Are you a cloud architect or IT professional looking for a new job? There is a high chance that you will be asked about the Google Cloud Platform, a public cloud vendor, in your upcoming interview. It’s, therefore, essential to anticipate some of the questions and find possible responses for better interview performance. This article aims to simplify your work by covering some of the most common GCP questions in IT and cloud architecture interviews. Let’s get started!
1. What Is GCP?
GCP, fully referred to as Google Cloud Platform, is a public cloud vendor offered by Google. It is in the same league as Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services and allows users to access different computer resources in Google data centres regardless of location. It provides a computing services suite for data management, GCP cost management, and web and video delivery. It also comes with several machine-learning tools for better data manipulation.
2. Mention The Services Offered By Google Cloud
Thanks to its secure cloud infrastructure, Google Cloud allows users to host their web-based applications. Some of the services offered include:
- Application Programming Interfaces- APIs are generally used for enterprise mapping and machine learning that guarantee software-to-software communication.
- Google Workspace- Formerly known as Google Apps or G-Suite, Google workspace comes with identity management, collaboration, and Gmail tools.
- Android and Chrome OS Enterprise Versions- These phone and laptop OS allow users to connect with web-based apps.
3. What Are The Main Services Offered By The Google Cloud Platform?
Even though Google Cloud Platform has certain location-specific services, all users enjoy storage and database, machine learning, big data, computing, hosting, and networking services, which are usually paid for and can be accessed anytime, provided no geographical limitation exists.
4. Mention The Pros And Cons Of The Google Cloud Platform
Google Cloud Platform, or GCP, has a number of strengths explaining its popularity. It offers one of the best documentation, thanks to the actions incorporated into its documents. Users get hands-on and overview sections for better documentation. GCP also uses state-of-the-art software-defined services for consistent, scalable, and fast performance, even though it costs more. On shortcomings, GCP offers fewer services than competitors such as Azure and Amazon Web Services. It can therefore be functionally limited compared to other cloud platforms.
5. Mention Some Of The Use Cases Of The Google Cloud Platform
Google Cloud Platform offers a great organizational hierarchy that allows large organizations to set permissions when working on projects. It, therefore, allows faster execution of projects while keeping within corporate limits. It’s also recommended for companies aiming to reduce costs, given that once a project is deleted, all the resources are eliminated from the project. Lastly, GCP is highly recommended for organizations that have embraced machine learning, analytics, and Big Data. It’s relatively easier to feed data into the Google Cloud Platform and obtain the key performance indicators or collect customer data and make recommendations based on their buying history.
6. Define What A Cloud Is
A cloud is a computer system with a network, application programming interface, storage capabilities, and hardware. Cloud usage gives rise to cloud computing, which allows businesses to fulfil different requirements. The service provider and end-user are the most critical participants in a cloud computing system. The service provider generally provides and manages the cloud services, while the end-user uses the cloud services for different reasons, including fulfilling business requirements for stakeholder satisfaction.
7. Mention The Different Levels Of The Google Cloud Platform
The Google Cloud Platform has four tiers, namely:
- IaaS- Fully referred to as infrastructure-as-a-Service, IaaS is the most crucial part of a cloud computing environment and therefore makes the first tier.
- PaaS- The second tier is Platform-as-a-Service, shortened as PaaS. It has the required application development tools and the underlying infrastructure.
- SaaS- The third layer, Software-as-a-Service, grants users access to cloud services.
- Business Processing Outsourcing- This is the most unique and final layer of the Google Cloud Platform, given that it is a non-technical solution. Its main aim is to outsource business operations. A user, therefore, contracts a third party to manage the end-user requirements.
The above four tiers are the different levels of GCP worth knowing.
8. What Do You Know About The Google Cloud Application Engine
One of the services and offerings of the Google Cloud Platform is the GCP Engine, a feature that supports the instantaneous running of codes owing to the serverless architecture of GCP. As website traffic increases, the app engine furnishes users with the required built-in services and application programming interfaces (APIs). It attracts no additional costs since GCP only charges users for the resources. This PaaS platform also allows users/ developers to develop Scalable applications premised on Google’s data centres. It is compatible with several integrated development environments and plugins, such as IntelliJ, Maven, Eclipse, and Git.
