Getting ‘Google Cloud Digital Leader’ certified in 2023 — complete with notes

Join me on my Cloud and FinOps journey 📔🔖💡

Why I chose GCP (over AWS and Azure)

There are a ton of great AWS resources (YT videos and blogs) and I have Azure experience, so I decided to go with Google Cloud Digital Leader to learn more about it.

Two additional reasons:

1. I’m aspiring to take up FinOps Cloud practitioner certification. I thought this could be a good primer.
2. Decided to leverage Google’s no cost training resources, available this November 2023: https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/training-certifications/on-demand-google-cloud-training-during-no-cost-november

This is a straightforward blog documenting my learning. I hope it helps folks who are in a similar journey.

Materials I used

In 2023, the trickiest part is to not get overwhelmed with the massive information out there. I followed Google’s ‘official’ Cloud Digital Leader Learning Path that comprises of the following 4 modules:

• Digital Transformation with Google Cloud — Dig into cloud technology, the concept of digital technology, and how they work together.
• Innovating with Data and Google Cloud — Find out how data can unlock value and create new experiences for customers.
• Infrastructure and Application Modernization with Google Cloud — Explore legacy systems and cloud technology solutions, and options for modernization.
• Understanding Google Cloud Security and Operations — Examine cost management, security, and operations in the cloud.

I’m sharing my notes from these sessions. Shout out to Google Cloud’s training team — the video content was bite sized and absolutely fun, colorful and engaging! You’ll find a mix of training content excerpts and my interpretation of the same below.

My 3 step approach to getting certified

1. Complete Google Cloud’s official training path(https://cloud.google.com/learn/certification/cloud-digital-leader).
2. Use my notes below as a reference guide to revise
3. My last tip is to review sample questions (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSedAmf77MGS7FGEaylFzY51KtBd7kkIZJIMDsV5zSRSmpKIOA/viewform)

Now, you should be all set to take your exam!

My Notes from module 1 — Digital Transformation with Google Cloud

There are 5 different ways organizations can implement their information technology infrastructure:

quick sketch of my handwritten notes outlining IT infra types

Transportation analogy to see how on-premises, IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS compare with each other:

• On-premises IT infrastructure is like owning a car. When you buy a car, you’re responsible for its usage and maintenance.
• IaaS is like leasing a car. When you lease a car, you choose a car and drive it wherever you want, but the car isn’t yours. E.g. Compute Engine and Cloud Storage
• PaaS is like taking a taxi. You provide specific directions, like the code, but the driver does the actual driving. E.g. Cloud Run and BigQuery
• SaaS is like going by bus. You still get access to transport, but it’s less customizable. Buses have designated routes, and you share the space with other passengers. SaaS is appealing because it abstracts technology completely E.g. Google Workspace, which includes tools such as Gmail, Google Drive, Google Docs, and Google Meet

Benefits of cloud are:

• Scalable
• Agile
• Strategic
• Secure
• Cost effective

Fundamentals of networking include:

• Bandwidth — Ability to download info quickly
• Latency or lag — Amount of time it takes for info to travel from one point to another

Shared model

• Cloud Service Provider (CSP) is responsible for security of the cloud
• Customer Organization is responsible for security of what’s in the cloud

My Study Notes from module 2— Innovating with Data and Google Cloud

Capturing, managing, and leveraging data is central to redefining customer experience and creating new value in almost every industry.

Unlocking the value of data is central to digital transformation

A helpful starting point is to identify and map your data. A data map is a chart of all the data used in end-to-end business processes. There can be 3 buckets to your data type:

1. Customer
2. Operational/corporate
3. Industry

To make your data actionable, explore intersections between your datasets.

Data can be categorized into two main types:

• structured - highly organized and can be easily stored and managed in databases (Examples include customer records consisting of names, addresses, credit card numbers, and other quantitative data)
• unstructured - has no organization, tends to be qualitative and can be stored as objects. An object consists of the data itself, a variable amount of metadata, and a globally unique identifier and can be stored in a format called a BLOB. (Examples of unstructured data can include word processing documents, audio files, images, and videos)

Organizations rely on both structured and unstructured data to gain insight and make intelligent decisions. Cloud technology can help analysis of unstructured data which can be challenging.

Data considerations

• Capturing, storing, and analyzing vast amount of data is key to adopting Cloud technology.
• It demands responsibility and accountability.
• Not all information that can be captured should be captured.
• Businesses are accountable for making responsible decisions about which data they collect, store, and analyze.
• Data security and privacy matter. If it’s personal or sensitive data it has to be encrypted when stored in the Cloud. Additionally, only a subset of users should be granted permission to view or access the private data.
• Regional or industry-specific regulations often guide data policies.

Easy to understand analogy

When you consider the value of your data, storing data on-premises in silos is like storing your money in a mattress - it’s vulnerable to user attacks and it’s unproductive.

