GCP

GCP#

Google Cloud Platform is the third hyperscaler. Strongest in Kubernetes (the project came out of Google), data analytics (BigQuery), and ML (Vertex AI). The catalog is smaller than AWS or Azure, the integration tighter, the network among the best in the industry.

Account model#

The GCP hierarchy:

Organization, the top-level resource tied to a Google Workspace / Cloud Identity domain.
Folder, optional grouping (departments, environments).
Project, the unit of billing, IAM, and quota. Equivalent to an AWS Account; recommended one per environment per service.
Resource, the actual asset.

Identity lives in Cloud Identity (or Google Workspace). Service accounts are first-class resources per project; roles bind identities to projects, folders, or resources.

Catalog at a glance#

Layer	Headline services
Compute	Compute Engine (VMs), GKE (Kubernetes), Cloud Run (serverless containers), Cloud Functions (FaaS), Batch.
Storage	Cloud Storage (object), Persistent Disk (block), Filestore (file), Coldline / Archive tiers.
Database	Cloud SQL, AlloyDB, Spanner, Firestore, Bigtable, Memorystore.
Analytics	BigQuery (data warehouse), Dataflow, Dataproc, Pub/Sub.
Networking	VPC, Cloud Load Balancing, Cloud CDN, Cloud DNS, Cloud Interconnect, Network Connectivity Center.
Identity	IAM, Cloud Identity, Secret Manager, KMS, Workload Identity Federation.
Observability	Cloud Monitoring, Cloud Logging, Cloud Trace, Cloud Profiler, Error Reporting.
AI / ML	Vertex AI, Gemini API (Google AI / Vertex), Model Garden, AutoML.

CLI and SDKs#

The gcloud CLI plus language client libraries (google-cloud-* packages). Shape: gcloud <group> <verb> [args].

$ gcloud auth login
$ gcloud config set project my-project
$ gcloud compute instances list
$ gcloud container clusters get-credentials prod --region us-central1
$ gcloud storage ls gs://my-bucket
$ gcloud logging read 'severity>=ERROR' --limit 20 --format=json

Regions and zones#

Regions span continents (us-central1, europe-west1). Each region has three or more zones (us-central1-a, b, c) with independent power and networking. Some services (Cloud Storage, BigQuery) are regional or multi-regional by default.

Identity in practice#

Service accounts are first-class IAM principals. Workloads authenticate as one.
Workload Identity Federation is the cross-cloud-trust mechanism. GitHub Actions, AWS workloads, and on-prem clusters can assume GCP service accounts without long-lived keys.
Workload Identity (Kubernetes-specific) ties GKE service accounts to GCP service accounts. The right pattern for pods.
Organization Policy Service caps what projects in the org can do (allowed regions, public IPs, service usage).

Pricing model#

Sustained Use Discounts on Compute Engine apply automatically for instances that run a large fraction of the month, no commitment required.
Committed Use Discounts for 1- or 3-year commitments on Compute Engine, GKE, BigQuery slots.
Spot VMs for interruptible capacity at a steep discount.
BigQuery bills per query bytes scanned (on-demand) or per slot-second (flat rate). The most operator-visible knob on a data warehouse.

When to pick GCP#

When the workload is Kubernetes-first; GKE is the most mature managed Kubernetes.
When the analytics shape is BigQuery (petabyte-scale SQL with no cluster to operate).
When the AI/ML stack is Vertex + Gemini; tighter integration than the multi-vendor patchwork on AWS or Azure.
When global low-latency reads matter (Cloud Load Balancing’s anycast).

When to pick something else#

When the catalog depth or niche-service breadth (AWS) is the driver.
When the estate is Microsoft-shaped (Azure).
When pricing transparency is the constraint; GCP’s pricing surface is wider than AWS’s but harder to predict than a fixed VPS bill.

Datacenter locations#

Code	Location
africa-south1	Johannesburg, South Africa
asia-east1	Changhua County, Taiwan
asia-east2	Hong Kong
asia-northeast1	Tokyo, Japan
asia-northeast2	Osaka, Japan
asia-northeast3	Seoul, South Korea
asia-south1	Mumbai, India
asia-south2	Delhi, India
asia-southeast1	Jurong West, Singapore
asia-southeast2	Jakarta, Indonesia
australia-southeast1	Sydney, Australia
australia-southeast2	Melbourne, Australia
europe-central2	Warsaw, Poland
europe-north1	Hamina, Finland
europe-north2	Stockholm, Sweden
europe-southwest1	Madrid, Spain
europe-west1	St. Ghislain, Belgium
europe-west2	London, United Kingdom
europe-west3	Frankfurt, Germany
europe-west4	Eemshaven, Netherlands
europe-west6	Zurich, Switzerland
europe-west8	Milan, Italy
europe-west9	Paris, France
europe-west10	Berlin, Germany
europe-west12	Turin, Italy
me-central1	Doha, Qatar
me-central2	Dammam, Saudi Arabia
me-west1	Tel Aviv, Israel
northamerica-northeast1	Montreal, Canada
northamerica-northeast2	Toronto, Canada
northamerica-south1	Querétaro, Mexico
southamerica-east1	Osasco (São Paulo), Brazil
southamerica-west1	Santiago, Chile
us-central1	Council Bluffs, Iowa, USA
us-east1	Moncks Corner, South Carolina, USA
us-east4	Ashburn, Virginia, USA
us-east5	Columbus, Ohio, USA
us-south1	Dallas, Texas, USA
us-west1	The Dalles, Oregon, USA
us-west2	Los Angeles, California, USA
us-west3	Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
us-west4	Las Vegas, Nevada, USA

GCP

Contents