06)

Scaling with Google Cloud Operations

Cloud Operations & Scaling with Google Cloud

📌 What are Cloud Operations?

Cloud operations refer to the practices and strategies used to manage, monitor, and
optimize cloud-based systems. It ensures that cloud applications and infrastructure run
smoothly, securely, and efficiently.

🚀 Why Are Cloud Operations Important?

1. Ensures Reliability – Keeps cloud systems running with minimal downtime.

2. Optimizes Performance – Improves speed and efficiency of cloud applications.
3. Enhances Security – Protects data and infrastructure from cyber threats.
4. Manages Costs – Helps organizations track and control cloud expenses.
5. Supports Scaling – Easily expands resources as needed.

🎯 Course Goals: "Scaling with Google Cloud Operations"

• Learn how to control cloud costs using financial governance.

• Understand modern cloud operations, reliability, and resilience.
• Explore how Google Cloud helps reduce environmental impact and supports
sustainability goals.

📌 Assessments:

• The course includes graded knowledge tests.

• You must pass these assessments to receive course credit.

1.Financial governance and Managing cloud Costs

Introduction

Cloud Cost Management & Financial Governance

📌 Why is Cloud Cost Management Important?

• Cloud costs can fluctuate based on usage, unlike traditional fixed capital
expenditures (CapEx).
 • Organizations need real-time monitoring to avoid overspending.
• IT budgeting responsibility is now shared across multiple teams, not just finance.
• Managing cloud spending effectively maximizes business value.

🎯 Key Learning Areas in this Course

1. Fundamentals of Cloud Cost Management – Understanding how cloud billing and

pricing models work.
2. Cloud Financial Governance Best Practices – Ensuring financial efficiency while
using cloud services.
3. Controlling Access with Resource Hierarchy – Using Google Cloud’s Resource
Manager to organize and manage cloud usage.
4. Ways to Control Cloud Consumption – Optimizing cloud usage to prevent waste
and unnecessary expenses.

🔍 Key Takeaways

• Cloud costs must be actively monitored to avoid budget overruns.

• Resource hierarchy and access controls help manage spending.
• Financial governance ensures that cloud spending aligns with business goals.

➡ This knowledge helps organizations make smarter cloud investments! ✅

i)

📌 Cloud Financial Governance: Managing Cloud Costs Efficiently

Why is Cloud Financial Governance Important?

• Easy access to cloud resources can lead to unexpected overspending.

• Without control, costs can spiral out of control, causing budget overruns.
• A well-defined governance strategy ensures cost efficiency and real-time decision-
making.

🔍 Key Areas of Cloud Financial Governance

1⃣ People: Who Manages Cloud Costs?

• Small Organizations → One person might handle budgeting, procurement,

tracking, and optimization.
• Large Organizations → A finance team manages cloud spending, but may struggle
to track daily costs.
 • Technology & Business Teams → Use cloud resources but don’t always factor in
costs.
• Solution? → A Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE)
o A centralized team of experts ensuring best practices and cost visibility.
o Helps make real-time decisions and balance cost vs. business needs.

2⃣ Process: How to Control Cloud Spending?

• Daily/Weekly: Monitor and analyze cloud usage & costs.

• Weekly/Monthly: Finance team reviews spending, assigns costs, and makes
optimizations.
• Accountability Culture → Helps teams recognize waste and act quickly to eliminate
it.
• Collaboration → Finance, tech, and business teams must align spending with
business goals.

3⃣ Technology: Tools for Cost Management

Google Cloud provides built-in tools to:

✅ Monitor & manage cloud costs.
✅ Increase visibility into spending.
✅ Control costs to avoid overspending risks.
✅ Provide smart recommendations to optimize costs & usage.

🚀 Key Takeaways

• Cloud costs affect everyone, not just finance teams.

• A strong partnership between finance, tech, and business is crucial.
• A centralized team (CCoE) helps organizations stay on top of spending.
• Regular monitoring and built-in cloud tools improve cost efficiency.

➡ Coming up next: Exploring Google Cloud’s cost management tools! ✅

ii)

Cloud Financial Governance: Best Practices for Cost

Control
🔹 Why is Financial Governance Important?
 • Helps control and predict cloud costs.
• Establishes accountability within teams.
• Provides visibility into spending trends.
• Helps organizations optimize cloud usage efficiently.

🚀 Best Practices for Managing Cloud Costs

1⃣ Identify Who Manages Cloud Costs

• Cloud spending is decentralized → Requires a mix of IT managers & financial

controllers.
• Define clear ownership for projects to improve accountability.
• Share cost insights with teams using cloud resources → Helps ensure responsible
spending.
• Use Google Cloud policies to control who can spend & view costs.
• Organize cloud resources to allocate costs to specific departments & teams.

