On Cloud 9
What is the STARLF method?
Situation Task Action Results Learnings Follow-Up Questions
If you are asked to explain GCP to someone that does not know a lot about the cloud? What are the first initial foundational questions that we must understand?
The first foundational question that I want to understand is have I ever spoken to this person or no? I really need to understand the audience. So one of the first things I would want to know is are they sitting in a technical or a non technical role? I really want to know from an organizational standpoint, where are they at in their cloud journey? Are they currently utilizing GCP, Azure, or AWS or are they completely on-prem? Are they in a regulated or non-regulated environment? Can you clarify or answer any of those questions for me?
What is Cloud Run for Anthos?
a Google-managed and supported Knative developer platform that lets you leverage Kubernetes and serverless together Anthos is a modern application management platofrm used for managing hybrid architectures that span from Google Cloud to other AWS or on-premise datacenter running VMWare. Anthos is a single control plane to mange Kubernetes compute in hybrid scenarios Has a managed service mesh
What is Google Kubernetes Engine?
an open-source system to deploy, scale, and manage containerized applications anywhere.
If you are asked How would you convince a GCP customer to expand their cloud services? For the purposes of solving, how do you start?
focus on two higher level generic PM concepts: historical data and goals/objectives
Working with a Technical Account Manager (TAM), you can perform a high-level assessment of your organization's cloud maturity, which will tell you
how to prioritize your training and change management programs, your partner relationships, your cloud operating model, and your secure account configuration.
Folders are commonly used to
isolate projects for different departments or for different environments.
What is business platform modernization?
its about enabling integration between systems and granting users the correct access priveleges in an organization
If you are asked How would you convince a GCP customer to expand their cloud services? For the purposes of solving, what educated assumptions can you make?
let's assume this is an existing customer has been utilizing GCP for at least a year larger customer(as many of Google's customers are) that needs to expand services now has a good budget to do so. they have the right counterparts from the business and technical side
What qualities do you need to show them you have?
problem solving skills, leadership, an ability to navigate ambiguity being data-driven, adaptability/flexibility and teamwork.
What are applications?
programs and software that enable people to perform various digital tasks
What are Application Processing Interfaces/APIs?
technical tools that enable integration between applications
What is infrastructure modernization?
term used to describe the process of replacing legacy hardware systems and consolidating them in the cloud
Abandoning old technology for a new one is commonly referred to as
the "burning platform" effect.
What are user expectations when it comes to customization?
they expect that a product or service seamlessly adapts to their individual needs and preferences.
What is Google's mission statement?
to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful
What are user expectations when it comes to engagement?
users are looking for sources of valued content. They expect up to date reliable content from multiple fields of expertise
What are user expectations when it comes to access?
users expect faster and easier services with always-on capabilities that can be accessed anywhere.
What is Moore's Law?
•Every year computation of power doubles, and this doubling leads to exponential growth
You are asked to open a pastry shop. What clarifying questions will you ask first?
Have I ever opened a pastry shop before? Does it have to be a physical shop or can it be an online shop or food truck? If its a physical shop, does it have to be a standalone entity? Is this a franchise? Who are my stakeholders? -Do i have partners? -Do I have investors? -Do I have a pastry chef ? Am I working within a specific timeline or budget?
In regards to computing and set up, What do you need to know about a customer in order to advise them on their Cloud services?
I need to know the specifics of their current set up. Does it make sense for the customer or Google to handle most of the resources? Highlight the benefits of working in a serverless environment And leveraging container technologies.
If you are asked How would you convince a GCP customer to expand their cloud services? What do you need to know in order to understand how you can convince them to expand?
I want to learn more about their documented goals and objectives, And speak with any current or previous stakeholders to see how we have worked with them now and in the past I want to understand how I can utilize data from other companies of similar size, industry, etc. i would want to meet with them ideally face to face, but if not, via video to determine more about their goals/objectives Are they completely new to cloud services or have they used cloud before such as AWS or Azure?
What is my goal as a Google Cloud resident?
I will support customers in all aspects of Google Cloud adoption, helping them accelerate their journey to our platforms and optimize their business and technical operations.
If you are asked to explain GCP to someone that does not know a lot about the cloud? To explain ease of use, how would you begin your explanation? Go through the conversation.
