1. Rightscale Cloud Compare
Hello, welcome. I wanted to talk about a really cool new tool, at least to me. It looked like it just came out. I’m familiar with the platform and all of the fantastic research and tools that right skill produces. So this one here is actually very useful. So for me, one of the challenges as a cloud architect is trying to know what the speeds and feeds are quickly without having to dig into this and dig into that. And the customer is curious about the maximum number of CPUs. Right?
Well, you could remember a lot of things, for example, if you deal with Amazon all the time. But what about if you don’t know Google, Soft Layer, or Azure? So, for example, you get a side-by-side comparison here. This is pretty cool, and what I like about it is that if you look at the tool and click the link at the bottom of the description, you’ll see that there’s a lot more here than you’d expect. So, for example, SLA terms.
So this is actually pretty cool because you can compare SLA credits, such as if there’s any kind of outage or degradation, and the service will tell you the maximum credit. Compliance, well, this is also a very pleasant area to deal with, isn’t it? How do you deal with compliance? You want to know if the cloud that you’re looking at is HIPAA-compliant, and for most providers, HIPAA isn’t going to be a problem to worry about. But again. What about Fed RAMP?
If you’re in the government sector, this might be of interest. Again, Google does not support Fed RAMP requirements yet, as you can see, for example, that MPAA is not supported by Soft Layer, nor is IRAP. Now if you go down here to operating systems, let’s say your customer has been running a specific machine image, and you want to know if it’s supported or not. regions, you can compare services and capabilities between regions. For example, let’s say North America in this case. So, for example, if you look here, you can see: Does Amazon have support? Do they have regions in North America? Again, you can see that everybody does, and if you look at all the regions, really the only weak point is Google. Google currently has no presence in South America. Then you go over here to countries, and you could narrow it down to countries as well. So, in your opinion, it compares to the East Coast of the United States. like, for example, the East Coast, Virginia, Ohio, South Carolina, and Virginia. Washington, DC. And, once again, Azure has a presence.
This is actually pretty cool. I’m glad they thought of this for all our government friends. It gives you a nice, easy view of the government cloud over here as well. Now what about services? Core services like Autoscale—that’s a big deal as well. Bare metal capability for your AmisVMs network services and storage services Again, compare all that. What about databases? So this is actually one of the areas where there’s significant differentiation. So you can just look at this right away without having to go to four different websites or three or two, whatever situation you’re in for comparison purposes, and just pull it right up. Again, they’ve got the links, and you can go right over to that service.
So again, that is very convenient. So congratulations to Zulo for creating the scale for this tool. And if you’re in the Navy, you know exactly what that means as far as non-relational databases; again, they all support some version of that. Additional services like caching, data warehousing, and on and on So that’s a pretty good analogy. Now, we have application services. Again, this is the big differentiator between some of the clouds. Security is also a big differentiator. You can see just by looking that Google is pretty weak in its security capabilities as well as theirs.
Get some limitations as well. So again, if you’re looking for certificate management or a dedicted HSM, you’re definitely not going to be looking at GCP or Azur in that case. Security assessment. This is actually pretty cool as well. Again, some have pretty robust capabilities around security as well. So again, this is a good tool. And also, you go ahead and select this. So, if you want to send this link to your customer, boss, neighbor, I don’t know, whoever, or save it for something like an RFI or RFP so that it can be referenced, you can do so. So, once again, another useful tool from Rightskill. Thank you, rightskill I’ll put the link at the bottom. Have a great day.
2. Tips For preparing – Console, White Papers and Resources to study for Exam
Hello, welcome. I wanted to talk about a really cool new tool, at least to me. It looked like it just came out. I’m familiar with the platform and all of the fantastic research and tools that right skill produces. So this one here is actually very useful. So for me, one of the challenges as a cloud architect is trying to know what the speeds and feeds are quickly without having to dig into this and dig into that. And the customer is curious about the maximum number of CPUs. Right? Well, you could remember a lot of things, for example, if you deal with Amazon all the time. But what about if you don’t know Google, Soft Layer, or Azure? So, for example, you get a side-by-side comparison here.
