Getting Started with Google Cloud Platform
· What is cloud computing
First of all, it’s reasonable to understand the basic principles of cloud technology and it’s main benefits with traditional PC resources. Cloud computing is a remote platform of shared resources working on-demand. Typically provided services are Compute, Storage, Database and Network. The main instances of Cloud Computing are Virtual Machines — they are installed on one physical server, but each of them running separately on own operating system. The superior advantage, in this case, is the ability to rapidly scale, the architecture allows us to provide sufficient multiple resources for any kind of business task. That’s why the technology grows exponentially on the market and widely applied among commercial organizations. The common examples are Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform, Tableau and etc. The article shows a brief introduction and guides for starting with GCP.
Google Cloud Platform is a set of cloud computing services provided by Google which is suitable for a range number of tasks, starting from data analytics and ending with end-user products and web-applications.
· Free trial access conditions
For personal use, it can be convenient to operate with a limited amount of services and small computations in comparison with industrial usage. For that purpose, Google provides a free trial credit of $300 to a beginner, which can be used for one year. Either the balance limit of $300 is spent or the time of exploiting the demo version is over then the trial period expires.
· Registration for the demo account
It is sufficient to follow the first link after typing in Google search “google cloud platform” and you will be redirected on a similar page:
Be sure that you have signed in your Google account. Then click either “Try it free” or “Get started for free” button in the upper right corner. The upcoming registration consists of next steps:
1) You provide the country and agree on the conditions, then click “Further”
2) Personal, address information. For account type, you can choose business or personal. In the first case you provide the company’s address, otherwise — your personal one.
3) Payment information. Notice that the provided card is charged only for $1, which is returned at the nearest time — this is the check for the validity of the card only. The automatic charge also doesn’t happen until you enable automatic payment. After finished, click “Start my free trial”
· Project details
Google automatically creates for you the Project named “My First Project”. You can edit it or create your own, going to IAM&admin menu in the main dashboard:
· Further steps
All work is done inside one project, it can be shared between a group of users. For this purpose, each project has a unique ID, which can be viewed on the left corner of the main page:
After beginning, you can start a quick guide about work in GCP by clicking on the “Take a tour of GCP” button, which is helpful for new users:
Google Cloud Platform allows building various architectures and ready solutions — from Data Warehouse and BigQuery to ML applications: for example, the course https://www.coursera.org/learn/google-machine-learning/home/welcome
gives at some of these solutions — invoking different ML applications through the Python Notebook for own global task:
From our experience, cloud technologies are essential when dealing with industry projects, implying big data analytics.
RockYourData — a consulting company with a focus on Cloud Analytics and Analytics Modernization.