I'm going to start to explain the cloud to them by focusing on a specific technology that I think would interest them. So in this case, lets talk about big query. From an ease of use perspective, there are a few things that they will care about: Its scalable, flexible and cost effective. We will always get back to that cost piece . Why would they want to know this if they don't really know about the cloud? Its going to make their business as a retail company more predictable, it's going to help them share critical analytics across the organization and its gonna have that full machine learning and automation capability. So whats the visual here? Maybe its an inventory issue that they need help with. Maybe we want to identify someone who buys a certain kind of t-shirt. Really high level. This is just one type of technology on the GCP platform that can help our audience understand a little bit more about how easy it is to use and why it's important. Any of those areas like machine learning that you would like me to focus on a bit more? Should I focus on predictability? Let me just pause here and see which direction you would like to go
What are you ready to do?
I'm ready to tackle some of technology's greatest challenges and make an impact on millions, if not billions, of users.
What are the 3 focus areas for modernization?
Infrastructure, Business platforms, and applications
What are the four themes in the Google Cloud Adoption Framework?
Learn: The quality and scale of the learning programs you have in place to upskill your technical teams, and your ability to augment your IT staff with experienced partners. Who is engaged? How widespread is that engagement? How concerted is the effort? How effective are the results? Lead: The extent to which IT teams are supported by a mandate from leadership to migrate to cloud, and the degree to which the teams themselves are cross-functional, collaborative, and self-motivated. How are the teams structured? Have they got executive sponsorship? How are cloud projects budgeted, governed, assessed? Scale: The extent to which you use cloud-native services that reduce operational overhead and automate manual processes and policies. How are cloud-based services provisioned? How is capacity for workloads allocated? How are application updates managed? Secure: The capability to protect your services from unauthorized and inappropriate access with a multilayered, identity-centric security model. Dependent also on the advanced maturity of the other three themes. What controls are in place? What technologies used? What strategies govern the whole?
What is a managed serverless platofrm?
Serverless is a type of application that eliminates all infrastructure management, simplifying the developer experience.
What is the GCP framework?
C - S - D - N - B - M Computing and Hosting Storage Databases Networking Big Data Machine Learning
What are some common ways organization use containers?
"Lift and shift" existing applications into modern cloud architectures - Some organizations use containers to migrate existing applications into more modern environments. While this practice delivers some of the basic benefits of operating system virtualization, it does not offer the full benefits of a modular, container-based application architecture. Refactor existing applications for containers -Although refactoring is much more intensive than lift-and-shift migration, it enables the full benefits of a container environment. Develop new container-native - like refactoring, this approach unlocks the full benefits of containers. Provide better support for microservices architectures - Distributed applications and microservices can be more easily isolated, deployed, and scaled using individual container building blocks. Provide DevOps support for continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) - Container technology supports streamlined build, test, and deployment from the same container images. Provide easier deployment of repetitive jobs and tasks - Containers are being deployed to support one or more similar processes, which often run in the background, such as ETL functions or batch jobs.
What is App Engine?
(Platform as A Service) Compute GCP Service - Build and deploy apps on a fully managed, highly scalable platform without having to manage the underlying infrastructure.
How do you go about introducing assumptions into the conversation?
Make sure to clarify and bring your interviewer into the conversation to give us some data points to work with. Then make assumptions based off of the data points that are given.
What are container orchestration platforms?
Container orchestration is the automation of much of the operational effort required to run containerized workloads and services. This includes a wide range of things software teams need to manage a container's lifecycle, including provisioning, deployment, scaling (up and down), networking, load balancing and more.
What are the 5 things that GCAP is composed of?
4 Themes - Learn, Lead, Scale, Secure 3 Maturity Phases - Tactical, Strategic and Transformational Cloud Maturity Scale - Matrix of Themes and Phases Epics -Workstreams to scope and structure cloud adoption Programs - Logical Grouping of Epics
What is a container ?
A Container is a lightweight, standalone package that encapsulates a complete runtime environment including an application and its dependencies (libraries, binaries, and any additional configuration files), increasing an application's portability, scalability, security, and agility.
What is a data map?
A data map is a chart of all of the data used in end-to-end business processes.
What are the 4 focus areas of user expectations that help determine how to innovate?
Access, Engagement, Customization, and Communication
If you are asked How would you convince a GCP customer to expand their cloud services? What are some clarifying questions you would need to know first?
Are they a new or existing GCP customer? Have I interacted with them before? Have I shared any information with them? Are they utilizing a free trial of GCP? Is this a proactive or reactive response? Do I have historical data to reference? How long have they been a GCP customer? When was the last time they added on service if at all? When was the last time I spoke with them? What are their desired outcome goals? (Short term and long term) Are they a small, medium, or large GCP customer? What is their industry? Are they a growing, stable, or declining business? What is their primary reason for utilizing our services? How are they utilizing their current Cloud Services? Are they fully supported by GCP or do they have a hybrid model? Is this company going through a digital transformation?