This is pretty cool, and what I like about it is that if you look at the tool and click the link at the bottom of the description, you’ll see that there’s a lot more here than you’d expect. So, for example, SLA terms. So this is actually pretty cool because you can compare SLA credits, such as if there’s any kind of outage or degradation, and the service will tell you the maximum credit. Compliance, well, this is also a very pleasant area to deal with, isn’t it? How do you deal with compliance? You want to know if the cloud that you’re looking at is HIPAA-compliant, and for most providers, HIPAA isn’t going to be a problem to worry about. But again. What about Fed RAMP? If you’re in the government sector, this might be of interest.
Again, Google does not support Fed RAMP requirements yet, as you can see, for example, that MPAA is not supported by Soft Layer, nor is IRAP. Now if you go down here to operating systems, let’s say your customer has been running a specific machine image, and you want to know if it’s supported or not. regions, you can compare services and capabilities between regions. For example, let’s say North America in this case. So, for example, if you look here, you can see: Does Amazon have support? Do they have regions in North America? Again, you can see that everybody does, and if you look at all the regions, really the only weak point is Google. Google currently has no presence in South America. Then you go over here to countries, and you could narrow it down to countries as well.
So, in your opinion, it compares to the East Coast of the United States. like, for example, the East Coast, Virginia, Ohio, South Carolina, and Virginia. Washington, DC. And, once again, Azure has a presence. This is actually pretty cool. I’m glad they thought of this for all our government friends. It gives you a nice, easy view of the government cloud over here as well. Now what about services? Core services like Auto scale—that’s a big deal as well. Bare metal capability for your Amiss network services and storage services Again, compare all that. What about databases? So this is actually one of the areas where there’s significant differentiation. So you can just look at this right away without having to go to four different websites or three or two, whatever situation you’re in for comparison purposes, and just pull it right up.
Again, they’ve got the links, and you can go right over to that service. So again, that is very convenient. So congratulations to Zulo for creating the scale for this tool. And if you’re in the Navy, you know exactly what that means as far as non-relational databases; again, they all support some version of that. Additional services like caching, data warehousing, and on and on So that’s a pretty good analogy. Now, we have application services. Again, this is the big differentiator between some of the clouds.
Security is also a big differentiator. You can see just by looking that Google is pretty weak in its security capabilities as well as theirs. Get some limitations as well. So again, if you’re looking for certificate management or a dedicated HSM, you’re definitely not going to be looking at GCP or Azur in that case. Security assessment. This is actually pretty cool as well. Again, some have pretty robust capabilities around security as well. So again, this is a good tool. And also, you go ahead and select this. So, if you want to send this link to your customer, boss, neighbor, I don’t know, whoever, or save it for something like an RFI or RFP so that it can be referenced, you can do so. So, once again, another useful tool from Rightskill. Thank you, rightskill I’ll put the link at the bottom. Have a great day.
3. Case Studies on Exam
So let’s talk about the case studies. Google has provided you with some sample case studies to review before you take the cloud architecture certification exam. And this is important to know because you will most likely see one or two of these on the exam; at least, I did. And so I’d like to just prepare ahead of time for you to be able to find these, but also to be able to review them and understand why they’re asking you to review the case studies as well.
So the first step is to go to the link I provided in the course, or you can go to this link here, cloudgoogle.com/certificationguidecloudarchitect. So, go over here, select Gencomart, and read the case studies before taking the test, and just look at what they have specifically—the questions that you’ll get around the case study will ask you specifically more of a presales architecture approach. So what I mean is that they’ll have you look at the case study, determine the customer situation, determine the customer requirements, and then translate that over to the Google cloud platform. To do these exercises successfully, you’ll need to be familiar with all of the cloud services that Google provides.
