Google Cloud Digital Leader Study Guide PDF

**1.** [Cloud Fundamentals and Google Cloud Overview] - **Cloud Technology/Computing** -- Cloud computing is a model for delivering computing services over the internet. Understand the benefits, such as scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency. - Public Cloud: Third party-mana...

**1.** [Cloud Fundamentals and Google Cloud Overview] - **Cloud Technology/Computing** -- Cloud computing is a model for delivering computing services over the internet. Understand the benefits, such as scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency. - Public Cloud: Third party-managed resources shared by multiple organizations (e.g., Google Cloud). - Private Cloud: Resources are used solely by one organization, either on-premises or with a third-party private cloud provider. - Hybrid Cloud: A combination of on-premises and cloud infrastructure. - Multi-cloud: Use of multiple public cloud providers to avoid vendor lock-in and enhance flexibility. - **Cloud Computing Models** - IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service): Virtual machines, networking, storage. Virtualized infrastructure over the internet (e.g., Compute Engine). - PaaS (Platform as a Service): Managed runtime environments (e.g., Google App Engine). - SaaS (Software as a Service): Software solutions that are fully managed and accessible over the internet. (e.g., Google Workspace). - **Compute Power** -- The ability of a machine to process data; key for evaluating the efficiency of cloud solutions. - **Google Cloud Infrastructure** - Regions and Zones: Google Cloud's physical locations (regions and zones). A region is a geographical area; a zone is a deployment area within a region. - Global Infrastructure: Understanding Google's data centers and global network. - Google Cloud Console and Cloud SDK: Using the web interface or command-line tools to interact with Google Cloud. - **Cloud Storage** - Buckets and Objects: Cloud Storage is an object storage service, where data is stored as objects in buckets. - Storage Classes: Standard, Nearline, Coldline, and Archive for various use cases. - Access Control: Using IAM roles to control who has access to storage. - **Google Cloud Databases** - Cloud SQL: Managed relational databases (e.g., MySQL, PostgreSQL). - Cloud Spanner: Globally distributed, horizontally scalable relational database. - Cloud Firestore and Datastore: NoSQL document databases. - Bigtable: NoSQL database designed for large, high-throughput workloads. **2.** [Data Management Concepts] - **Data Types** - Structured Data: Organized data, often stored in databases (e.g., customer information). - Unstructured Data: Data without organization, like media files and documents. - Semi-structured Data: A hybrid of structured and unstructured, like XML or JSON files. - **Data Lake vs. Data Warehouse**: - Data Lake: Stores raw, unprocessed data (both structured and unstructured). - Data Warehouse: A repository designed for structured data, optimized for fast querying and analysis. - **BigQuery** -- A data warehouse service that allows for fast analysis of large datasets. - **Metadata** -- Data that describes other data, such as file size or type. **3.** [Digital Transformation and AI/ML] - **Digital Transformation** -- How businesses leverage cloud technologies to change processes and customer interactions. It is the heart of modern business innovation. - **AI & ML**: - Artificial Intelligence (AI): Broad field involving machines performing tasks that typically require human intelligence. - Machine Learning (ML): A subset of AI that allows systems to learn from data and improve over time. - **Responsible AI** -- Ethical considerations in AI deployment, such as fairness and transparency. - **Vertex AI and TensorFlow**: - *Vertex AI*: Google\'s platform for building, deploying, and managing ML models. - *TensorFlow*: Open-source library for machine learning development. **4.** [Security and Compliance] - **Security Models**: - *Shared Responsibility Model*: The cloud provider manages the security of infrastructure, while customers manage security in the cloud (e.g., data encryption, access management). - *Zero Trust Model*: Assumes no one is trusted and requires continuous verification before access is granted. - **Encryption** -- Protects data by encoding it to prevent unauthorized access. At rest and in transit, using Google-managed keys or customer-managed encryption keys (CMEK). - **Compliance** -- Adherence to laws and regulations (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA). - **Defense-in-depth** -- Security approach using multiple layers to protect data and infrastructure. - **IAM (Identity and Access Management)** - Roles and Permissions: Learn about predefined roles (e.g., Viewer, Editor, Admin) and custom roles. - Service Accounts: Used for automated services to authenticate and access resources. - Best Practices: Principle of least privilege, minimizing access. - Cloud Identity -- Provides identity and access management for users. - Cloud Security Command Center -- Centralized security and risk management. **5.