1. What is Google Cloud Platform (GCP)? #

Answer:
Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is a suite of cloud computing services provided by Google. It offers solutions for compute, storage, databases, AI/ML, networking, and analytics.

2. What are the key components of GCP? #

Answer:

  • Compute: Compute Engine, App Engine, Kubernetes Engine (GKE), Cloud Functions
  • Storage: Cloud Storage, Persistent Disk, Filestore
  • Databases: BigQuery, Cloud SQL, Firestore, Spanner
  • Networking: VPC, Cloud Load Balancing, Cloud CDN
  • AI/ML: Vertex AI, AutoML, TensorFlow

3. What is the difference between Compute Engine and App Engine? #

Answer:

  • Compute Engine: IaaS offering; provides customizable virtual machines for any workload.
  • App Engine: PaaS offering; used for building and deploying applications without managing infrastructure.

4. What is Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)? #

Answer:
GKE is a managed Kubernetes service that simplifies deploying, scaling, and managing containerized applications using Kubernetes clusters.

5. What is Cloud Storage, and how does it differ from Persistent Disk? #

Answer:

  • Cloud Storage: Object storage for unstructured data; scalable and suitable for backups, media storage, and big data.
  • Persistent Disk: Block storage attached to virtual machines for low-latency data access.

6. What is BigQuery? #

Answer:
BigQuery is a serverless, highly scalable data warehouse designed for analyzing large datasets using SQL-like queries. It is widely used for analytics and business intelligence.

7. What is the difference between Cloud SQL and Cloud Spanner? #

Answer:

  • Cloud SQL: Managed SQL database service supporting MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQL Server.
  • Cloud Spanner: Horizontally scalable, globally distributed SQL database with strong consistency.

8. What is VPC in GCP? #

Answer:
A Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) is a virtual network in GCP that allows secure communication between resources. It supports subnets, firewalls, and interconnectivity options.

9. What is the purpose of Cloud Load Balancing? #

Answer:
Cloud Load Balancing distributes traffic across multiple backend resources (e.g., Compute Engine instances) to ensure high availability, performance, and scalability.

10. How does Identity and Access Management (IAM) work in GCP? #

Answer:
IAM allows you to define permissions and roles for users and services to access GCP resources. It supports principles of least privilege and resource-specific policies.

11. What are GCP Regions and Zones? #

Answer:

  • Regions: Geographic locations where GCP services are hosted (e.g., us-central1, asia-south1).
  • Zones: Specific data centers within a region (e.g., us-central1-a).

12. What are Preemptible VMs in GCP? #

Answer:
Preemptible VMs are short-lived, low-cost instances suitable for batch processing and fault-tolerant workloads. They can be terminated by Google when resources are needed.

13. What is the difference between Stackdriver Logging and Stackdriver Monitoring? #

Answer:

  • Logging: Captures logs from applications and GCP services for troubleshooting and auditing.
  • Monitoring: Collects and visualizes metrics from GCP resources for performance and health insights.

14. What is Cloud Functions? #

Answer:
Cloud Functions is a serverless compute service that executes event-driven code in response to triggers such as HTTP requests or cloud events.

15. What is Vertex AI? #

Answer:
Vertex AI is GCP's unified platform for building, training, and deploying machine learning models. It simplifies the end-to-end ML lifecycle.

16. What is the purpose of Cloud Interconnect? #

Answer:
Cloud Interconnect provides high-speed, secure connections between on-premises infrastructure and GCP. It supports hybrid cloud and reduces network latency.

17. What is Google Cloud CDN? #

Answer:
Cloud CDN (Content Delivery Network) caches content at edge locations globally, improving load times and reducing latency for users.

18. What is Terraform, and how is it used in GCP? #

Answer:
Terraform is an infrastructure-as-code tool used for defining and provisioning GCP resources in a declarative manner, allowing automation and version control of infrastructure.

19. What is the Shared Responsibility Model in GCP? #

Answer:

  • Google: Secures the cloud infrastructure (hardware, networking, and physical security).
  • Customer: Secures resources within the cloud (IAM, data encryption, network configurations).

20. What is Cloud Run? #

Answer:
Cloud Run is a managed service for deploying containerized applications. It supports auto-scaling based on demand and integrates with GCP services like Pub/Sub.