Google Cloud Overview

In this Google Cloud Overview, Secure IT Consult will help you understand the overall landscape of Google Cloud, providing you a brief look at some of the commonly used features. Knowing what’s available and how the parts work together can best-position you to make decisions on how to proceed.

What is Google Cloud

“What is Cloud Computing?”, and we’ve made that very simple:

Google Cloud is Google’s foray into the Cloud Computing industry. Cloud Computing, in its simplest form, is the delivery of what would once be considered hardware/software (think PCs, Desktops, Hard Drives for Hardware, and Operating Systems, Accounting Systems, Databasing and Games that you have downloaded as software), through the internet. You do not download and store any of the data, software, and do not purchase any of the hardware, but instead rent it from a provider, in this case Google.

Your entire computing infrastructure (aside from the endpoint you access it from), is run and managed by a provider, and you pay to use it. These resources are pooled from the provider in order to lease it out to users, cutting overall costs for the provider, and also providing full service availability to the user at a fraction of the typical on-premises cost of licensing the individual software, or buying, maintaining and upgrading the hardware.

Google Cloud Resources

Google Cloud consists of a set of assets, such as computers, HDDs, and Virtual Machines, contained in Google’s datacentres around the globe. Each data centre location is in a region. Regions are available across continents, such as Australia, North America, Asia, and Europe. Each region is a collection of zones isolated inside of a region, identified singularly. Distributing resources like this means low-latency and redundancy in case of failure, but it also introduces access rules about how resources can be used together.

When utilising Cloud Computing, what you would previously have considered products, such as hardware and software, become services in the cloud. These services provide access to the resources. The list of available Google Cloud services is long, but ever-growing. When you develop on Google Cloud you mix-and-match services into combinations for the infrastructure you need, then add your code to enable tailored scenarios that you want to build.

Google Cloud CLI and Google Cloud Interface

When you want to interact with the Google Cloud services, you have a couple of basic ways to interact:

•Google Cloud Console– The Google Cloud Interface provides a web-based GUI through which users can manage projects and resources on Google Cloud. When using the Google Cloud Interface, you can select existing or create new projects, then use the resources in the context of that project. Compartmentalise your work however makes sense to you by making multiple projects, separate by user group, organisational role, project relevance etc. as long as it works for you. This separation means that users only access the resources created for the projects they are involved in.

•Command-Line Interface(CLI) – The Google Cloud CLI allows you to perform most google cloud tasks if you prefer to work through a CLI. The Google Cloud CLI allows the management of development workflow and resources through a terminal window. You can create Compute Engine VMs in a shell environment by running the ‘gcloud compute instances create’ command. You can install the Google Cloud CLI, or use Cloud Shell to run these command Line Interfaces.

Google Cloud Platform Services

Google Cloud Platform Services come in a variety of products – from Compute Engine to BigQuery and beyond.

Utilise AI and Machine Learning in data science, development and automating processes throughout your workflow, or utilise Cloud Functions to run your code in the cloud free of servers and containers through Google Cloud Functions as-a-Service(FaaS) scalable PAYG product.

Build and Deploy containerised apps written in any language on the GCP platform fully managed, or access unified stream and batch data processing that’s serverless, fast and cost-effective through Google Cloud’s Dataflow.

Wield integrated monitoring, logging and trace managed services for apps and systems running on and beyond Google Cloud, or use the Google Cloud CDN for fast, reliable web and video content delivery globally.

Google Cloud Scheduler

The Google Cloud Scheduler is a fully managed, enterprise-grade cron job scheduler, allowing the scheduling of virtually any job; batch, big data jobs, cloud infrastructure operations and more. You can automate everything and have total visibility of automations from one place – minimise your manual toil with the Google Cloud Scheduler by running jobs on a recurring schedule, and automate your infrastructure operations such as running your staging environment only through work hours, or any number of tedious tasks on an interconnected Internet of Things.

Google Cloud Architecture

The Google Cloud Architecture Framework provides recommendations & describes best-practices to help any and all cloud practitioners design a secure, efficient and cost-effective cloud topology. A cross-functional team at Google validates design recommendations & best practices that make up the Google Cloud Architecture Framework, and the team curates the framework to reflect the expanding capabilities of Google Cloud, industry best practices, community knowledge and user feedback. Their ‘what’s new’ documentation summarises the significant changes so that users are always kept in the know about updates and augmentations to Google Cloud Architecture framework.

