditional access.

GCP Cloud KMS

How Cloud KMS manages encryption keys.

GCP Load Balancing

How GCP load balancers work: global + regional, application + network.

GCP Cloud Logging

How Cloud Logging aggregates + queries logs.

GCP Memorystore

How Memorystore provides managed Redis and Memcached.

GCP Memorystore -- managed Redis / Memcached

Deep-dive on GCP Memorystore: the fast-cache need, managed Redis/Memcached (no server ops), tiers (basic vs standard/HA), VPC-private access, replicat…

GCP Cloud Monitoring

How Cloud Monitoring collects + analyzes metrics + alerts.

GCP Multi-Region Architecture in Depth

A 2500-word walkthrough of GCP multi-region: Cloud DNS, Global LB anycast, regional stacks, Cloud Spanner multi-region, Firestore/GCS/BigQuery, and ob…

GCP Overview

What GCP is, how projects and folders organize resources, and where GCP fits versus AWS and Azure.

GCP Pub/Sub

How GCP Pub/Sub provides globally distributed pub/sub messaging.

GCP Pub/Sub architecture

Deep-dive on Pub/Sub architecture: topic vs subscription, delivery modes, ordering keys, DLQ, exactly-once, and consumer resilience patterns.

GCP Secret Manager

How Secret Manager stores and manages secrets in GCP.

GCP Service Accounts

Identity for workloads. Key files vs Workload Identity.

GCP Cloud Spanner

How Spanner provides horizontally-scalable strongly-consistent SQL globally.

Spanner architecture

Deep-dive on Cloud Spanner: TrueTime, Paxos-replicated splits, directories, commit wait, 2PC, read variants, split management, schema.

Spanner TrueTime

Deep-dive on Spanner TrueTime: the interval-returning TrueTime API, GPS/atomic-clock-bounded uncertainty, commit wait for external consistency, Paxos …

GCP Cloud Trace

How Cloud Trace provides distributed tracing.

Vertex AI architecture

Deep-dive on Vertex AI: Model Garden and custom training, Model Registry lineage, online endpoints with traffic splits, batch prediction, KFP pipeline…

GCP VPC

How GCP VPCs differ from AWS: global scope, subnets per region, and shared VPC patterns.

GCP VPC

Cross-region VPC. Different from AWS regional VPCs.

GCP Workflows

How Workflows provides serverless orchestration for GCP + external services.

Cloud Storage Autoclass

Auto-move objects to optimal class. Zero effort.

Cloud Storage Encryption

Google-managed, customer-managed (KMS), customer-supplied (CSEK).

Cloud Storage Lifecycle Management

Rules to transition classes + delete. Similar to S3.

Cloud Storage Object Versioning

Keep every version. Delete uncovers previous.

GCS Regional vs Dual-Region vs Multi-Region

Location scope + failover semantics.

Cloud Storage Signed URLs + Cookies

Time-limited access to private objects.

GCS Storage Transfer Service

Move data into GCS from S3, Azure, on-prem, HTTP.

Gemini API on Vertex + AI Studio

Google's frontier LLMs. API access.

GKE Autopilot Deep Dive

Google manages nodes. Pay per pod. Simpler K8s.

Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)

Standard vs Autopilot. Google's flagship K8s service.

GKE for ML

K8s-native ML. Job scheduling via Kueue.

GKE Workload Identity

Pods authenticate as GCP service accounts. Foundational security.

Global HTTP(S) Load Balancer

Anycast global LB. Single IP, routes to nearest backend.

Google Global External LB Family

Global HTTPS/TCP/SSL. Regional External. Internal.

Identity-Aware Proxy (IAP)

Zero-trust access to apps + SSH. No VPN needed.

Instance Templates

Reusable template for MIGs. Versioned.

Looker

Semantic modeling. LookML.

Memorystore

Sub-ms cache. Redis Cluster + Standalone.

Managed Instance Groups + Autoscaler

Auto-scale VM fleets. Regional MIG for HA.

Network Connectivity Center

Central hub for VPCs + on-prem + other clouds.

Persistent Disk Types

GCP block storage. Match perf to cost.

Preemptible + Spot VMs on GCP

60-91% discount. 24-hour max (preemptible) or indefinite (spot).

Private Google Access + Private Service Connect

Reach Google APIs from private subnet without NAT.

Pub/Sub

Google's Kafka analog. Global + serverless.

GCP Secret Manager

Managed secrets. Versioning + IAM.

Security Command Center

GCP security posture + threat detection.

Shared VPC

Central VPC used by multiple projects. Enterprise pattern.

Sole-Tenant Nodes on GCP

Dedicated hardware. Compliance + BYOL software.

Cloud Spanner

Global consistency via TrueTime. NewSQL pioneer.

Google Speech-to-Text

Streaming + batch STT. Chirp foundation model.

Google Text-to-Speech

WaveNet + Neural2 voices. Multilingual.

Google TPU v5 + v6 (Trillium)

Google's ML silicon. v5e cheap inference, v5p high perf, v6 (Trillium) latest.

Vertex AI

Training, prediction, feature store, pipelines.

Vertex AI Model Garden

150+ foundation models. Open + partner + Google.

Vertex AI Search

Grounded search on your data. Multimodal.

GCP VPC Peering

Direct connect between VPCs. No transit.

VPC Service Controls

Perimeter around GCP services. Prevent data exfil.

GCP Workflows

Step Functions analog. YAML workflows.