Google Compute Engine (GCE) Flashcards
What is the definition of “Compute”?
Computing is any activity that uses computers to manage, process, and communicate information.
What are the available names/types of Compute Engine VM Instances?
- E2 - Best TCO - Cost-Optimized
- N2 & N2d - Most Flexible, Leading perf/$ - General Purpose VMs
- C2 - Compute-Optimized - Highest performance CPUs
- M2 - Memory-Optimized - Most memory on Compute Engine
- A2 - Accelerator-Optimized - Highest performance GPUs
What is Sole Tenant node (VMs)?
VM(s) dedicated to one customer (no sharing with other customers) for 10% premium. Useful to physically separate VMs from other projects (security/compliance) or to group VMs together on same host hardware. Also for ‘Bring Your Own License (BYOL) scenarios that require per-core or per-processor licenses.
What is a Custom Machine Type?
Can configure VM with 1 - 96 vCPUS (in increments of 2) and custom RAM amounts.
What is preemptible VM?
Super low-cost (60% -91% discount), short-term instances that last 24 hours or less. Usable for jobs that are fault-tolerant (batch jobs, video/image processing, etc…) Note: new Spot VMs are similar with more options.
How create a VM through console?
Hamburger menu -> Compute Engine -> (enable API) -> Create Instance
How create a VM via SDK/Cloud Shell/CLI
gcloud compute instances create –image image-1 –tags test –zone “” –machine-type f1-micro
What are VM disk options?
Every Compute Engine VM instance is attached to at least one disk as a boot disk and for persistent storage. A persistent disk can be a standard (HDD) or a solid-state (SSD) drive. You can also attach an ephemeral local SSD for high-performance I/O.
Compute Engine offers always-encrypted local solid-state drive (SSD) block storage for virtual machine (VM) instances. Each local SSD is 375 GB in size, but you can attach a maximum of 24 local SSD partitions for 9 TB per instance.
Unlike Persistent Disks, Local SSDs are physically attached to the server that hosts your VM instance. This tight coupling offers superior performance, very high input/output operations per second (IOPS), and very low latency compared to persistent disks.
Local SSDs are suitable only for temporary storage such as caches, processing space, or low value data. To store data that is not temporary or ephemeral in nature, use one of our durable storage options.
How create preemptible VM in console?
Begin to create VM instance as normal. Then:
Expand the Networking, disks, security, management, sole tenancy section, and do the following:
- Expand “Networking, Disks, Security….”
- Expand the Management section.
- For Availability policy, set the Preemptibility option to On. This setting disables automatic restart for the VM, and sets the host maintenance action to Terminate.
How create preemptible VM via Cloud shell/CLI?
gcloud compute instances create –preemptible …..
What is Active Assist?
Active Assist is a portfolio of tools that use data, intelligence, and machine learning to reduce cloud complexity and administrative toil, making it easy to optimize your cloud’s security, performance, and cost.
Active assist can make automatic recommendations in Compute engine to reduce/optimize cloud spend.
What are Compute Quotas?
IAM & Admin - Quotas. Compute Engine enforces quotas on resource usage for various reasons. There are Quotas overall, per per region and based on billing reputation. For example, quotas help to protect the community of Google Cloud users by preventing unforeseen spikes in usage.
In what scenario should we use unmanaged instance groups?
1) Instances in the group need different configurations.
2) We need to autoscale instances based on CPU usage.
3) Instances in the group need to have the same configurations.
4) We are building a stateless app.
Answer: 1
1) Instances in the group need different configurations.
- Managed instance groups (MIGs) let you operate apps on multiple identical VMs. You can make your workloads scalable and highly available by taking advantage of automated MIG services, including: autoscaling, autohealing, regional (multiple zone) deployment, and automatic updating.
- Unmanaged instance groups let you load balance across a fleet of VMs that you manage yourself.
Which of the following is true regarding managed instance groups?
1) Additional instances are removed 10 minutes after they are no longer required.
2) They are not suitable for batch processing workloads.
3) Additional instances are removed 15 minutes after they are no longer required.
4) They offer high availability, autoscaling, and automatic updates.
5) They are not suitable for high-throughput applications
Answer: 1 & 4
1) Additional instances are removed 10 minutes after they are no longer required.
4) They offer high availability, autoscaling, and automatic updates.
- Managed instance groups (MIGs) let you operate apps on multiple identical VMs. You can make your workloads scalable and highly available by taking advantage of automated MIG services, including: autoscaling, autohealing, regional (multiple zone) deployment, and automatic updating.
Your company wants to deploy several microservices to help their system handle elastic loads. Each microservice uses a different version of software libraries. You want to enable their developers to keep their development environment in sync with the various production services. Which technology should you choose?
1) RPM/DEB
2) Containers
3) Chef/Puppet
4) Virtual machines
Answer: 2 - Containers
