GCP Foundational - Master Study Guide

Google Cloud Digital Leader

Master GCP.

The definitive interactive guide for the Cloud Digital Leader exam. Explore the power of Google Cloud.

GCP Foundations

🌳

Resource Hierarchy

Organization, Folders, Projects, and Resources structure.

☁️

Cloud Concepts

Scalability, Availability, and Global Infrastructure.

🤝

Shared Responsibility

Division of security and operational duties.

Core Infrastructure

🚀

Compute & Services

Compute Engine, GKE, App Engine, and Cloud Run.

📦

Data & Storage

Cloud Storage, BigQuery, Cloud SQL, and Spanner.

🌐

Network & Security

VPC, Load Balancing, Cloud Armor, and IAM.

Operations & Governance

⚙️

Operations & Billing

Cloud Monitoring, Billing Accounts, and Cost Optimization.

GCP Resource Hierarchy

How Google Cloud organizes resources and how policies are inherited top-down.

🏢

Organization &
Folders

The root node of the GCP hierarchy. Policies defined here automatically cascade down to every folder, project, and resource beneath them.

Organization Node

The absolute top level. Represents your company (e.g., example.com). Tied to a Google Workspace or Cloud Identity domain. Centralizes visibility and auditing across all projects.

Folders

Used to group projects. You can map them to your business structure (e.g., "Engineering", "Marketing", or "Production", "Development"). Folders can contain other folders or projects.

📁

Projects &
Resources

The functional levels where work actually gets done. Billing, APIs, and specific resource limits are tracked at the project level.

Projects

The fundamental trust domain. ALL resources must belong to exactly one project. Projects are the basis for enabling APIs, setting up billing, and managing specific permissions.

Resources

The lowest level (e.g., a Compute Engine VM, a Cloud Storage bucket, a BigQuery dataset). They inherit policies from the Project, which inherits from the Folder, which inherits from the Organization.

Shared Responsibility Model

Google Cloud Platform: Shared Security.

👤

Customer
Responsibility IN the Cloud

Content & Data

The customer is responsible for data classification, encryption at the application level, and access control (Cloud IAM).

Service Configuration

Configuring firewall rules, assigning roles, and managing application-level security.

☁️

Google Cloud
Responsibility OF the Cloud

Hardware & Networking

Google manages physical security, hardware lifecycle, and the global high-speed network.

Storage & Encryption

Google provides default encryption at rest and in transit, and manages the underlying storage stack.

Cloud Concepts

Compute & Services

Virtual machines, serverless, and orchestration.

💻

VMs &
Servers

✦ Need full OS control? Use Compute Engine (IaaS) for total flexibility.
✦ Need orchestration at scale? Use GKE or Autopilot for complex microservices.

⚡

Serverless &
Apps

✦ Need raw code or containers? Use App Engine (PaaS) or Cloud Run (Serverless containers).
✦ Event-driven snippets? Use Cloud Functions for lightweight execution.

💻 Compute Options Cheat Sheet

Compute Engine

IaaS. Virtual machines. Total OS control.

Kubernetes Engine (GKE)

Containers. Managed orchestration.

Cloud Run

Serverless containers. Scales to zero.

Cloud Functions

Serverless code snippets. Event-driven.

Data & Storage

Database decision trees and Cloud Storage classes.

Storage Class Decision Guide

Standard

Active data, website content, streaming.
0 days min.

Nearline

Accessed less than once a month.
30 days min.

Coldline

Accessed less than once a quarter.
90 days min.

Network & Security

VPC architecture, load balancing, and identity frameworks.

GCP Load Balancers

Load Balancer	Traffic Type	Scope	Use Case
HTTP(S)	Layer 7	Global	Routing global web traffic based on URL.
TCP Proxy	Layer 4	Global	Non-HTTP traffic spanning multiple regions.
Internal	Layer 4/7	Regional	Balancing traffic between internal app tiers.

Operations & Billing

Monitoring, logging, and cost management tools.

Master GCP.

GCP Foundations

Resource Hierarchy

Cloud Concepts

Shared Responsibility

Core Infrastructure

Compute & Services

Data & Storage

Network & Security

Operations & Governance

Operations & Billing

GCP Resource Hierarchy

Organization &Folders

Organization Node

Folders

Projects &Resources

Projects

Resources

Shared Responsibility Model

CustomerResponsibility IN the Cloud

Content & Data

Service Configuration

Google CloudResponsibility OF the Cloud

Hardware & Networking

Storage & Encryption

Cloud Concepts

Compute & Services

VMs &Servers

Serverless &Apps

💻 Compute Options Cheat Sheet

Data & Storage

Storage Class Decision Guide

Network & Security

GCP Load Balancers

Operations & Billing

Organization &
Folders

Projects &
Resources

Customer
Responsibility IN the Cloud

Google Cloud
Responsibility OF the Cloud

VMs &
Servers

Serverless &
Apps