** [Cloud Computing Models and Cost Optimization] - **Cost Management**: Understand Google Cloud tools for monitoring and controlling costs (e.g., Google Cloud Cost Management). - **Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)**: A calculation of all costs associated with maintaining infrastructure, including hardware, software, maintenance, downtime, and support. - **Capital vs. Operational Expenditures**: - *CapEx*: One-time purchases for fixed assets like servers. - *OpEx*: Ongoing costs for running business operations (e.g., cloud services). - **Latency and Bandwidth**: - *Latency*: Delay in data transmission, typically measured in milliseconds. - *Bandwidth*: The data transfer rate across a network. **6.** [Google Cloud Products] - **Compute Engine**: Virtual machines (VMs) running on Google's infrastructure, offering customizable compute power. - **Cloud Storage**: Object storage solution for structured and unstructured data. - **App Engine**: Platform for building scalable web apps and mobile backends without managing infrastructure. - **BigQuery**: Data warehousing solution for big data analytics and reporting. - **Cloud Run**: Fully managed compute platform for deploying containerized applications. - **Google Kubernetes Engine**: Platform for orchestrating containers at scale. - **Firebase**: App development platform for mobile and web apps. - **Looker**: Business intelligence solution that provides data exploration and analytics. - **Cloud Pub/Sub**: Messaging service to send and receive messages between systems and devices. - **Cloud Deployment Manager**: Infrastructure as code tool for creating and managing resources. - **Cloud Build**: Continuous integration service for building, testing, and deploying applications. - **Terraform on Google Cloud**: Open-source tool to automate resource provisioning. - **Google Cloud Operations Suite** (formerly Stackdriver): Monitoring, logging, and application performance management. - **Cloud Scheduler**: A fully managed cron job service for running scheduled jobs. - **Cloud Profiler:** Collect profiling data to optimize performance of your applications. - **Cloud Trace:** Track latency and find bottlenecks in your system. **7.** [Monitoring and Management] - **Monitoring & Logging**: - *Cloud Logging*: Tracks and analyzes logs from applications and infrastructure. - *Cloud Monitoring*: Provides metrics and insights for cloud infrastructure health. - **SLA, SLO, SLI**: - *SLA (Service Level Agreement)*: Contract that defines service availability. - *SLO (Service Level Objective)*: Target performance measure (e.g., 99.9% uptime). - *SLI (Service Level Indicator)*: Measurement of specific service performance (e.g., latency). - **Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)**: Practices to ensure reliable software systems by applying software engineering to IT operations. **8.** [DevOps and Automation] - **DevOps**: A set of practices aiming to unify software development and IT operations to shorten the development lifecycle. - **Containerization & Kubernetes**: - *Containers*: Lightweight environments that package and isolate software. - *Kubernetes*: Open-source system for automating container deployment and management. - **Serverless Computing**: Running applications without managing servers. Resources are automatically allocated by the cloud provider. - **Rehosting**: Moving applications without changing them, e.g., from on-premises to the cloud. **9.** [Advanced Analytics and Streaming] - **Streaming Analytics**: Real-time analysis of data as it's generated (e.g., Dataflow for pipeline processing). - **Dataflow**: Fully managed service for stream and batch data processing. - **Looker**: Tool for business intelligence to explore and visualize data. **\ ** **Sample Questions** 1. Your organization offers a service to retail businesses: you give recommendations to their customers of other products they might want to buy, based on their past behavior. You use machine learning tools to provide this service, now hosted in an on-premises server, but this solution is not satisfactory. You want reliable scalability, managed services, and pay-per-use pricing. What should your organization do? A. Migrate your services to more powerful computers. B. Migrate your services to a public cloud. C. Get more internet bandwidth. D. Optimize your algorithms. Feedback: *A) is not correct because even if you vertically scale your service, you will not be guaranteed reliability.\ B) is correct because it is the solution that allows you to benefit from the pay-as-you-go model, a variety of compute options, and managed services that can scale your existing machine learning algorithms.\ C) is not correct because increased bandwidth does not guarantee more reliability.\ D) is not correct because optimizing the algorithm does not guarantee reliability and does not match any of the other specified criteria.