Google Cloud Hosting & Google Cloud WordPress

Deploy your WordPress website on Google Cloud Hosting in minutes. Google Cloud Hosting handles the setup and configuration, so you can focus on your website.

Google Cloud Hosting services give your Google Cloud WordPress site improved performance and virtually limitless scalability, with stronger security, control and flexibility.

If you’re not ready to put up a Google Cloud WordPress website immediately, you can still access Google Cloud Hosting and build a code-less website, secure a domain and more with Google Domains. If you are in fact ready to deploy your Google Cloud WordPress site, you can deploy WordPress to a Google Cloud Hosting Compute Engine instance with a single click – for your low-to-medium traffic needs. If you need your Google Cloud WordPress website to utilise plugins, you can use App Engine Standard Environment, or upload media files to your Google Cloud Hosting Storage.

Run your Google Cloud WordPress in a variety of ways, such as: WordPress on Compute Engine, for the simplest and fastest deployment option. Deploy with one click to a single Compute Engine instance. For your high-peaking variable traffic utilise App Engine for your Google Cloud Hosting – the best option for flexibility while maintaining simplicity. Highly scalable with simpler deployment than GKE. For your heavy-traffic, auto-scaling, flexibility-first needs you can operate your Google Cloud WordPress on the Kubernetes Engine – Google Cloud Hosting through containers requiring a more complex setup and deployment, but providing guaranteed scalability and flexibility so you scale up-and-down based on the traffic flow.

Google Cloud Marketplace

With the Google Cloud Marketplace, find top solutions integrated with Google Cloud to accelerate your digital transformation. The GC Marketplace offers best-in-class cloud solutions from industry-leading organisations, to simplify your procurement procedures with online discovery, flexible purchasing and fulfilment of effective and efficient Google Cloud integrated solutions, from the Google Cloud Marketplace.

Find everything from financial services to integrate into your billing procedures to development tools you need to keep innovating, down to security modules that slot right into your cloud infrastructure to keep it secure. The Google Cloud Marketplace provides the ability to negotiate with partners, utilise flexible billing models and consolidate billing into one straightforward invoice – procure and fulfil quicker than before with Google as a preferred partner you may be able to purchase without an internal vendor review. Create a scalable and repeatable procurement process with Google Cloud Marketplace and the plethora of integrated solutions available for Google Cloud.

Google Cloud APIs

Google Cloud APIs allow you to automate your workflows by using a preferred language. Use the Google Cloud APIs with REST calls or client libraries in popular programming languages. This list is extensive and can be found in the Google Cloud APIs documentation.

The Google Cloud API list includes (but is not limited to):

• Compute APIs for Virtual Machines, Compute Engine Instances and Kubernetes etc.
• Storage and Database APIs for cloud spanner instances, Cloud SQL admin, object storage and storage transfer instances
• Networking APIs for VPC access, cloud domains, connectivity and Network management
• Data Analytics APIs for BigQuery functions and data transfers, dataflow and dataproc for processing patterns and cluster managements
• Machine Learning APIs for training models, translations and speech-to-text as well as integrations for image labelling, or natural language analysis of text
• Management APIs for billing, budget and scheduling tools as well as deployment, runtime and task management and controls.
• Operations APIs for log entries, data management, error reporting and debugging.
• Security and Identity APIs for asset inventory and history management, binary authorisation and Data Loss Prevention services as well as IAM and cryptographic key management.
• Managed Infrastructure APIs for service consumption, usage, management and control services – monitor your usage and control the resource consumption.

The Google Cloud API list demonstrates that developers have significant flexibility and customisation options for how they use the platform, through the use of the Google Cloud interface or by integrating the use of the Google Cloud Interface with any number of the extensive Google Cloud APIs, depending on how and where you utilise your resources.

There is a wealth of resources available for your Google Cloud Projects that allows you to take the entirety of your on-premises infrastructure, move it to the cloud and never worry about the maintenance, upkeep, or management of your IT resources again. Cut your long-term IT costs to a fraction with the Google Cloud Platform – and with Secure IT Consult to take you there!

For everything Google Cloud projects, support, training, and general queries, look no further than SITC.

SITC is partnered with Google Cloud across Professional Services and Licensing. We can be a one-stop shop for all your Google Cloud needs: We can provide licensing and product assistance, and consultancy services for projects (all the way from planning to deployment & ongoing support!).

We can additionally offer instructors for your Google Cloud Courses from our Certified Instructors pool!

For all things Google Cloud, choose SITC as your one-stop shop for your solutions. Contact us for more information, and to see what the team at SITC can do for you.