A computer system that has a network, hardware, storage, and an application programming interface is referred to as a “cloud,” and its name comes from the word “cloud.” The combination of these two factors is what makes cloud computing a universal service that everyone can use.

Computing in the cloud is employed extensively by businesses in order to fulfill the requirements posed by its stakeholders. In any given cloud computing system, the two most important participants are the service provider, who is in charge of providing and managing the cloud services, and the end-user, who makes use of the cloud services for a variety of different reasons.

There are four separate tiers of the Google Cloud Platform, and they are as follows:

1. IaaS is an abbreviation for “Infrastructure as a Service,” which describes the most fundamental component of a cloud computing environment.
2. The “platform as a service” (PaaS) model, which serves as the second tier, is responsible for providing the underlying infrastructure as well as the application development tools.
3. Users get access to the cloud services offered by the provider through the third layer, which is known as “Software as a Service,” or SaaS.
4. Despite the fact that business process outsourcing (BPO) is not a technical solution, it is considered to be the final layer because of its essential role in outsourcing business operations. In the context of cloud computing services, business process outsourcing (BPO) refers to the practice of entering into a contract with a third party in order to manage the requirements of the end user.

The following are the most prominent characteristics:

1. The ability to create your own machine types, complete with arbitrary configurations for the CPU, RAM, and storage devices.
2. When resizing a disc in situ, there is no requirement for maintenance or downtime to be taken.
3. The many different tools that are pre-installed with GCP can be used to manage a wide variety of different operations.
4. There are two different web hosting options available, and you have the option to select either one of them. App Engine gives users the option of using a Platform as a Service, whereas Compute Engine gives users the chance to utilize an Infrastructure as a Service.

• Public Cloud:Everyone is able to make use of a service when it is hosted in the cloud and made available through a public subscription model. Users have the ability to access the various components of this kind of cloud, which include the operating system, central processing unit, memory, and storage.
• Private Cloud:A private cloud is a type of cloud that is accessible solely to a single organization and the individuals working for that company. A similar idea that exists within a company’s own network is referred to as the internal cloud or the corporate cloud.
• Hybrid Cloud:The combination of public and private cloud services is what’s meant to be understood by the term “hybrid cloud.” This form of infrastructure, which includes a combination of processing, storage, and service components, is frequently used by businesses that desire more scalability and management flexibility than what is currently available to them.
• Community Cloud:Multiple companies are able to share the same amount of online storage space when using a community cloud.

“Buckets” are the most straightforward containers that may be used to hold information. Any data that is stored in Cloud Storage must first be organized into a bucket. There is no restriction on the number of buckets that can be added or taken away from the system. Buckets, on the other hand, do not support nesting in the same way that directories and files do.

Both Reserved Instances and On-Demand Instances offer the same computing options and configurations, therefore there is no difference between the two. When renting (reserving) a Reserved Instance for a predetermined amount of time, the user is entitled to a price reduction in comparison to the standard cost of an On Demand instance.

With the help of cloud computing, you won’t require the assistance of a large number of individuals. In a manner analogous to that of carpooling, these make use of a communal pool of resources, for which users pay only for the amount of those resources that they really consume.

The product that Google offers in the category of infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is referred to as Google Compute Engine, whereas the product that Google offers in the category of the platform as a service (PaaS) is referred to as Google App Engine. They complement one another very well and work well together. In contrast to the App Engine, which is in charge of providing power to websites and mobile backends, the Compute Engine can be used to develop one-of-a-kind business logic and can even host an individual data storage system.

The primary objective of utilizing application programming interfaces is, of course, to automate processes within the programming language of your choice. 

Application programming interfaces are what makes it easy to connect to and integrate with any of Google’s many services (APIs). Additionally, it functions as a portal via which users can have access to a range of software services and cloud resources, both internal and external to the organization.

You have the ability to immediately run your code on Google App Engine, which is also referred to as GCP App Engine. This is made possible by the platform’s serverless architecture, which ensures that your app is constantly accessible to users. Google will handle the management of all of your servers and infrastructure for you. GCP App Engine will take care of providing the necessary built-in services and APIs as the traffic to your website increases. You will only be charged for the resources that you actually use, so there is no need to worry about additional costs.

App Engine is a PaaS platform that allows developers to make scalable web applications that operate on Google’s data centres. It is sometimes referred to by its acronym, GAE. It is compatible with a wide range of integrated development environments (IDEs) and IDE plugins, such as Jenkins, Eclipse, Git, IntelliJ, and Maven, so you won’t need to make any changes to the way you do things now.

The virtual machines (VMs) can be moved from on-premises data centres, Azure, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) to Google’s Compute Engine with the use of the cloud software known as Google Cloud Migrate for Compute Engine. This software does not come with any additional charges or fees attached to it.

Through the use of a Virtual Private Cloud, your Google Cloud Platform (GCP) virtual machine (VM) instances, Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) clusters, and other resources will be able to connect with one another (VPC). The Virtual Private Cloud gives users a great deal of wiggle room in terms of regulating regional and global workload connectivity. Without having to rely on the public internet, virtual private networks (VPCs) make it possible for multiple regions to communicate with one another.

The following is a list of the primary characteristics of GCP:

1. Using Google Cloud Platform makes it simple to fine-tune the CPU, RAM, and storage capacities of your virtual machine. The virtual machine (VM) rightsizing advice tool clearly demonstrates in a short amount of time whether or not the machines in your environment are utilizing the appropriate quantity of hardware.
2. You will have access to the Google cloud shell when you utilize GCP. This shell comes pre-loaded with a broad number of helpful tools and makes it possible for you to manage your infrastructure with just a few keystrokes. Docker, Gradle, Make, npm, nvm, and pip, along with a great deal more software, is pre-installed and ready to use.
3. You’ll have the ability to swiftly prototype new kinds of machines with Google Cloud Platform thanks to its fully programmable CPU, RAM, and storage.
4. The preemptible virtual machines that come with this technology can slash expenses by as much as 70 per cent for fault-tolerant and batch processing.
5. The Cloud SQL functionality of GCP does a check on the database’s available storage once every 30 seconds and adds additional if it’s required.
6. It is possible to alter the size of a persistent disc in real-time and without disrupting service in any way, either by decreasing or increasing the amount of space it occupies.