* https://cloud.google.com/what-is-cloud-computing\#what\_are\_the\_benefits\_of\_cloud\_computing  2. Your organization wants to gain insight from customers' previous purchases. You want to analyze your purchase records while protecting personally identifiable information (PII). Which product or feature should you choose? A. Speech-to-Text API B. Cloud Natural Language API C. Cloud Vision API D. Cloud Data Loss Prevention API Feedback: *A) is not correct because Speech-to-Text API extracts insights from audio conversations.\ B) is not correct because Cloud Natural Language API derives insights from unstructured texts.\ C) is not correct because Cloud Vision API derives insights from your images.\ D) is correct because Cloud Data Loss Prevention API helps you discover, classify, and protect your most sensitive data. where you copy in the rationale.* https://cloud.google.com/natural-language   3. Your organization wants to let your team members access Google Cloud resources as desired, but you want to avoid unexpected costs. You also want to track the amount of your total expenditures against estimates. What should you do? A. Export your billing data into a Google Sheet and track your actual cost. B. Set a budget amount and a budget alert threshold to track your Google Cloud spend. C. Monitor your spend on the Google Cloud billing report and terminate resources with high cost. D. Monitor your spend on the Google Cloud billing report and terminate projects with high cost. Feedback: *A) is not correct because it is not Google's recommended way of tracking your spend.\ B) is correct because it is Google's recommended way of tracking actual Google Cloud spend against your estimated spend.\ C) is not correct because it is not in line with best practices recommended by Google.\ D) is not correct because it is not in line with best practices recommended by Google.* https://cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/budgets  4. Your organization is developing a new application. This application responds to events created by already running applications. The business goal for the new application is to scale to handle spikes in the flow of incoming events while minimizing administrative work for the team. Which Google Cloud product or feature should you choose? A. Cloud Run B. Cloud Run for Anthos C. App Engine standard environment D. Compute Engine Feedback: *A) is correct because Cloud Run scales to the number of instances based on the number of incoming requests.\ B) is not correct because Cloud Run for Anthos requires the creation of a GKE cluster.\ C) is not correct because App Engine Standard is not suitable for event-driven processing.\ D) is not correct because Compute Engine requires additional administration.* https://cloud.google.com/run/docs/configuring/min-instances https://cloud.google.com/anthos/run 5. Your organization has a global application running on Compute Engine. Your application contains a certain file that must be shared between multiple virtual-machine instances and zones. Which service or feature should you choose? A. Cloud Storage B. Cloud SQL C. Regional Persistent Disk D. Zonal Persistent Disk Feedback: *A) is correct because Cloud Storage buckets are the most flexible, scalable, and durable storage option for your VM instances and should be used when you must share data easily between multiple instances or zones.\ B) is not correct because Cloud SQL is not a file storage service.\ C) is not correct because files stored in a Regional Persistent Disk are accessible only within a region.\ D) is not correct because you cannot attach a persistent disk to an instance in another project or across regions.* https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/disks?hl=en 6. Your organization has multiple teams. Each team works independently on projects. Your Google Cloud resource hierarchy must be structured so that each team only has access to its own resources. What structure should you create? A. One organization resource per team B. One project that contains all of each team's resources C. One project per team D. One folder per team Feedback: *A) is not correct because the Organization resource is the top-level node of the hierarchy and provides central visibility over all resources further down the hierarchy.\ B) is not correct because one team can actively work on more than one project.\ C) is not correct because at the bottom of the hierarchy are projects; it is a better practice to isolate using folders.\ D) is correct because folders can be used to isolate requirements for different departments and teams in the parent organization.* https://cloud.google.com/docs/enterprise/best-practices-for-enterprise-organizations\#control-access 7. As your organization grows, resource consumption increases. You need to avoid running out of resources in the long term and ensure your organization experiences positive financial growth. What should you do? A. Invest in your on-premises infrastructure to make sure it can keep up with resource consumption. B. Gradually migrate your workloads to the cloud to take advantage of the elasticity of cloud resources. C. Optimize your resource consumption to make sure it does not consume all the available resources. D. Automate your on-premises deployment to save on operational overhead costs. Feedback: *A) is not correct because it is not a long-term solution.