✅ Example: Google Cloud Budgets notify key stakeholders about actual or forecasted
costs.

2⃣ Understand Invoices vs. Cost Management Tools

• Invoice = Bill sent by the cloud provider to request payment.

• Cost Management Tool = Software to track, analyze, and optimize cloud spending.
• Organizations don’t just need to know how much they spent → They need to know
why.
• Google Cloud’s built-in cost management tools help uncover trends & optimize
spending.

✅ Example: Google Cloud Console provides detailed cost insights & trends.

3⃣ Use Google Cloud Cost Management Tools

• Before optimizing costs, organizations must first understand their spending.

• Key steps:
1. Identify who is using cloud resources and for what purpose.
2. Assign responsibility for monitoring & managing costs.
3. Define how spending reports will be shared.
4. Set up regular cost reviews & reporting schedules.

✅ Google Cloud’s Reporting & Monitoring Tools:

 • Google Cloud Pricing Calculator → Estimates costs based on usage.
• Built-in cost reporting → Provides visibility into trends & waste areas.
• Recommended review frequency: At least once a week.

📍 Try it out: Google Cloud Pricing Calculator 👉 cloud.google.com/products/calculator

iii)

🔹 Controlling Access to Cloud Resources with Google

Cloud Resource Hierarchy
🚀 Why is Access Control Important in Cloud Computing?

• In on-premises infrastructure, access was controlled physically.

• In cloud environments, physical control is not possible, so a structured access
control system is needed.
• Google Cloud Resource Hierarchy helps in organizing resources and managing
access efficiently.

🔹 Understanding Google Cloud Resource Hierarchy

Google Cloud resources are arranged in a tree-like structure to make management and
access control easier.

🔹 Four Levels of the Resource Hierarchy:

1⃣ Resources → Virtual machines, Cloud Storage buckets, BigQuery tables, etc.
2⃣ Projects → Resources are grouped into projects.
3⃣ Folders → Projects can be organized into folders or subfolders.
4⃣ Organization Node → The top-level structure containing all folders, projects, and
resources.

📌 Why is this structure important?

• Defines access policies at different levels.

• Ensures inherited access permissions from top to bottom.
• Improves security & compliance.

🔹 How Policies Work in Google Cloud?

A policy is a set of rules that define who can access a resource and what actions they can
perform.
✔ Where can policies be applied?

• At the Organization level → Affects all resources within the organization.

• At the Folder level → Applies to all projects and resources inside the folder.
• At the Project level → Applies to specific projects only.
• At the Resource level → Some Google Cloud services allow policy settings on
individual resources.

✔ How does policy inheritance work?

• Permissions set at higher levels are automatically inherited by lower levels.

• Example: If a user is granted access at the folder level, all projects and resources
within that folder will inherit those permissions.

🔹 Benefits of Using Google Cloud Resource Hierarchy

✅ 1. Granular Access Control

• Assign roles & permissions at different levels → folder, project, or individual

resource.
• Provides flexibility in access management.

✅ 2. Simplified Permission Inheritance

• Higher-level permissions automatically apply to lower-level resources.

• Reduces manual configuration for each resource.

✅ 3. Stronger Security & Compliance

• Follows Least Privilege Principle → Users get only the permissions they absolutely
need.
• Prevents unauthorized access and supports regulatory compliance.

✅ 4. Better Visibility & Auditing

• Track and review access changes at different levels.

• Improves accountability by identifying security risks and potential issues.

🔹 Summary

📌 Google Cloud Resource Hierarchy helps control access by organizing resources in a

structured way.
📌 Policies define who can access resources and what they can do.
📌 Permissions are inherited, making access management easier.
📌 Strong security, compliance, and auditing capabilities help maintain a secure cloud
environment.

🔹 Next Step: Explore Google Cloud IAM (Identity and Access Management) to
implement these policies effectively! 🚀

iv)

🔹 Controlling Cloud Consumption in Google Cloud

🚀 Why Do Organizations Need to Control Cloud Consumption?

Organizations control cloud consumption for various reasons:

✔ Cost Savings → Prevent overspending on unnecessary resources.
✔ Increased Visibility → Understand resource usage and identify areas to reduce costs.
✔ Improved Compliance → Ensure adherence to industry regulations and standards.

🔹 Google Cloud Tools for Controlling Cloud

Consumption
🔹 1. Resource Quota Policies

• What are they? → Limits set on how many cloud resources a project or user can use.
• Why are they useful? → Prevents excessive spending and ensures cloud usage stays
within budget.
• Where to set them? → Configured in the Google Cloud Console.

