Visualizing Google Cloud Book Review
TLDR: Buy it!
Introduction
It feels very odd sitting down to write this book review, something I think I last did in any depth when I was back at school! So what about this book made me want to write a review, well read on and I hope to explain…
About Me
First, a little about me to hopefully provide context for my views on this book: I am a multi-certified GCP Cloud Architect working for CTS which is a Google exclusive cloud consultancy and partner. Personally, I have been working exclusively with GCP for nearly 3 years at the time of writing this so I like to think I come at this book with a good amount of knowledge and experience already.
About the Author
Priyanka Vergadia has for many years been a very active and visible member of the GCP community in her role as a Developer Advocate at Google. Her content spans blogs (both on Google and here on Medium), videos, and her own website. The main thing I tend to think of when I think of Priyanka though is her amazing GCP sketchnotes (website & Github), these distill cloud topics into easy-to-follow diagrams calling out key decisions and features. I have personally used these extensively in my study for the different certifications and recommend others do too!
Overview of the Book
The book is split up into 8 chapters, the first 4, “Infrastructure”, “Storage”, “Databases”, and “Cloud Analytics” provide a really good overview of the various products GCP offers in each of these spaces, with suggested use cases for each of them.
The 5th chapter, “Application Development and Modernization Opening” shifts the focus slightly away from product areas towards practices and processes in the cloud, including but not limited to; migration, multi-cloud deployment with Anthos, CICD, systems architectures, and orchestration, API management, and cloud operations.
The 6th chapter, simply titled “Networking” covers the various tools and configurations available, and provides some suggested best practice architectures. Again, covering but not limited to CDN, DNS, Hybrid Connectivity, NAT, and Traffic Director. In all, it provides a very good basis for understanding the components that could be used to build a network. The only thing I personally might like to have seen that was missing, is some reference network designs - for example hybrid connectivity, terminating into a shared VPC (a pattern I have seen and deployed a lot with clients).
The 7th chapter, “Data Science, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence” covers some of the theory of productionising ML models using the Vertex AI toolset, as well as many of the ‘pre-baked’ APIs which Google offers such as the Vision API.
The 8th and final chapter, “Security” covers many of the best practice concepts and tools used to achieve these such as SLSA which my colleague Stuart has blogged about, The crux of this chapter from my perspective is that GCP is very secure (my colleague Jonny has even blogged about common cloud objections), even letting you use customer-supplied encryption keys (CSEK), protecting the network with tools like cloud armor, and protecting data with powerful IAM.
Hopefully, this has given you a good feel for the content of the book. Now, I hope to answer some questions I had before reading it, in the hope that it’s useful for others.
Is it up to date?
At the time of writing, yes it’s pretty up to date. The main missing items I found were those who were newly released or still in beta, for example the new version of Cloud Functions, or the new external HTTP(s) load balancer. I hope that this book is updated annually to try and keep up with changes from within GCP. This being said though, many of the core components are at this point well established, so changes to these are likely to be more minor.
Aren't the sketchnotes available for free, if so why should I buy the book?
Whilst it is true that at least some of the sketchnotes are available for free, these only form part of each topic, with the other part being what I would describe as expertly condensed Google Cloud documentation. These two parts combined are really what I think gives this book serious value.
Isn’t all this information available in the Google Cloud documentation?
Yes, though as someone who has spent far more hours than I care to admit trawling through Google Cloud documentation having Priyanka (and her reviewers), expertly condense and visualize the documentation will no doubt save me many more hours trying to find the information I am looking for.
Would I and to whom would I recommend it?
Yes, I would wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone currently, or work with and build solutions in GCP. In my opinion, the book can be read in both a linear fashion as part of studying (I would recommend it for at least the PCA Certification), or as a reference guide to dive into a topic or specific product.
How do I intend to use the book?
I personally intend to use the book as a reference guide for both refamiliarising myself with products I don’t use often, and as an aid when working with, and explaining Google concepts and services to my company's clients. I have already recommended that the current client I am working with, purchase copies for their team, to help them gain greater familiarity with the platform.
Where to buy it?
Closing thoughts
So, hopefully my first ‘proper’ book review since school has been helpful. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and I hope many of you will buy it and enjoy reading it just as much as I! But until next time, keep it Googley :)
About CTS
CTS is the largest dedicated Google Cloud practice in Europe and one of the world’s leading Google Cloud experts, winning 2020 Google Partner of the Year Awards for both Workspace and GCP.
We offer a unique full stack Google Cloud solution for businesses, encompassing cloud migration and infrastructure modernisation. Our data practice focuses on analysis and visualisation, providing industry specific solutions for; Retail, Financial Services, Media and Entertainment.
We’re building talented teams ready to change the world using Google technologies. So if you’re passionate, curious and keen to get stuck in — take a look at our Careers Page and join us for the ride!