For example, you may have a data warehouse requirement and need to know how to migrate the data warehouse to Google or which Google cloud services would be a good cloud fit to be able to take over that data warehouse capability. As a result, Google employs these approaches in the test. Another point of emphasis I noticed was that they will have you look at the business requirements and translate them to how they would fit in the Google cloud. So look at these deeply as well as from a technical perspective before you select the questions, and that is about all you want to know for the case study. However, I would recommend that you spend four or five minutes on each before taking a test to understand the differences and to get a head start on the types of questions that Google has that would be translated for each of these case studies. That will give you a head start, I think.
4. How to sign up for the exam
All right, so you’ve gotten through the course, and you’ve now already had the opportunity to play on the console, and hopefully you’ve had the opportunity to study and review the links that I have provided as well. Now what you want to do is go over to the web link that’s in the resources. It’s a Google.com cloud certification. Cloud architect. Now, before you tick the task again, there are a few things you should be aware of. Do you realise that Google uses a company called Criterion? And they don’t exactly have what I would call a remarkable presence in a lot of areas.
So it’s not like the Pearson view. It’s not like Pearson or Viewper metrics, or whatever the others are. So you may be limited in where you can take the test. So let’s go ahead and walk you through this and show you. So you could take it in English or Japanese. And you’ll want to create a cloud account. Now, just so you know that, I guess, if you have the Google for work certificates, that’s actually different. So you need to sign up for a new account. So you want to go over here and sign up for a new account, if that’s what you need. So you want to go over here, create a new account, enter your information, and then proceed on. So I’ll log in using my account—a new account, that is.
5. Using Qwiklabs to learn hands on (Cost involved)
Let’s go ahead and talk about Quick Labs. Now, Quick Labs is an interesting service. It’s not a free service. There is a cost. You have to obtain credits to use the labs, but it’s fairly cheap, and it supports both Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services. Now, as you scroll down here, you can go over to the different labs. You can see that they have Amazon and other labs that are related to Amazon but also to Google Cloud. And you can go ahead and filter those by selecting Filter. It will go ahead and basically show only Google. For example.
Now in this case, since we’re talking about App Engine, the labs that you’d want to do to really get familiar with App Engine would be more focused on deploying applications. There are nine exercises in total, and you can see that they include deploying Python Flask web apps, NodeJSRuby on Rails, Slack again, and WordPress. And again, take a look at what’s available. Some of these may be of interest to you. And then the other one I would recommend is to go over to the data engineering labs as well. Now, a lot of these correlate, like, for example, if you’re using an app engine, you could integrate BigQuery and create pipelines, and these are things you’re going to do as a developer and as a data engineer. So you can see that there is plenty of lab work here, and it tells you how many labs you sign up for what is known as a quest. And these are the quests here. So you go over here. I’ll select one that I’m not part of.
Let’s see, how about machine learning? And you can see it’s 45 credits, 5 hours, and 50 minutes here. Go enrol in the quest, and it says you’re part of the quest now. And it will take you to the first lab to begin. It walks you through what I like about Quick Labs, and the way the labs flow is that you’re going to have instructions here, and you just follow the instructions. It tells you how to log in, and you’ll get a temporary code to log in—a temporary account. And you’re going to go ahead; once you start the lab, it’ll go ahead and provide you that information. And then, if you just scroll down, it gives you step-by-step instructions on what to do in the lab and how to complete the lab. And you pretty much just follow the steps, and that’s really all you need to do. Now, the one thing I did want to point out is that you see that it says 50 minutes.
I don’t recommend you start any of the labs unless you’re positive you’re going to have that amount of time to complete the labs. Because what will happen is that once that time hits 50 minutes, you can’t pause it. You can’t do anything like that. So basically, it’s going to start 50 once you start it, and it keeps on going until it runs out of time, and then your lab is shut off. So just be aware of that before you actually start the lab and proceed. Now, let’s go over here. I’d like to take you to, say, my account. And you can see that I have some credits here. I’ve got a significant amount of credit. And if I wanted to buy credits, I wanted to show you the two options that they use.
