Understand GCP visually

Cloud Virtual Machines

Google Compute Engine lets you run virtual machines on Google's infrastructure. Combine CPUs and memory freely with custom machine types and save costs with per-second billing.

Unlimited Object Storage

Google Cloud Storage is an object storage service for unstructured data. It guarantees 99.999999999% (11 nines) annual durability through automatic replication and lets you optimize costs with storage class transitions.

Serverless Function Execution

Google Cloud Functions is a serverless compute service that runs code in response to events without managing servers. Functions execute automatically on HTTP requests, Cloud Storage uploads, and other events, and you only pay for the time your code runs.

Serverless Data Warehouse

Google BigQuery is a serverless data warehouse that lets you analyze petabyte-scale data using SQL. Run massive queries in seconds with no infrastructure management, and pay based on the amount of data scanned.

Serverless Container Execution

Google Cloud Run runs containers in a fully serverless environment. Deploy a Docker image and get auto-scaling, HTTPS, and custom domains out of the box — with instances scaling down to zero when there's no traffic.

Managed Relational Database

Google Cloud SQL is the relational database service for teams that want to keep MySQL, PostgreSQL, or SQL Server semantics without personally handling patching, backups, and replica operations. It becomes the default home for transaction-heavy application data when SQL familiarity matters more than database administration.

Managed Kubernetes Engine

Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) is the orchestration system for teams that need Kubernetes to keep many containers scheduled, recovered, and exposed in a consistent way. It becomes the center of operations when container count, rollout rules, and service-to-service traffic are too complex to manage by hand.

Private Cloud Network

Google Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) provides virtual networking for your GCP resources. Configure subnets, firewall rules, and routing to control communication between resources and manage the boundary with the public internet.

Asynchronous Messaging Service

Google Cloud Pub/Sub is a fully managed messaging service for asynchronous communication between services. It decouples publishers from subscribers to reduce system coupling and auto-scales to millions of messages per second.

Serverless NoSQL Document Database

Google Cloud Firestore is a document-based NoSQL database with built-in real-time sync and offline support. Store data as JSON without a fixed schema, with automatic global scaling.

Cloud Access Management

Google Cloud IAM is the access-control system that decides which users and service accounts can touch which GCP resources through APIs. It forms the baseline security boundary for cloud operations before network paths and runtime code enter the picture.

Cloud Infrastructure Observability

Google Cloud Monitoring tracks the performance, availability, and health of your GCP resources and applications. Collect metrics, build dashboards, and set alerting policies to detect and respond to issues quickly.

Unified AI/ML Platform

Google Vertex AI is the ML operations platform that keeps training, model registration, and serving in one flow instead of scattering them across separate tools. It becomes the control point when an experiment needs to turn into a production prediction API.

Global and Regional Traffic Distribution

Google Cloud Load Balancing is a managed load balancer that routes user requests to the most appropriate backend. It can front HTTP(S), TCP, UDP, and serverless backends behind a single entry point.

Edge Cache Acceleration

Google Cloud CDN serves static or cacheable responses from edge locations worldwide to reduce latency and origin load. It works with Cloud Load Balancing so you can apply cache policy under the same domain.

Edge WAF and DDoS Protection

Google Cloud Armor is a security service that blocks malicious requests and large-scale attacks in front of public services. You attach WAF rules, geographic policies, and rate limits directly to Cloud Load Balancing.

Centralized Encryption Key Management

Google Cloud KMS is the centralized key-management system for teams that need encryption keys to live separately from the data and applications they protect. It becomes the control point when keys must be rotated, permissioned, and audited centrally.

Central Secret Storage and Versioning

Google Secret Manager centrally stores sensitive runtime values such as API tokens, database passwords, and certificates. It combines versioning with IAM so services can fetch only the secrets they actually need.

Globally Distributed Relational Database

Google Cloud Spanner is the distributed relational database service for systems that need data in multiple regions to stay in the same order and under the same transaction rules. It becomes the system of record when global scale and strong consistency have to coexist.

Managed Redis and Memcached Cache

Google Memorystore is the in-memory cache service that sits in front of a primary data store and returns hot values from memory first. It becomes the first performance buffer when repeated reads start overwhelming the source database.

Apache Beam-Based Stream and Batch Processing

Google Cloud Dataflow is a managed data processing service that runs both streaming and batch pipelines through one model. You submit Apache Beam code, and Dataflow manages the worker infrastructure and scaling.

Centralized Log Collection and Search

Google Cloud Logging is the centralized log system that gathers records from many runtimes into one place so incidents can be reconstructed in order. It becomes central when debugging or auditing requires following an event across services instead of inside a single machine.

Container and Package Repository

Google Artifact Registry stores and versions container images and language packages for deployment. It acts as the central repository from which runtimes repeatedly pull the exact artifacts they should run.