The phrase “virtualization” refers to the usage of the software that transforms your hardware into many virtual machines, whereas the term “cloud computing” refers to the practice of utilizing several computers and servers that work together as a single entity. In the case of virtualization, each user is provided with their very own unique collection of hardware resources; yet, in the cloud, a user’s login information is shared across a number of different machines.

Scalability is something that may be provided to web app developers and large enterprises through Google App Engine, which is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering. Because of this, developers are able to build, deploy, and scale a totally managed platform according to their requirements.

Support is provided for many of today’s most popular programming languages, including Java, PHP, Python, C#,.Net, Go, and Node.js, among others. Because it is malleable, you can use it to develop programmes that are quite robust.

The cloud-based data storage solution offered by Google is known as Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Storage. Access to your data is possible at any time and in any location. This storage solution is dependable, safe, and scalable all at the same time. This service gives you the ability to securely store not just your own data but also the data generated by your apps, as well as the data generated by your customers.

Object versioning makes it possible to restore deleted or overwritten data. This includes entire databases. Object versioning causes an increase in storage costs, but it also safeguards the objects, preventing them from being mistakenly deleted or replaced. 

When object versioning is enabled in a Google Cloud Storage (GCP) bucket, a historical copy of the item is saved anytime it is modified or removed. This happens regardless of whether the item is being kept or deleted. Generation and meta-generation are the qualities that are utilized to figure out which form of an object is being referred to in a certain context. The term “generation” refers to the process of creating material, whereas “metageneration” refers to the process of creating metadata.

Serverless computing is made possible by cloud service providers who maintain a server in the cloud and dynamically allocate resources to customers. Because the provider is responsible for the underlying hardware, the user is free to concentrate on their task without being distracted by concerns about the system’s workings.

The costs that are linked with the users’ utilization of the resource are anticipated to be covered by them. The deployment procedure is simplified for end users as a result, and they no longer need to worry about scalability or maintenance. This falls under the category of “utility computing.”

Load balancing refers to the process of dividing up tasks and resources between all of the cloud’s accessible servers in an equitable manner. This helps in obtaining high performance at reduced costs by carefully managing the requirements of the workload as well as the distribution of the available resources. Scalability and flexibility are utilized so that supply and demand can be more effectively matched.

In addition to this, it is utilized for the purpose of monitoring the health of the cloud service on its own. This functionality is offered by all of the major cloud service providers, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Microsoft Azure, and so on.

BigQuery is a service that can be found on the Google Cloud Platform. This service acts as a storage facility for major companies and organizations. This reasonably priced and highly scalable software analyses data in memory and makes use of machine learning to improve the quality of the results.

You will have the ability to quickly develop analytical reports and perform real-time evaluations of the data with the assistance of a data analytics engine. BigQuery is able to access and work with a wide variety of external data sources, including object storage, transaction databases, and spreadsheets.

Firebase is a message and notification system that is free and ubiquitous (Android, iOS, and the Web). It is also often known as Google Cloud Messaging. That’s a terrific approach to get users engaged once more, and one method to do it is by sending a message or notifying a client app. You have the option of sending a message to a single device, an entire group of devices, or all devices that are subscribed to the service.

Users are able to extend the functionality of Google Cloud-based applications in a variety of ways by utilizing the Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) provided by Google Cloud. Some of these ways include improved storage access and image analytics that are powered by machine learning.

In the cloud, application programming interfaces (APIs) are easily accessible through client libraries and server-side code. The Application Programming Interface (API) for Google Cloud can be accessed through a variety of different programming languages. The utilization of mobile apps is made possible by Firebase SDKs and other third-party clients. Both the command-line tools of the Google SDK and the Web-based user interface of the Google Cloud Platform Console can be used to access the Google Cloud APIs.

The Google Cloud Software Development Kit includes a variety of command-line interface (CLI) utilities. The cloud infrastructure that Google uses depends on this data. With the help of these utilities, we are able to use Google Cloud Platform services such as Big Query, Cloud Storage, and Compute Engine from the command line. It comes with both the API libraries and the client libraries in addition to the API libraries. We are able to browse computer engine networks, storage, and firewalls, as well as manage instances of Virtual Machines thanks to the utilities and libraries that we have at our disposal.

Cloud service and cloud computing as a whole have a multitude of features, especially the ease of access and management of commercial software from anywhere around the globe.

1. Easy centralization of all management related to the software to a central web service
2. The design and development of web applications capable of handling multiple clients from anywhere around the world simultaneously
3. The elimination of software upgrade downloads by centralizing and automating the updating process

First, let us compare Google Cloud with AWS Cloud:

The advantages of using cloud computing are many. Here we will discuss some of the most important advantages of the cloud. You will be able to store and have a backup of the data anytime, it has powerful server capabilities, improves productivity, cost-effectiveness and time saving, ability to get up and started in the shortest duration of time.

Google Cloud Platform is gaining popularity among cloud professionals as well as users for the advantages they offer over others :

• GCP offers competitive pricing 
• Google Cloud servers allow access to information from anywhere 
• GCP has an overall better performance and service compared to other hosting cloud services
• Google Cloud provides speedy and efficient server and security updates
• The security level of Google Cloud Platform is exemplary; the cloud platform and networks are secured and encrypted with various security measures.