They basically have a subscription that costs $55 per month. This pretty much allows you to use any of the labs as much as you like, pretty much, is my understanding. Still, usually I don’t do the subscription. I just like to count the credits. So in this case, if I buy 400 credits, you get a discount. If you buy 4,000, you get a 20% discount. Now, again, most people certainly won’t be paying that. But let’s say you’re getting ready to take the Data Engineer exam or the Google Cloud Architect exam. So if you go back here to catalog, this area is called Catalog It. Go ahead and go back to the catalogue here in a second. So let’s say I go over to cloud architecture. I’ll just select, like in this case, cloud architecture. So I go over here.
This quest, which revolves primarily around cloud architecture, requires 56 credits to complete. So I go back, and as you can see, let’s just go back here and buy. So as you can see, I’m looking for 56 credits. Now, the one thing I definitely have found is that they clearly don’t make the costs and the number of credits sort of correlate. Well, you’ll notice that as well. One of the things I wish they would do is keep the credits within the scope of what the quest is if they have to adjust the pricing, because this confuses people. So, for example, if it’s 56 credits, maybe just make it $49 or something. But they don’t do that. So you have to go back and buy additional credits until you have enough credits.So that’s the one thing I don’t really care for with that. But that’s just my opinion. So this is Quick Labs. great resource for you to use. I will say that I have found the support to be generally attractive. It’s not great. They do respond, but they respond with, “We’ll get around to it in a couple of days.” So with that said, Quick Labs will take a look at it. It is a great tool for anyone getting to know Google Cloud or Amazon Web Services.
6. Google Cloud Icon Library for GCP Cloud Architecture
I’m over here at the Google Cloud Platform icon site. The URL is cloud Google.com Icons. Now this site here is actually pretty useful. You can go download an asset library. So essentially, if you want to go and download PowerPoint, Google Slides, Drawer, IO, or just your typical icons, you can do that. This is going to be very helpful. When you’re designing a reference architecture, you’re trying to plot out what services are going to be used with your cloud service that you’re going to utilise with your current infrastructure, even if you’re going to study for the exam. So this could be a very useful resource. So let’s go over here to GoogleSlides, and I will select View the presentation. As you can see, it brings up some presentations over here. And if I scroll down, you can see that it has different diagrams. And then let’s click on this one.
Now these are fully editable, so go ahead and just take one of these templates and start designing a GCP service architecture. Just getting started with whatever template you see There are about 80 pages in this numerous different architecture and product cards and templates that you could use, according to Google. So if you keep scrolling down, these are example diagrams, and I think this is PowerPoint content, for example. So let’s go over here to this specific diagram. here, and it’s called App Engine and Cloud Endpoints. This is a very simple diagram, and you can see that it has your mobile elements, and those mobile elements are using what’s called cloud endpoints. Now, Cloud Endpoints is a service where you’re going to essentially tie in your APIs. And this enables the developers to utilise specific Google Cloud capabilities without having to directly programme all the APIs. And this could, of course, cause some significant resource challenges if you don’t pay attention. But with that said, you have App Engine as well.
And then you can see that they’ve got many different architectures, the internet of things, and real-time bidding. You can see that they have a workflow here. They’ve got load balancing set up here, compute engine, app engine, cloud SQL, and so on and so forth. And then here we’ve got more specific examples as well. This is live streaming, with ComputeEngine, Content Delivery, and a Fast Lease CDN in place. This is more concerned with rendering back-end databases, data warehouses, and so on. So I encourage you to take a look at the appropriate download, whatever you’re using. I select this one. This is like a retail recommendation engine. So this is a standard Machine Language Analytics setup.
