Overview

GCP: Operations, Security, and Case Studies course is the third course of Exam Prep: Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect Specialization. This course provides a comprehensive exploration of Google Cloud's observability, automation, and security services. Beginning with Google Cloud’s Operations Suite, the course focuses on critical services such as Monitoring, Logging, and Cloud Scheduler, offering both theoretical understanding and practical demonstrations for real-world observability use cases. Learners will gain proficiency in Cloud IAM, Cloud Key Management Service (KMS), Identity-Aware Proxy, and Cloud Data Loss Prevention (DLP), essential tools for managing access control and securing sensitive data. The course extends into infrastructure as code with Cloud Deployment Manager, and introduces event-driven architecture using Cloud Pub/Sub, including its integration with Cloud Functions. This course is ideal for: - Cloud engineers and DevOps professionals moving into architecture roles. - System administrators and solution architects aiming to validate their GCP skills. - IT professionals seeking to grow into high-impact cloud design and governance roles. - Anyone who wants to master how to design scalable, secure, and resilient solutions on Google Cloud. By the end of the course, you will be able to: - Implement secure identity and access controls using Cloud IAM, Context-Aware Access, and Cloud KMS. - Design and deploy scalable cloud services like Cloud Deployment Manager, Pub/Sub, and Cloud Functions. - Analyze and apply real-world architecture scenarios and explore case studies such as Mountkirk Games, TerramEarth, and Helicopter Racing League.

Syllabus

Operations in Google Cloud

Welcome to Week 1. This week, we’ll focus on operations, observability, and deployment management within the Google Cloud environment. You’ll start with an overview of Google Cloud’s Operations Suite, gaining insights into how it supports monitoring, logging, and overall system visibility. We’ll dive into Cloud Monitoring and Cloud Logging, learning how to collect, visualize, and analyze operational data to keep applications reliable and performant. You’ll also explore Cloud Scheduler, a fully managed cron job service, through both conceptual overviews and a practical demo, showcasing how to automate tasks like report generation and backups. Finally, we’ll introduce Cloud Deployment Manager, Google Cloud’s infrastructure-as-code tool, which helps automate the provisioning of resources using configuration templates. By the end of this module, you’ll be equipped to build observability into your cloud solutions and manage cloud infrastructure through repeatable, automated processes.

Security in Google Cloud

Welcome to Week 2. This week, we’ll focus on securing and managing access to your Google Cloud resources using Cloud IAM (Identity and Access Management). You’ll learn how IAM helps define who can take what action on which resources, giving you fine-grained control over permissions. You’ll explore context-aware access using Identity-Aware Proxy (IAP) to enable conditional access based on device, location, and identity context. We’ll also introduce Cloud Key Management Service (KMS) and Cloud Data Loss Prevention (DLP), showing how they help protect sensitive data through encryption and anonymization. Finally, you’ll explore event-driven architectures using Cloud Pub/Sub, including a demonstration on creating a Pub/Sub topic that triggers a Cloud Function. By the end of this module, you’ll be able to implement secure access controls, manage sensitive data, and build scalable messaging-based workflows in Google Cloud.

Case Studies for GCP PCA

Welcome to Week 3. This week, we’ll begin with the Helicopter Racing League, exploring how low-latency streaming, real-time analytics, and scalability are achieved using GCP's networking and compute services. You’ll understand how modern media platforms are architected to deliver high-performance experiences globally. Next, we’ll dive into Mountkirk Games, a mobile gaming company looking to scale globally while ensuring minimal downtime and seamless user experiences. This case will help you understand how GCP services like App Engine, Cloud Spanner, and CI/CD pipelines support rapid, reliable game deployment across regions. Finally, we’ll examine TerramEarth, a heavy equipment manufacturing company integrating IoT telemetry with cloud analytics. This scenario demonstrates how Google Cloud supports predictive maintenance, big data processing, and machine learning at scale through services like Cloud Pub/Sub, Cloud Dataflow, and BigQuery. By the end of this module, you’ll be able to apply architectural decision-making skills to real-world scenarios, evaluate trade-offs, and align GCP services with business goals across multiple industries.