The Google Cloud Platform is fast emerging as a leading public cloud provider. The GCP, as it is popularly known, is backed by Google’s awe-inspiring engineering expertise and infrastructure, and is able to draw upon the goodwill and respect that Google has come to enjoy. The GCP is one of a handful of public cloud providers to offer the full range of cloud computing services, ranging from Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) to Platform as a Service (PaaS). There is another reason why the GCP is fast gaining popularity; genre-defining technologies such as TensorFlow and Kubernetes originated at Google before being open-sourced, and the GCP is a natural choice of cloud on which to run them. If you are a cloud professional today, time spent on mastering the GCP is likely to be an excellent investment.

Using a public cloud platform was considered risky a decade ago and unconventional even just a few years ago. Today, however, the use of the public cloud is completely mainstream—the norm, rather than the exception. Several leading technology firms, including Google, have built sophisticated cloud platforms, and they are locked in a fierce competition for market share.

The main goal of this book is to enable you to get the best out of the GCP and to use it with confidence and competence. You will learn why cloud architectures take the forms that they do, and this will help you to become a skilled, high-level cloud architect. You will also learn how individual cloud services are configured and used so that you are never intimidated at having to build it yourself. You will also learn the right way and the right situation in which to use the important GCP services.

By the end of this book, you will be able to make the most out of Google Cloud Platform design.