9. Is There Any Connection Between The Google App Engine And The Google Computer Engine?
Yes. The Google App Engine and the Google Compute Engine are related. In fact, they need each other for the proper functioning of the Google Cloud Platform. The Google Compute Engine provides computing services, while the Google Application Engine is a Platform-as-a-Service. The application engine operates several applications, including online, back-ends, and bespoke business software. On the other hand, the computer engine greatly influences the underlying infrastructure. It can build independent storage systems and supply specialized business logic.
10. It Is Said That GCP Offers Serverless Computing. Explain What That Is
Serverless computing is one of the most recent computing services. In this type of computing, the service provider handles all the administrative tasks, such as maintaining the cloud’s server and ensuring dynamic resource allocation to different customers. The user is therefore protected from any distractions, giving them time to go about their tasks. All they have to do is foot the resource utilization costs billed by the service provider. Benefits associated with serverless computing include better scalability, a simplified deployment procedure, and regular maintenance.
11. Why Would You Advise Someone To Use GCP?
The benefits of Google Cloud Platform Usage should convince end-users and developers to use it. They include:
- It comes with a Cloud SQL functionality that runs a database storage availability check every half a second to determine if additional storage is needed.
- It comes with preemptive virtual machines capable of significantly reducing batch processing and fault-tolerant expenses.
- It allows real-time alteration of the persistent disc size without any service disruption by simply decreasing or increasing the amount of space.
- It offers a simple means of fine-tuning a virtual machine’s RAM, storage capacities, and CPU without additional resources or hardware.
- It offers access to the Google Cloud Shell with tools such as Gradle, Docker, pip, nvm, and Make for infrastructure management. Users also get additional ready-to-use and already-installed software
12. Mention And Explain The Different Types Of Cloud Computing Services
There are four main types of cloud computing services, namely:
- Private Cloud- A private cloud can only be accessed by the organization’s owners, managers, and employees. Examples of private clouds are internal and corporate clouds.
- Public Cloud- As the name suggests, anyone can access the services or resources hosted in a public cloud. Components such as storage, central processing unit, and operating system can also be equally accessed.
- Hybrid Cloud- A hybrid cloud has both private and public cloud services. Therefore, it has service, storage, and processing infrastructure businesses use to achieve more management flexibility and scalability.
- Community Cloud- This is the last type of cloud. It requires several companies to share similar online storage space.
13. What Do You Think Are The Most Outstanding Features Of The Google Cloud Platform?
The Google Cloud Platform has four main features, i.e.,
- It empowers end-users/ developers to create machine types and configure storage, RAM, and CPU devices.
- It doesn’t need end-users/developers to undertake maintenance or downtime when resizing a disc.
- It comes with several pre-installed tools for different operations management.
- It offers two select web hosting options, i.e., platform-as-a-service (offered by the app engine0 and infrastructure-as-a-service.
14. Does Cloud Computing Save Money? If Yes, How?
Cloud computing ensures that you get everything you pay for by eliminating go-betweens. You don’t need several professionals or individuals to host your web services or store data, saving you from additional, unnecessary costs. Users only pay for the resources used since they are communally pooled. This may explain why companies are fast turning to cloud computing.
15. Define Bigquery. Do You Think It Is Important?
BigQuery is one of the most critical services on the Google Cloud Platform. It allows significant companies and organizations to store data and resources. Given its high scalability and reasonable pricing, it is one of the most popular GCP services. It uses machine learning to analyze memorized data and improve the quality of the result. It also works hand in hand with a data analytics engine for successful real-time data evaluation and rapid development of analytic reports. Lastly, BigQuery can access and collaborate with data sources such as spreadsheets, object storage, and transaction databases.
16. How Do You Normally Safeguard The Information Stored In The Google Cloud Platform?
GCP is a relatively secure cloud platform owing to several detective and preventive safeguards, such as virtual private clouds, popularly known as VPC, Identity and Access Management (IAM), and Firewall Rules. Security is also enforced by several best practices that customers are advised to know. All the aforementioned features make all Google Cloud services secure.