Shopping. Cart analysis. And then again, that’s the website there as well that you just downloaded the files from, if you just did. Let’s see. And again, these are basically what are called diagram elements. This gives you some capabilities around how to identify the different elements in the diagram, essentially. Simply put, there’s not much to it. Now, I don’t typically call them user cards, but that’s just their approach. Again, this gives you an approach to setting up your diagrams, talking about, in this case, zoning or projects. There are lots of good examples here to play around with. Now, this slide here basically has icons. Again, some more here as well. Now, if we go back to the icon library, there are also SVG and PNG icons. If we select that, it’ll bring up a zip file in which you’ll see products and services. And then just go over here and select what type of icon to use. Like here. We have networking. Let’s select networking. And each of these icons is now focused on that specific service. So let’s select a cloud VPN. See that? That is the Cloud VPN icon. Let’s select load balancing. This is the icon for load balancing. So this is nothing more than a site that you go to and get additional collateral.
7. Finding Help with Stackoverflow
One resource you really need to know about is called Stackoverflow.com. Now Stackoverflow.com is focused on developers. This allows you to be able to collaborate with other developers, programmers, architects, and data engineers to solve problems, but also to get your problem solved and then help other people solve problems as well.
One of the areas of this resource that I like is that it allows you to, of course, search for what you’re looking for. So if I go here and I just type “Google Cloud,” you’ll see that it’ll bring me over to about 30,000 plus results of different questions and areas that come up around Google Cloud. You could certainly narrow this down more. For example, the common area might be, let’s see, BigQuery, right? So, for example, how do you use BigQuery with Python and MongoDB? As a result, this is an excellent location for becoming thoroughly acquainted with the various services. And what I like about this is that it’s not like looking at boring documentation. It sometimes allows you to get what other users think, and they usually put it in a language that a developer would write in rather than a tech writer. For example.
Jobs are another intriguing topic. They have a job section as well. For example, if you’re looking for a job or just want to look around, they have a nice database that, from what I’ve seen, is updated fairly frequently. And again, just take your time to play around. You essentially have a messaging service, as well as the ability to earn badges and awards. And what can happen is that once you get so many points, or awards, as I should say, and you start escalating levels, you have the ability to become more of a community moderator, for example. So with that said, I just wanted to make sure you’re aware of Stack Overflow. Excellent resource for collaborating, problem solving, or even looking for a new role, if that’s what you’re looking for.
8. Using Codelabs to Learn some GCP for FREE
Welcome to Code Labs. So one of the benefits of Code Labs is that you have the ability to use it for actually trying things before you buy in and figuring out how things work. For example, these are essentially labs that walk you through specific processes, like booting up a virtual machine or installing Stackdriver monitoring. This includes more than just GoogleCloud; it also includes everything from Android to Chrome—you name it. So with that said, there are generally three reasons I like Co Labs.
The first is that I think it’s actually useful. It’s a great tool for you to use at no cost. So the second reason I like it is that it’s free. There’s no cost. The third reason I like it is that the instructions are pretty clear and very direct about what you have to do. and let me show you. So let’s say, for example, I want to look for App Engine. So App Engine being a platform as a service, let’s go ahead and find some exercises that might make sense to do. So with that said, I have six to seven exercises available. You can see that there is some timing here. This is the time they estimate it will take to complete the lab completely. In this case, I go over to App Engine and click to deploy a Node JS Express application. It tells you what you need. It asks you how you’re going to use the tutorial.
This is more of an information-collection exercise than anything else. Go ahead and select that. You can see that it will tell you how the environment will be set up. It also tells you here that you’ll have to create a Google account to use Google Cloud. And once again, make sure you go over to the free trial area if you don’t have it and sign up for that if you are able to in your country. And this will walk you through how the lab works. It gives you all the commands as well as what to look for. And you simply keep on scrolling through. When I clicked, it told me how many minutes were left in the year. You click here, for example, and you can go ahead and just copy that and paste it into the lab when you do it. And then you just continue on, and you can see the time decrements and so on and so forth. So this is a great tool to use to get some practice. It is free. My recommendation to you is to take some time to do it. If you’re not familiar with the app engine.