In regards to Cloud, what is computing?
Copmuting, at its most basic, is any task that requires a calculation. In the context of Cloud, computing is ability to process information. to store, compute, compare, and analyze it.
Your organization wants to let your team members access Google Cloud resources as desired, but you want to avoid unexpected costs. You also want to track the amount of your total expenditures against estimates. What should you do?
Set a budget amount and a budget alert threshold to track your Google Cloud spend.
If you are asked to explain GCP to someone that does not know a lot about the cloud? What are some educated assumptions that you can make?
Based on the fact that I am working with no data, lets talk through a few specific items. So I want to assume that this person is really new to me and new to the cloud journey because its a very common market for retail companies to be adopting the cloud massively right now, lets focus on more of a retail client.
If you are asked How would you convince a GCP customer to expand their cloud services? After rolling out your plan, what follow up questions will you ask the interviewer?
Can I spend more time talking about computing and hosting, storage, or databases? Can I tell you a little more about how I would explore networking, big data, and machine learning ? or Can I dig more into the solution and what that might look like?
Why is data important?
Capturing, leveraging, and managing data is essential to redefining the customer experience and creating new value in almost every industry.
What is the CSTAR method?
Clarify: You are welcome to ask follow up questions if you do not understand the question or need additional information. Situation: Describe the situation that you were in or the task that you needed to accomplish. You must describe a specific event or situation, not a generalized description of what you have done in the past. Be sure to give enough detail for the interviewer to understand. This can be from a previous job, a volunteer experience, or relevant event. Task: What goal were you working toward? Outline the quantitative or qualitative outcomes you had to achieve. Action: Describe the actions you took to address the situation. What specific steps did you take and what was your particular contribution? Results: Describe the outcome of your actions. How did the project or situation end? What did you accomplish?
What is Sole Tenant Nodes?
Cloud Compute Service - Dedicated Virtual Machines - Help meet compliance, licensing, and management needs by keeping your instances physically separated with dedicated hardware.
Your organization wants to gain insight from customers' previous purchases. You want to analyze your purchase records while protecting personally identifiable information (PII). Which product or feature should you choose?
Cloud Data Loss Prevention API
What are some powerful application diagnotics associated with App Engine?
Cloud Monitoring and Cloud Logging to monitor the health and performance Cloud debugger and error reporting to diagnose and fix bugs quickly. Application versioning - easily create development, test, staging and production environments. Traffic splitting - Route incoming requests to different app versions, A/B test, and do incremental feature rollouts. Application security - defining access rules with App Engine firewall leverage manages SSL/TLS certificates by default
Your organization is developing a new application. This application responds to events created by already running applications. The business goal for the new application is to scale to handle spikes in the flow of incoming events while minimizing administrative work for the team. Which Google Cloud product or feature should you choose?
Cloud Run
Your organization has a global application running on Compute Engine. Your application contains a certain file that must be shared between multiple virtual-machine instances and zones. Which service or feature should you choose?
Cloud Storage
How can cloud technology help a business?
Cloud technology can map, , understand, and predict human behavior, human biology, global industrial systems, and every other complex and dynamic environment. Cloud tech helps us collaborate, perceive, categorize, predict, and recommend in every industry in the world.
What is Cloud GPUs?
Compute GCP Service - Add GPUs to your workloads for machine learning, scientific computing, and 3D visualizations.
What is Google Cloud VMWare Engine?
Compute GCP Service - Migrate and run your VMWare workloads natively on Google Cloud.
What is Migrate for Compute Engine?
Compute GCP Service - Migrate servers and VMs from on-premises or another cloud to Compute Engine (Lift and Shift) quickly clone and test migrated VM test clones No down time
What is Bare Metal Solution?
Compute GCP Service - Providing hardware to run specialized workloads with low latency on Google Cloud.
What is Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)?
Compute GCP Service - Reliably, efficiently, and securely deploy and scale containerized applications on Kubernetes.
What is Compute Engine?
Compute GCP Service - Virtual Machines - Create and deploy scalable high performance VMs.
Your organization offers a service to retail businesses: you give recommendations to their customers of other products they might want to buy, based on their past behavior. You use machine learning tools to provide this service, now hosted in an on-premises server, but this solution is not satisfactory. You want reliable scalability, managed services, and pay-per-use pricing. What should your organization do?