🔹 2. Budget Threshold Rules

• What are they? → Alerts triggered when cloud costs exceed a set amount.
• Why are they useful? → Act as early warnings to prevent cost overruns.
• Where to set them? → Managed in the Google Cloud Console.

🔹 3. Cloud Billing Reports

• What are they? → Reports that track and analyze cloud spending.
• Why are they useful? → Help understand past spending and identify ways to
optimize costs.
• How to use them? →
o Export billing data to BigQuery for in-depth analysis.
 o Visualize data using tools like Looker Studio.

🔹 Optimizing Cloud Costs with Committed Use Discounts

(CUDs)
✔ If your workloads have predictable resource needs, you can purchase a Google Cloud
commitment.
✔ This provides discounted pricing in exchange for committing to use a minimum level of
resources for a specific period.

🔹 Summary
📌 Google Cloud provides multiple tools to control cloud consumption and costs.
📌 Resource Quota Policies set limits on resource usage.
📌 Budget Threshold Rules provide alerts for potential overspending.
📌 Cloud Billing Reports help analyze spending trends and optimize costs.
📌 Committed Use Discounts (CUDs) offer savings for predictable workloads.

🔹 Next Step: Implement these tools in your Google Cloud environment to gain better
control over cloud costs and resource usage! 🚀

2.Operational Excellence and Realiability Scale

Introduction

This section focuses on operational excellence and reliability in cloud computing,

emphasizing the importance of scalability, resilience, and proactive monitoring to ensure
uninterrupted service delivery.

Key Takeaways:
✅ Operational Excellence: Optimizing cloud operations through automation, resource
provisioning, and load balancing to handle growing workloads efficiently.
✅ Reliability: Minimizing downtime by implementing fault-tolerant systems, disaster
recovery strategies, and proactive monitoring.
✅ Real-world Example: A global eCommerce platform must scale resources rapidly and
maintain service availability during high-traffic events, preventing revenue loss and
maintaining a positive user experience.
✅ Google Cloud Solutions: Learn about modernizing operations, designing resilient
infrastructure, cloud reliability principles, and Google Cloud support services.
i)

This section discusses DevOps and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), which focus on
enhancing collaboration, automation, and reliability in software development and
operations.

Key Points:

✅ Developers vs. Operators:

• Developers: Focus on writing and deploying code quickly to release new features,
improve business value, and fix issues rapidly.
• Operators: Prioritize stability and reliability, ensuring systems work consistently.
• Traditional challenges: Developers push code without knowing how it will behave
in production, leading to unclear accountability and troubleshooting issues.

✅ DevOps Approach:

• Encourages collaboration between development and operations teams.

• Promotes automation, shared responsibility, and continuous improvement to
improve software delivery.

✅ Site Reliability Engineering (SRE):

• Combines software engineering and operations to ensure scalable, reliable cloud

infrastructure.
• Monitoring plays a key role in identifying trends, capacity planning, and improving
user experience.

✅ Four Golden Signals of System Reliability:

1. Latency: Measures response time for system requests.

2. Traffic: Monitors the number of requests reaching the system.
3. Saturation: Shows how close a system is to its capacity limits.
4. Errors: Tracks system failures and incorrect behaviors.

✅ SRE Concepts:

• Service-Level Indicators (SLIs): Metrics like response time, error rate, and uptime.
• Service-Level Objectives (SLOs): Targets set for SLIs, e.g., "99.9% uptime per
month."
• Service-Level Agreements (SLAs): Contracts between cloud providers and
customers, including performance guarantees and compensation for outages.

ii)

Cloud Infrastructure: High Availability & Disaster Recovery

When designing cloud infrastructure, it’s crucial to ensure resilience, fault tolerance, and
scalability to maintain high availability and enable disaster recovery in case of failures.

• High Availability (HA) – Ensures systems remain operational even if hardware or

software failures occur.
• Disaster Recovery (DR) – Focuses on restoring systems to a functional state after
major disruptions.

Key Design Considerations

1. Redundancy – Duplicates critical components (e.g., power supplies, network

switches) to prevent single points of failure.
2. Replication – Creates multiple copies of data/services across servers or locations,
ensuring continuity if a component fails.
3. Geographic Distribution – Uses multiple cloud regions to mitigate risks from
regional disasters or outages.
4. Scalability & Autoscaling – Adjusts resource allocation dynamically to handle
varying workloads and sudden spikes.
5. Backups – Regularly stores critical data and configurations in separate geographic
locations for quick recovery.
6. Monitoring & Incident Response – Implements alerts and response mechanisms to
identify and address failures promptly.