To get the most value from your data, you need to know what you have, find it easily, and be able to use it while keeping it secure from external threats. If you’re storing your data on-premises, you’ll need to start thinking about taking some or all of it to the bank, or in other words, to the Cloud.

It’ll provide a greater return on investment. This means that your data storage and compute powers are elastic. It can scale up or down as the data you take increases or decreases.

How data is stored, is central to using it

quick sketch of my handwritten notes outlining different types of cloud storage

My Study Notes from module 3— Infrastructure and Application Modernization with Google Cloud

Businesses need to provide seamless digital experiences to remain relevant. Legacy systems and applications fail to deliver the real time speed and scale needed to provide those experiences. Modernizing IT infrastructure is a process that breaks down monolithic systems into the smallest units that use a shared pool of resources.

Before the cloud, Organizations owned their servers, data centers, cooling systems, the physical security features in place and the real estate to house all of that infrastructure. On top of this, they paid for maintenance and ongoing security costs.

As hardware is often underutilized (even in the colocation model), engineers found a way to package applications and their operating systems into a ‘virtual machine’. Virtual machines share the same pool of computer processing, storage and networking resources. Virtual machines optimize the use of available resources and enable businesses to have multiple applications running at the same time on a server in a way that is efficient and manageable.

Outsourcing your IT needs at the infrastructure level is called infrastructure as a service.

3 ways to modernize IT infrastructure are virtual machines, containerization, and serverless computing:

In the context of the cloud, compute or computing refers to a machine’s ability to process information to store, retrieve, compare and analyze it, and automate tasks often done by computer programs, otherwise known as software or applications.

Traditionally, the hardware available for computing could only run a limited amount of software and applications — virtualization changed this.

Virtualization is a form of resource optimization that allows multiple systems to run on the same hardware. These systems are called virtual machines, or VMs.

1. Virtual machines are the first compute option for infrastructure modernization:

• This means they share the same pool of computer processing, storage and networking resources.

screenshot captured from Google Cloud training video

• VMs enable businesses to have multiple applications running at the same time on a server in a way that is efficient and manageable. The software layer that enables this is called a hypervisor.
• A hypervisor sits on top of physical hardware and multiple VMs are built on top of it.
• It’s like having multiple computers that only use one piece of hardware.

2. The second option for infrastructure modernization is containers:

• Containers follow the same principle as virtual machines. Application development and deployment is an important part of a company’s modernization strategy. Containers enable app development teams to be more agile and bring fresh experiences to customers quickly with minimal downtime.
• They provide isolated environments to run your software services and optimize resources from one piece of hardware.
• However, they’re even more efficient. Virtual machines recreate a full representation of the hardware. By contrast, containers only recreate or virtualize the operating systems. This means that they only contain exactly what’s needed for the particular application that they support.

screenshot captured from Google Cloud training video

• Containers offer a far more lightweight unit for developers and IT operations teams to work with and provide a range of benefits.
• They start faster, and use a fraction of the memory compared to booting an entire operating system.
• Containers give developers the ability to create predictable environments that are isolated from other obligations. Containers are able to run virtually anywhere, which makes development and deployment easy.
• Containers improve agility, strengthen security, optimize resources and simplify managing applications in the cloud.

Kubernetes demystified

Many businesses have a mix of VMs and containers. For example, businesses can have millions and millions of containers.

This means that keeping them secure and making sure that they operate efficiently can require significant oversight, and management.

Kubernetes is an open source cluster management system that provides automated container orchestration. In other words, Kubernetes simplifies the management of your machines and services for you.

This improves application reliability, and reduces the time and resources you need to spend on development and operations, not to mention the relief from the stress attached to these tasks.

Kubernetes makes everything associated with deploying and managing your application easier.

3. Finally, the third compute option is serverless computing.

• Serverless computing doesn’t mean there’s no server though.
• Serverless computing means that resources such as compute power are automatically provisioned behind the scenes as needed.
• This means that businesses do not pay for compute power unless they’re actually running a query or application.
• At its simplest, serverless means that businesses provide the code for whatever function they want, and the public cloud provider does everything else.

Determining the right blend of compute solutions is a necessary part of any business cloud strategy.

screenshot captured from Google Cloud training video

Google Cloud VM based Compute solutions:

• Compute Engine is a computing and hosting service that lets you create and run virtual machines on Google’s infrastructure. It delivers scalable, high performance virtual machines running in Google’s data centers and worldwide fiber network.
• Google Cloud VMware Engine is a fully managed service that lets you run the VMware platform in Google Cloud.
• Bare Metal enables you to migrate specialized workloads to the cloud while maintaining your existing investments and architecture.