17. How Is Google Cloud Platform Billed? Are There Many Payment Options?
Google Cloud Platform users are generally billed based on the amount of time spent using the platform, which takes into account the storage space, compute instances, and network traffic consumed. In short, the Google Cloud Platform bills customers based on the number of resources consumed. The lesser time/resources spent on the platform, the lower the cost, and vice versa. Virtual machines running on the platform are billed per second, the minimum charge being a minute. The storage price is further determined by the amount of data on the account. Therefore, the amount of money payable is
18. What’s The Difference Between A Project Number And Identifier?
Even though the project ID and number are different, they can be highly confusing. They are usually used to create a uniform identifier for a given project. The project identifier is not usually needed for many services (it is mandatory for Google Compute Engine), while the project number is required. The project identifier appears in logs and metrics and is generally used as a storage key. It is produced when a new project is formed. On the other hand, the user produces the project number, given its user-settable nature.
19. Mention Some Of The Best Practices For Cloud Security
Every Google Cloud Platform user should know the different cloud security best practices for proper data storage and productivity tools access, among many other uses. They include removing malware from cloud services, adjusting cloud access policies with the emergence of new services, understanding the current state, assessing risk, and strategically applying for cloud services protection depending on risk level. These practices can help prevent unauthorized data access, a significant problem worth avoiding.
20. Mention The Libraries And Tools Available For Google Cloud Platform Cloud Storage
The most important tools for Google Cloud Platform cloud storage are XML and JSON application programming interfaces. However, Google also offers the following tools for interfacing purposes:
- Cloud Storage Client Libraries- This tool allows data storage on Google’s infrastructure for users who need high performance, availability, and reliability. It also supports direct download, delivering large data items to consumers.
- Gustil Command-line Tool- This is a Python program that permits the usage of the command line for cloud storage access. It also supports several object and bucket management operations, such as bucket creation and deletion and uploads, downloads, and deletion of objects.
- Google Cloud Platform Console- The GCP console consists of several computing services running on an infrastructure similar to end-user products such as Google Drive, YouTube, and Google Search. It has several modular cloud services, such as machine learning, data analytics, data storage, and computing.
21. Define A Bucket In Google Cloud Storage
Buckets are the primary containers used to store data in the Google Cloud. After data is arranged, buckets are used to provide control. Their names must be globally unique, and they have to be stored in geographical locations. Items without specified storage classes are given default storage classes before they are added to the bucket. It’s also important to note that the number of buckets that can be added or removed is unlimited.
22. What Do You Understand By Google Cloud SDK?
The Google Cloud SDK consists of several command-line utilities that developers and end users use to develop the Google Cloud. They allow direct access to resources such as the computing engine, cloud storage, and large queries from the command line. It is also made up of client and application programming interface libraries. Overall, the tools and framework in the Google Cloud SDK play several functions, such as Virtual Machine instances interaction, computer engine network management, firewalls, and storage.
23. Define VPC And Google Cloud API
VPC, fully known as Virtual Private Control, is a virtual network connecting to compute Engine VM instances, Google Kubernetes, and various other services. It allows users or developers to exercise extensive control on the global or regional connection of workloads, making internet-free usage of VPCs in several regions possible. On the other hand, Google Cloud Application Interfaces are programmatic interfaces used with server applications and libraries to offer a power boost. They can be accessed via different programming languages, Google Cloud Platform Console, and Google SDK command-line tools.
24. Define Object Versioning And Serverless Computing
Object versioning is a functionality used to recover overwritten or erased objects. It ensures the security of replaced or removed objects even though users incur additional storage costs. Enabling GCP object versioning creates a non-common version of the deleted or overwritten object. It’s also important to note that an item’s version is identified using properties and meta-generation.
Serverless computing offers back-end services based on usage, saving end-users from server management and administration. Users are therefore charged based on consumption, unlike in other computing types where charges are based on the number of servers and bandwidth. The service provider also offers the infrastructure, saving the end user or developer from additional costs.
25. What Don’t You Like About Google Cloud Platform?
Some of the things I don’t like about GCP are:
- Cost- Google Cloud Platform is expensive, given that cloud hosting is not cheap.
- Customer Support- Google’s customer support is not satisfactory regarding GCP. There is also an additional support fee.
- The application engine can only use PHP, Google, Python, and Java.
- The documentation is not complete in certain places.
- It has fewer global data centres than other cloud platforms, i.e., Asia, Europe, and the USA.
- GCP products like Spanner, Datastore, and BigQuery have fewer customization options.
Conclusion
These 25 suggestions are some of the most common questions in Google Cloud Platform interviews. Take some time to come up with excellent responses before your interview. We wish you all the best.