By integrating these strategies, organizations minimize downtime, prevent data loss, and
ensure seamless service availability even in the face of disruptions.

III)

Google Cloud Observability: Ensuring Performance & Reliability

When moving to the cloud, organizations lose direct physical access to their infrastructure.
Unlike on-premises environments, where engineers can inspect hardware issues in person,
cloud systems require advanced tools to monitor and diagnose issues remotely.

To solve this challenge, Google Cloud Observability provides a suite of monitoring,

logging, and diagnostic tools that give deep insights into system performance, health, and
reliability.

Key Components of Google Cloud Observability

1. Cloud Monitoring
o Tracks metrics, logs, and traces from cloud applications.
o Enables real-time alerts when system performance deviates from expected
behavior.
2. Cloud Logging
o Collects and stores logs from applications and infrastructure.
o Helps in troubleshooting issues and identifying patterns.
3. Cloud Trace
o Analyzes application latency and identifies performance bottlenecks.
 o Helps engineers optimize code for faster response times.
4. Cloud Profiler
o Tracks how applications consume CPU, memory, and other resources.
o Aids in optimizing resource allocation and cost efficiency.
5. Error Reporting
o Aggregates and analyzes application crashes in real time.
o Provides detailed error logs and automated notifications for faster issue
resolution.

IV)

Google Cloud Customer Care: Choosing the Right Support Plan

Adopting cloud technology can present challenges, so having a strong support system is
crucial for success. Google Cloud Customer Care provides scalable, flexible support
services designed to match your business needs.

Support Levels

Google Cloud offers four service levels, allowing organizations to choose the best fit based
on their workloads and priorities.

1. Basic Support (Free)

o Available to all Google Cloud customers.
o Includes documentation, community support, Cloud Billing Support, and
Active Assist recommendations (which provide insights to optimize cloud
projects).
2. Standard Support (For workloads under development)
o Best for testing and troubleshooting early-stage workloads.
o Provides unlimited tech support from English-speaking representatives
during working hours (5 days a week).
o Includes Cloud Support API integration, allowing connection with customer
relationship management (CRM) systems.
3. Enhanced Support (For production workloads)
o 24/7 support in multiple languages with faster response times than Standard
Support.
o Offers technical escalations and third-party support for multi-vendor
issues.
4. Premium Support (For critical enterprise workloads)
o Fastest response time with Customer Aware Support (where Google
maintains knowledge of your architecture and cloud projects).
o Includes a dedicated Technical Account Manager for strategic guidance.
o Features:
✅ Google Cloud Skills Boost training credits
✅ Event Management Services (for major sales events or product launches)
✅ Operational Health Reviews to track progress and proactively address
blockers
V) Google Cloud Customer Care: Support Case Lifecycle

Google Cloud provides a structured support process for customers on Standard, Enhanced,
or Premium support plans. Through the Google Cloud Console, customers can create and
manage support cases, with additional options like phone and video call support for live
interactions.

Support Case Lifecycle

1⃣ Case Creation

• Customers initiate a support request via the Google Cloud Console (only users with
the Tech Support Editor role can do this).
• Details such as error messages, logs, and reproduction steps must be provided.
• Priority levels range from P4 (low impact) to P1 (critical impact), influencing
response times.

2⃣ Triage Process

• The support team reviews the case to determine its impact and severity.
• Additional information may be requested.
• Simple issues are resolved immediately, while complex cases are escalated to
specialized support engineers.

3⃣ Troubleshooting & Investigation

• Engineers analyze logs, system diagnostics, and configurations to identify root

causes.
• This phase may require collaboration with internal teams or subject matter
experts.
• Regular updates and communication are provided to the customer.

4⃣ Escalation (If Necessary)

• Used when a case is stuck or lacks progress, despite ongoing efforts.

• Not always the best solution—setting the right priority level is often more effective
for high-impact issues.
• Escalation should be used sparingly to avoid disrupting workflows.

5⃣ Resolution & Mitigation

• The support team provides fixes, configuration changes, or workaround solutions.

• If necessary, the case is escalated to engineering teams for further investigation.
• In some cases, a feature request may be submitted to Google Cloud engineers.

6⃣ Validation & Closure

• The customer tests and verifies that the issue is fully resolved.
• The support team documents the solution and steps taken.
 • Recommendations for preventive measures or best practices may be provided.

7⃣ Customer Feedback

• Customers receive a survey to rate their support experience.

• Feedback helps improve Google Cloud’s Customer Care services.

Throughout the process, Google Cloud’s Customer Care team ensures timely, effective
support and prioritizes customer satisfaction. 🚀