Migrate your services to a public cloud.
What are Google Cloud products engineered for?
Security, Reliability, and Scalability, running the full stack from infrastructure to application to devices and hardware.
What are some characteristics of the Flexible App Engine Environment?
Flexible are fully managed containers starts in minutes, runs with Docker Containers on Compute engine (VMs), designed for predictable and consistent traffic, supports generally any language version or run custom time, must have at least once instance running, pricing based on vCPUs, Memory and Disks, can SSH to debug , can have background processes
Which three business principles does Google recommend to ensure transformational outcomes?
Focus on the user, think 10X, launch and iterate
What are some benefits of containers?
Less overhead - Containers require less system resources than traditional or hardware virtual machine environments because they don't include operating system images. Increased portability - Applications running in containers can be deployed easily to multiple different operating systems and hardware platforms. More consistent operation - DevOps teams know applications in containers will run the same, regardless of where they are deployed. Greater efficiency - Containers allow applications to be more rapidly deployed, patched, or scaled. Better application development - Containers support agile and DevOps efforts to accelerate development, test, and production cycles.
What is Cloud Functions?
Function as a service - Create serverless, single purpose functions that respond to events.
You are asked to open a pastry shop. What framework do you use to drive the discussion?
Goals and objectives Historical Data Needs/Market Assesment Resources Risk Stakeholders Logistics Marketing Success Measurements.
What is Cloud Build used for?
Google Cloud Container product - Continuously build, test, and deploy containers using the Google Cloud infrastructure
What can Google Kubernetes Engine do?
Google Cloud Container product - Reliably, efficiently, and securely deploy and scale containerized applications on Kubernetes.
What is Artifact Registry used for?
Google Cloud Container product - Store, manage, and secure container images and language packages.
What does digital transformation mean?
DT is about taking advantage of established global scale IT infrastructures and leveraging vast compute power that makes it possible for developers to build revolutionary new applications. Its about a foundational change in the way an organization operates and optimizes internal resources to deliver more value to their customers
What do shielded VMs do?
Deloy hardened virtual machines on Google Cloud.
What do preemptible VMs do?
Deploy affordable, short lived compute instances suitable for batch jobs and fault tolerant workloads.
If you are asked to explain GCP to someone that does not know a lot about the cloud? What are the 3 general topics to discuss? What are other things to discuss?
Ease of use, cost, and security reliability, scalability, automation
What are 4 benefits/features of GCP Cloud Run?
Easy deployment of microservices. A containerized microservice can be deployed with a single command without requiring any additional service-specific configuration. Simple and unified developer experience. Each microservice is implemented as a Docker image, Cloud Run's unit of deployment. Scalable serverless execution. A microservice deployed into managed Cloud Run scales automatically based on the number of incoming requests, without having to configure or manage a full-fledged Kubernetes cluster. Managed Cloud Run scales to zero if there are no requests, i.e., uses no resources. Support for code written in any language. Cloud Run is based on containers, so you can write code in any language, using any binary and framework.
What is Container Registry used for?
Google Cloud Container product - Store, manage, and secure your Docker container images.
What is Container - Optimized OS used for?
Google Cloud Container product - You can deploy docker containers to any Compute Engine VM by enabling container mode
You are asked to open a pastry shop. What is the cadence for introducing your frameowrk?
Ok sue, based on the data you provided lets talk through some of the critical items that i would be thinking about if i was going to open a pastry shop the first thing i want to know is goals and objectives. I really want to understand historical data/my connection to pastries. id really want to understand the needs and do a market assessment i really want to understand how im resourced of course opening any sort of physical store there is risk involved, I would be thinking about risk. I would need to know who my stakeholders are. Logistics are extremely important, if its an online store or physical store. How am I going to market it? What are my success metrics?
What is Google Cloud's mission statement?
Our mission at Google Cloud is to enable organizations around the world to transform their business using digital technology and to do so by offering the best infrastructure, a digital transformation platform and industry-specific solutions to help you transform your organization as well as to infuse you with our expertise and our culture to help you create that magic.
What is the PM 101 Framework?
PM 101 Framework - GHBTRRSSSG: Goals/Objectives H - Historical Data B - Budget T - Timeline R - Resources (Tools, Stakeholders. SME's) R - Risk - Mitigation, Scoring, Dependencies S - Scope/Scale S - Stakeholders S - Shared Vision
You are asked to open a pastry shop. How do you begin to address the solution?