\ B) is correct because you can take advantage of the cloud and only use resources as they are needed and not worry about the infrastructure management.\ C) is not correct because it is a short-term solution and you will have to repeat the optimization process over and over again.\ D) is not correct because it only solves the cost problem but is not a long-term solution.* https://cloud.google.com/docs/overview https://cloud.google.com/free/docs/what-makes-google-cloud-platform-different https://cloud.google.com/why-google-cloud 8. Your small organization recently decided to expand globally within two weeks. Currently all your applications and services are hosted by a private hosting company within a single geographical region. Which two actions will allow you to scale your applications and services while minimizing costs? (Choose two) A. Purchase more resources from your current private hosting provider. B. Select a public cloud provider that allows hybrid integration with your private cloud provider. C. Contact different private hosting providers in each geographic region in which you want to make your services available. D. Plan a migration of your applications and services from your private hosting provider to the public cloud. E. Focus on purchasing powerful servers for your office to reduce the latency of the services you provide to your users globally. Feedback: *A) is not correct because that does not allow you to globally scale.\ B) is correct because some public cloud providers such as Google cloud allow you to take a gradual approach that presumes a hybrid environment.\ C) is not correct because private hosting does not provide you the pay-as-you-go model that you can have in a public cloud.\ D) is correct because by moving fully to the cloud you would have a much better costing model because you can benefit from the pay-as-you-go model.\ E) is not correct because that action does not reduce the latency and increases the cost.* https://cloud.google.com/docs/geography-and-regions https://cloud.google.com/what-is-cloud-computing\#will\_cloud\_computing\_work\_with\_existing\_infrastructure 9. Your organization has on-premises infrastructure for computing and data storage. Your compute capabilities are unable to keep up with business growth, and as a result your organization is experiencing unpredictable spikes in its maintenance burden. The amount of data your organization stores is rapidly increasing, and your storage infrastructure cannot keep up. Your organization needs reliable scaling, a predictable cost model, and the ability to work more efficiently. What should you do? A. Expand your infrastructure with extra compute and storage resources. B. Invest in more premium networking equipment. C. Migrate to an infrastructure-as-a-service solution offered by a public cloud provider. D. Hire more engineers to speed up your product development time. Feedback: *A) is not correct because purchasing extra compute and storage resources would not solely solve the problem. It might help with scaling up but it requires more maintenance and comes with more cost.\ B) is not correct because investing in a more premium networking not only comes with a cost, but also does not solve any of the issues mentioned in the question such as the volume of the data that is overwhelming the existing storage infrastructure.\ C) is correct because IaaS allows the business to reliably scale up and down without focusing on the underlying infrastructure, have a predictable cost model, and allows them to get their work done more efficiently.\ D) is not correct because hiring more engineers does not solve the scalability as well as the storage problem. It just creates extra costs for the company.* https://cloud.google.com/learn/what-is-iaas\#section-4 10. Your organization needs to deploy a new microservices-based application that requires scalability and the ability to automatically handle traffic spikes. You also want a fully managed environment with minimal operational overhead. Which Google Cloud product should you choose? E. Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) F. Cloud Functions G. App Engine H. Compute Engine **Feedback:**\ A) is not correct because GKE requires you to manage a Kubernetes cluster, which may introduce more operational overhead.\ B) is not correct because Cloud Functions is best suited for event-driven applications, but it doesn't scale well for all types of microservices.\ C) is correct because App Engine is a fully managed platform that handles scaling automatically and requires minimal operational management.\ D) is not correct because Compute Engine involves managing virtual machines and would require more operational overhead.