DevOps Google Cloud Platform Flashcards

24 sample cards from the Google Cloud Platform deck

Sampled from the end of the deck, so these are different cards from the ones shown on the syllabus page.

1. What is VPC Service Controls?

   A GCP security feature that creates a service perimeter around resources to mitigate data exfiltration risks by restricting access to managed services from outside the perimeter.

2. What is the difference between authentication and authorization?

   Authentication verifies who you are (identity); authorization determines what you are allowed to do (permissions/access). In GCP, IAM handles authorization after an identity is authenticated.

3. What does compliance and governance mean in a GCP context, and name two compliance standards GCP supports.

   Governance is the framework of policies, controls, and accountability for cloud usage; compliance is meeting regulatory/industry standards. GCP supports certifications such as ISO 27001, SOC 1/2/3, PCI DSS, HIPAA, and GDPR alignment.

4. What GCP tools support governance through policy enforcement and auditing?

   Organization Policy Service (constraints on resources), Cloud Audit Logs (Admin Activity, Data Access, System Event logs), and Security Command Center for posture and threat visibility.

5. What is a hybrid cloud strategy?

   An architecture combining on-premises/private infrastructure with public cloud, allowing workloads and data to move between them, often connected via VPN or Interconnect.

6. What is Anthos (Google Distributed Cloud) and what problem does it solve?

   Google's hybrid and multi-cloud platform built on Kubernetes/GKE that lets you run, manage, and govern containerized applications consistently across GCP, on-premises, and other clouds.

7. What is a multi-cloud strategy and one key benefit?

   Using services from multiple cloud providers (e.g., GCP plus AWS/Azure) simultaneously. Benefits include avoiding vendor lock-in, increased resilience, and using best-of-breed services per provider.

8. What is serverless computing?

   A model where the cloud provider fully manages servers and infrastructure, automatically scaling resources and billing only for actual usage, so developers focus on code without managing servers.

9. Name the main serverless compute products on GCP.

   Cloud Functions (event-driven functions), Cloud Run (stateless containers), and App Engine Standard (managed app platform), plus serverless data services like BigQuery and Firestore.

10. What is Cloud Functions?

    GCP's event-driven, function-as-a-service (FaaS) offering that runs single-purpose functions in response to events (HTTP requests, Pub/Sub messages, storage changes) and scales automatically including to zero.

11. What are the four key DevOps metrics (DORA metrics)?

    Deployment frequency, lead time for changes, change failure rate, and mean time to recovery (MTTR).

12. What is Cloud Build?

    GCP's fully managed continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) service that executes builds, tests, and deployments based on build steps defined in a configuration file (cloudbuild.yaml).

13. What is Artifact Registry in GCP?

    A managed service for storing, managing, and securing build artifacts such as container images and language packages (the successor to Container Registry), integrated with CI/CD and IAM.

14. What is Cloud Source Repositories?

    GCP's fully managed, private Git repositories for hosting, tracking, and managing source code, integratable with Cloud Build and other GCP developer tools.

15. List the main Google Cloud certification tracks.

    Foundational: Cloud Digital Leader. Associate: Cloud Engineer. Professional: Cloud Architect, Cloud Developer, Data Engineer, Cloud DevOps Engineer, Cloud Security Engineer, Cloud Network Engineer, Cloud Database Engineer, and Machine Learning Engineer.

16. How long are Google Cloud certifications valid before recertification?

    Most Google Cloud certifications are valid for two years (the Cloud Digital Leader and others), after which you must recertify by retaking the exam.

17. Which Google Cloud certification is the entry-level, non-technical foundational exam?

    The Cloud Digital Leader certification, which validates broad knowledge of cloud concepts and Google Cloud products without requiring hands-on engineering skills.

18. Name key official learning resources for studying GCP.

    Google Cloud Skills Boost (Qwiklabs hands-on labs), official Google Cloud documentation, Coursera Google Cloud specializations, Google Cloud free tier, and Cloud certification exam guides.

19. What does the GCP Free Tier include?

    A 90-day free trial with $300 (USD) in credits for new customers, plus an Always Free tier offering limited monthly usage of select products (e.g., small Compute Engine instance, Cloud Storage, Cloud Functions invocations) at no cost.

20. What is autoscaling in Compute Engine managed instance groups (MIGs)?

    A feature that automatically adds or removes VM instances in a managed instance group based on load signals such as CPU utilization, load-balancing capacity, or custom metrics, to match demand.

21. What is the difference between horizontal and vertical scaling?

    Horizontal scaling (scale out/in) adds or removes instances; vertical scaling (scale up/down) increases or decreases the resources (CPU/RAM) of a single instance.

22. What pricing discount mechanisms does Compute Engine offer for steady-state usage?

    Sustained use discounts (automatic discounts for running VMs a large portion of the month) and committed use discounts (CUDs, lower rates for 1- or 3-year resource commitments).

23. What is Cloud Identity in GCP?

    An Identity-as-a-Service (IDaaS) offering for managing users, groups, and devices, providing single sign-on and centralized identity management that integrates with IAM.

24. In a GCP load balancer, what is a backend service and a health check?

    A backend service defines how the load balancer distributes traffic to a group of backends (instance groups or NEGs); a health check periodically probes backends to route traffic only to healthy instances.

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