Google Cloud Developer Tools help you release software at a high velocity while balancing security and quality. There are two GCP app modernization tools:

• Google Kubernetes Engine — GKE enables rapid application development and iteration by making it easy to deploy, update, and manage your applications and services. Anthos (GKE Enterprise) is Google’s cloud-centric container platform for running modern apps anywhere consistently at scale.
• App Engine is a platform for building scalable Web applications and mobile back ends. It allows you to concentrate on innovating your applications by managing the application infrastructure for you. Just upload your code, and Google will manage your app’s availability. Google Cloud has identified five common patterns that businesses can adopt when they want to modernize their applications:

1. A business can move applications to the cloud first and then change them
2. they can change their applications before they move
3. they can invent in greenfield
4. invent in brownfield
5. they can just move their applications without any changes.

APIs are key to any business’s digital transformation strategy

APIs enable integration between systems so businesses can unlock value and create new services. They often sit in between legacy systems and modern applications and enable information that was previously inaccessible to flow between them.

They do this by exposing data in a way that protects the integrity of the legacy systems and enables secure and govern access to the underlying data. This allows organizations with older systems to adapt to modern business needs and, more importantly, to quickly adopt new technologies and platforms. APIs enable businesses to unlock value without architecting all of those legacy applications. Google’s Apigee is an example that helps with this. They enable faster innovation. The Apigee platform includes an API Services layer that provides the runtime API gateway functionality.

My Study Notes from module 4 — Understanding Google Cloud Security and Operations

The variable nature of cloud costs impacts people, processes, and technology.

As an organization adapts, it’ll need a core team across technology, finance, and business functions to work together to make decisions in real time

Assessing IT total cost of ownership can vary depending on an organization’s cloud adoption goals and can continue to evolve over time.

The goals of the cost management tools are to provide visibility, accountability, control, and intelligence so that businesses can scale in the Cloud with confidence. Here’s GCP’s price calculator: https://cloud.google.com/products/calculator

3 Operational changes when you move to the cloud

1. When you move to cloud, things change with respect to financial governance. How leaders plan, set up, manage, and control their IT costs.
2. Next operational shift is with respect to security. it’s critical to understand how you and your cloud provider can work together to keep your organization’s data private, secure, and compliant while maintaining service availability and subsequently, reliability. An Identity Access Management policy, or IAM policy, is made of three parts: * “who,” * “can do what,” * and “on which resource.”
3. The third operational shift focuses on how an organization monitors its IT services, whether on premises or in the cloud, to deliver optimal customer experiences. 100% availability is misleading. In order to roll out updates, operators have to take a system offline. To address this challenge, cloud providers use standard practices to define and measure service availability for customers. This practice includes a service level agreement, service level objectives, and service level indicators.

SRE and DevOps alignment

The five objectives of DevOps are to:

reduce organizational silos; accept failure as normal; implement gradual change; leverage tooling and automation; and measure everything

These 5 DevOps objectives should be aligned with SRE best practices. To foster these practices, organizations need a culture of goal setting, transparency, and data-driven decision making.

The tools included in Google Cloud’s operations suite fall into two major categories:

1. The first is operations-focused tools, which include Cloud Monitoring, Cloud Logging, Error Reporting, and Service Monitoring. These tools tend to be for users that want to keep their infrastructure up, running, and error-free.
2. The second is application performance management tools, which include Cloud Trace, and Cloud Profiler. In contrast, these features tend to be for developers who are trying to perfect or troubleshoot applications that are running in one of the Google Cloud compute services.

Big Reveal — Did I pass the ‘Google Cloud Digital Leader’ certificate in my first attempt?

Yes, I did! 😊🙌🥳🎇🎈

Follow me for Cloud and FinOps related content — more blogs to come in this corner of digital space.

❤️❤️❤️ good things happen when you stay consistent❤️❤️❤️

Definitions for quick reference (consolidated from Google Cloud’s video modules):

• The cloud is a metaphor for the network of data centers which store and compute information that’s available through the internet.
• A data center is a building or facility that houses a large amount of IT infrastructure, computing, and storage resources in one place.
• Capital expenditures, or CapEx, are upfront business expenses put toward fixed assets. Organizations buy these items once, and they benefit their business for many years. For e.g. in IT, these expenditures might mean buying hardware like servers, printers, or cooling systems. Maintaining these assets is also considered CapEx because it extends their lifetime and usefulness.
• OpEx are recurring costs for a more immediate benefit. This represents the day-to-day expenses to run a business. In IT, these expenses might be yearly services like website hosting or domain registrations, or the subscription fee for cloud services.
• A network’s edge is defined as a place where a device or an organization’s network connects to the Internet. It’s called “the edge” because it’s the entry point to the network. Google’s Edge Network is how we connect with ISPs to get traffic to and from users.
• An API is a set of functions that integrate different platforms with different types of data so that new insights can be uncovered.
• Virtualization is a form of resource optimization that allows multiple systems to run on the same hardware. These systems are called virtual machines, or VMs.
• Kubernetes is an open source cluster management system that provides automated container orchestration.
• An Identity Access Management policy, or IAM policy, is made of three parts: * “who,” * “can do what,” * and “on which resource.”
• A service level agreement or SLA is a contractual commitment between the cloud service provider and the customer. The SLA provides the baseline level for the quality, availability and reliability of that service.