\ [Learn more about App Engine](https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs) 11. Your organization wants to improve the performance of its data analytics pipeline, which uses large datasets for machine learning. Which Google Cloud service should you choose to handle the large amounts of unstructured data while ensuring fast processing? I. Cloud Bigtable J. Cloud Pub/Sub K. Cloud Spanner L. BigQuery **Feedback:**\ A) is not correct because Cloud Bigtable is optimized for NoSQL workloads and is not ideal for large-scale analytics and processing of unstructured data.\ B) is not correct because Cloud Pub/Sub is a messaging service and is not designed for direct analytics or data processing.\ C) is not correct because Cloud Spanner is a relational database service and is not designed specifically for large-scale data analytics.\ D) is correct because BigQuery is a fully managed, serverless data warehouse designed for large-scale data analytics and can handle unstructured data efficiently.\ [Learn more about BigQuery](https://cloud.google.com/bigquery) 12. Your organization needs to create a high-availability web application with automatic failover across multiple geographic regions to minimize downtime. Which Google Cloud product should you choose? M. Cloud Load Balancing N. Compute Engine O. Cloud Storage P. Cloud SQL **Feedback:**\ A) is correct because Cloud Load Balancing automatically distributes traffic across multiple regions and ensures high availability and failover.\ B) is not correct because Compute Engine requires manual management of instances and doesn\'t provide automatic failover across regions.\ C) is not correct because Cloud Storage is used for file storage, not for web application load balancing.\ D) is not correct because Cloud SQL is a managed relational database service, but it does not provide automatic failover across regions for a web application.\ [Learn more about Cloud Load Balancing](https://cloud.google.com/load-balancing) 13. Your organization needs to store backup data that must be retained for 10 years for compliance purposes. You want the storage to be low-cost and durable, with infrequent access. Which storage option should you choose? Q. Cloud Storage Nearline R. Cloud Storage Coldline S. Cloud Storage Standard T. Persistent Disk **Feedback:**\ A) is not correct because Nearline storage is designed for data that is accessed less than once a month, but it does not offer the lowest cost for long-term archiving.\ B) is correct because Cloud Storage Coldline is a low-cost storage class designed for data that is rarely accessed, making it ideal for long-term archival storage.\ C) is not correct because Standard storage is intended for frequently accessed data, and it's more expensive for long-term retention.\ D) is not correct because Persistent Disk is block storage typically used for active workloads and does not provide the best cost for long-term backup storage.\ [Learn more about Cloud Storage classes](https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/storage-classes) 14. Your organization needs to process streaming data from thousands of IoT devices in real time. The data should be ingested, processed, and stored for further analysis. Which Google Cloud service should you choose? U. Cloud Pub/Sub V. Cloud Dataflow W. BigQuery X. Cloud Dataproc **Feedback:**\ A) is correct because Cloud Pub/Sub allows for real-time ingestion of streaming data from devices and integrates easily with other Google Cloud services for processing.\ B) is not correct because Dataflow is used for stream and batch data processing, but it doesn't handle the ingestion of the data itself.\ C) is not correct because BigQuery is designed for data analysis, not for real-time streaming data ingestion and processing.\ D) is not correct because Cloud Dataproc is a managed Hadoop and Spark service, which is not optimized for real-time streaming data.\ [Learn more about Cloud Pub/Sub](https://cloud.google.com/pubsub) 15. Your organization needs to secure sensitive data and ensure that it can be accessed only by specific users or services. You also want to log and monitor access attempts for auditing purposes. Which Google Cloud service should you choose? Y. Cloud Identity Z. Cloud Key Management Service A. Cloud IAM B. Cloud Audit Logs **Feedback:**\ A) is not correct because Cloud Identity is used for managing users and identities but does not provide detailed control over data access or logging.\ B) is not correct because Cloud Key Management Service (KMS) is used for encryption key management but does not handle access control or auditing directly.\ C) is not correct because Cloud IAM is used for managing identity and access to resources but does not provide detailed logging of access attempts.\ D) is correct because Cloud Audit Logs allows you to log and monitor all actions related to your Google Cloud resources, ensuring access control and auditing.\ [Learn more about Cloud Audit Logs](https://cloud.google.com/logging/docs/audit)