Solution Framework: NMAR MACL PFPSRA Needs/Market Assessment Research Market Analysis/Competitive Landscape POC/Free Trial Product Alignment/Testing Scalable Reliable Available I'm thinking about my customer, I'm thinking about the product space. Sue, based on the answers you've given me and those high level concepts, lets start by focusing on needs. And so I would be doing some research. id be looking at some market analysis and the competitive landscape. I would want to do a proof of concept , maybe a free trials . set up a weekly farmers market to test some of my products. that would help me understand product alignment and the testing component. I want to make sure that I can scale this so what am I doing to make it scalable? What am I doing to make sure that the product that I'm delivering is reliable and availability as well and that may go back to logistical items like hours but am I making sure that I have the products that my customers want and making sure that those are available and available the most of course.
What are three benefits of serverless computing?
Speed to market Build your apps, deploy them, and run them in production—all within a few seconds. Simple developer experience Free up developers and operators with fully managed infrastructure. Automatic scaling Our serverless environment automatically scales your workloads up or down, even to zero, depending on traffic.
What are some examples of corporate data?
Staffing, Delivery, Sales Performance, Staff structures
What are some characteristics of the Standard App Engine Environment?
Standard is a serverless computer that: starts in seconds, runs in a sandbox, designed for rapid scaling, supports specific language versions but not custom runtime, can scale to zero instances (scale to zero), pricing based on hours, cannot debug with SSH, no background processes,
If you are asked How would you convince a GCP customer to expand their cloud services? What steps do you take when rolling out your plan?
Step 1: Make sure from the beginning that all important stakeholders and decision makers are involved in the planning process. I have to have the right people on that video call, in the room, and in communication. Step 2: I would convince them with data focusing not only on GCP offerings, but specifically how their goals and objectives align with those specific offerings. Step 3: Based off their interests and short and long term goals, I would provide data of how we had helped their competitors achieve similar results ( Here we have to be careful to focus on data that provides as much specificity as possible while also protecting confidentiality. And share relevant testimonials) Step 4: Create a shared vision and plan. So we will document timeline, budgets, resources, risks, overall scope and scale and keep track of milestones. Step 5: Once we had agreed to next steps, we will instantly trigger anything technically that did not require customization. And create a plan for any and all other technical integrations. Align a customer engineering and solutions consultant to be points of contacts for their team. Set weekly meetings for the first quarter followed by bi weekly meetings to follow.
What are the three phases that a company's theme can fall into?
Tactical: Individual workloads are in place, but no coherent plan encompassing all of them with a strategy for building out to the future. The focus is on reducing the cost of discrete systems and on getting to the cloud with minimal disruption. The wins are quick, but there is no provision for scale. Strategic: A broader vision governs individual workloads, which are designed and developed with an eye to future needs and scale. You have begun to embrace change, and the people and processes portion of the equation are now involved. IT teams are both efficient and effective, increasing the value of harnessing the cloud for your business operations. Transformational: With cloud operations functioning smoothly, you've turned your attention to integrating the data and insights garnered from working now in the cloud. Existing data is transparently shared. New data is collected and analyzed. The predictive and prescriptive analytics of machine learning applied. Your people and processes are being transformed, which further supports the technological changes. IT is no longer a cost center, but has become instead a partner to the business.
What is the cloud?
The cloud is a metaphor for a network of datacenters that store and compute information available on the internet
Its important to focus on _________________ not ______________________.
Why you exist, how you operate
What are some examples of user data?
Transactions, Returns, Footfall
What are some of the different data types?
User Data, Corporate Data, Industry Data
What are user expectations when it comes to communication?
Users expect to be able to communicate with service providers through a two way feedback channel. This means that the company also engages in conversation. The same is true for your employees. They expect for their contributions to matter and that their input has a positive impact on the evolution of a product.
In regards to storage, What do you need to know about a customer in order to advise them on their Cloud services?
We already assume that they have the budget, but this is where I would want to highlight Google's competitive cost structures and build out a long-term storage plan so we can make sure that they are being the most cost effective for their needs long term.
What is the natrual progression for one of my answers to a GCA question?
We go from clarifying to frameworks/educated assumptions to solution
If you are asked to explain GCP to someone that does not know a lot about the cloud? To explain ease of use, what do you need to know foundationally?
We want to start by understanding how is that specific company currently utilizing technology.
In regards to databases, What do you need to know about a customer in order to advise them on their Cloud services?
We would need to address their current set up and look at the advantages of: Cloud SQL Cloud Spanner NoSQL options
What are some examples of Industry data?
Wider trends, Purchasing patterns, research papers
