Stage 2 of 10 · 8 lessons · ~2 weeks
Cloud concepts and billing
Learn how Google Cloud is organised and paid for: service models, shared responsibility, regions and zones, projects and folders, the Free Trial and Free Tier, pricing models and the budget you set before anything else.
Start: IaaS, PaaS and SaaSLessons· one lesson for each topic, in this order
- 1IaaS, PaaS and SaaSLesson
- 2The shared responsibility modelLesson
- 3Regions and availability zonesLesson
- 4Projects, folders and the organisationLesson
- 5The Google Cloud Free Trial and Free TierLesson
- 6Pricing models and your first budgetLesson
- 7The same service under three namesLesson
- 8Well-Architected principlesOptionalLesson
Do this
- Read the official free offer page for your cloud and note what is free and for how long.
- Create your account and turn on MFA for the owner or root login immediately.
- Create a budget with email alerts at small thresholds.
- Choose one region near you and use it for everything in this roadmap.
- Write your own service map for VMs, storage, databases, networks and identity.
- Skim the Well-Architected pillars and note one question from each.
Start with
- PlatformFreeGoogle Skills (formerly Google Cloud Skills Boost)
Google
Free courses and labs: start with the Cloud Digital Leader learning path for concepts
Keep handy
Also worth your time
Google's version of the model, and what it adds with secure defaults
- Learn to CloudGo deeper
A free, open curriculum for the whole path to a cloud role, to see where this stage fits
Before moving on: Your own account on your cloud with a budget and alerts set, your free offer and its end date written down, and a one-page service map of the equivalents you expect to use.
Set the budget alert before you create a single resource. Nearly every horror story about a student cloud bill starts with "I forgot it was running". Then pick one region near you and stick to it, so everything you create is in one place when you clean up.