Welcome to issue #346 May 15th, 2023

News

Google Cloud advances generative AI at I/O: new foundation models, embeddings, and tuning tools in Vertex AI

Introducing Duet AI for Google Cloud – an AI-powered collaborator

New Cloud Deploy features make application deployment even more efficient - Cloud Deploy now lets you deploy to multiple targets, and with canaries, deploy a new version of an application alongside an existing version.

At Google I/O, generative AI gets to work

Bringing Google Cloud generative AI to popular workplace apps - With gen, workplace app makers can improve content management and collaboration; streamline sales and customer service; and enable content creation.

Announcing A3 supercomputers with NVIDIA H100 GPUs, purpose-built for AI - The next-generation A3 GPU supercomputer powered by NVIDIA H100 GPUs are purpose-built for training and inference of ML models.

The latest on maps customization

Build maps faster with Web Components - Starting today, we're happy to offer Web Components in Preview as a new way for developers to use Google Maps Platform. Initially you’ll be able to access Web Components for Map and Advanced Marker functionality, and we’ll iteratively add more functionality over time.

Routes API is now generally available - Starting today, Routes API is now generally available. Routes API builds on the foundational features of the Directions and Distance Matrix APIs that your business relies on, like comprehensive, up-to-date directions with real-time traffic, and calculating distances and ETAs for matrices of origin and destination combinations.

Create immersive cinematic video experiences with Aerial View API

Create immersive 3D map experiences with Photorealistic 3D Tiles

Google I/O Preview: Introducing new 3D imagery, map customization, and routing products

Manage IAM permissions with the Google Cloud mobile app - Administrators can use the Google Cloud mobile app to manage their organization’s cloud identities and access while on the go. Here’s how.

Looker now available from Google Cloud console - Creating a Looker (Google Cloud core) instance from the Cloud console makes it easy to test the business intelligence solution in your environment.

Introducing BigQuery differential privacy and partnership with Tumult Labs - In partnership with Tumult Labs, BigQuery differential privacy can help to anonymize data, and will integrate with BigQuery data clean rooms.

Accelerate smart transformation to SAP S/4 HANA with Tata Consultancy Services PreCast, now for Google Cloud

Articles, Tutorials

Infrastructure, Networking, Security, Kubernetes

5 steps to automating and streamlining your regulatory reporting - More efficient regulatory reporting is just 5 steps away. Read our latest infographic to learn how financial institutions can scale for the future.

Your new regulatory reporting mantra: simple, fast, and repeatable - See how Google Cloud can help financial services firms automate and streamline their regulatory reporting processes.

GCP Organisations - A Beginner’s Guide to Organizing Projects, Folders, and Organizations Using Terraform.

Secure your Nginx Ingress controller behind Cloud Armor - Properly securing Nginx Ingress controller on GKE.

Expiry times for user-managed service account keys - In Google Cloud Platform (GCP), service account keys are used to provide Google Cloud API access to applications running outside of Google….

How to solve customer challenges when security patching Google Kubernetes Engine - Cloud customers are increasingly running workloads in Kubernetes clusters. Applying security patches can be fraught — but it doesn’t have to be.

App Development, Serverless, Databases, DevOps

What is Cloud Scheduler? - Process large datasets in batches, monitor performance or errors, and handle recurring data backups with automated scheduling.

Choosing the right MongoDB type on Google Cloud - Learn how to choose between MongoDB Atlas or MongoDB Community Edition on Google Cloud to ensure you get the right database for your needs.

Connecting GitHub Actions and Google Cloud Deploy - Deploy containers to Google Cloud with GitHub Actions and Google Cloud Deploy targets - Kubernetes, Anthos, and Cloud Run.

Uptime checks for availability - Monitor the availability of public and private resources, and to alert you when there are problems.

Google Cloud Build Conditional Step - Executing step in Cloud build based on the name of the branch.

Big Data, Analytics, ML&AI

Model accidents and potholes using Waze and NOAA data in BigQuery - Every government leader can draw insights from their big data on-demand. BigQuery, our cloud data warehouse, can address data volume, consolidation, and freshness without a high degree of technical specialization.

Data Quality on steroids with Google Dataplex and BigQuery combined - Google Cloud Platform keeps on releasing exciting features within its Data suite. Solving one of the top challenges of Data teams, ensuring….

Cloud Workflows in Google Cloud Platform - Cloud Workflows is a fully managed service offered by Google Cloud Platform (GCP) that enables you to build and run serverless workflows….

Ensuring GDPR Compliance on GCP BigQuery: Efficiently Managing the Right to Be Forgotten - Implementing the Right to Be Forgotten (RTBF) on Google Cloud Platform’s BigQuery.

BigQuery Data Warehousekeeping: Nested, Repeated, Arrays, Structs… - Cookbook: how to organize data in your Data Warehouse.

Automatically Shut Down Vertex AI User-Managed Notebooks - Say goodbye to unexpected costs and unnecessary running notebooks.

Various

“The time is now.” Why this Kenyan Googler is betting on Africa’s tech opportunity - Tech lead and Kenyan Googler Jack Ngare is leveraging his role in Cloud’s Office of the CTO to help Africa seize its big tech opportunity.

ETS Sponsorship and Google Public Sector partner to support veterans transitioning to civilian life - Providing support for transitioning service members with Onward Ops, powered by Google Workspace.

Slides, Videos, Audio

Security Podcast - #120 Building Secure Cloud and Building Security Products: Finding the Balance.

Releases

Marketplace Partners - When you create or amend a prepay private offer with the committed use discounts (CUDs) pricing model, you can choose whether unused commitment expires or rolls over between installments of the offer.

StratoZone - Fixed an issue where a blank slide would appear in the Assessment & Summary report if no Solution Groups were present in the customer account. Fixed an issue with the expected asset count for some manual import types. Fixed an issue where a value of 0 was allowed for CPU cores in the manual import. Fixed an issue where overcommit on Sole Tenant was allowed to be set to 4 when the maximum is 2.

Cloud Monitoring - The new flow for creating uptime checks, which includes usability improvements and offers a seamless way to create uptime checks on your private resources, is now GA.

Cloud Router - The Cloud Router custom learned routes feature is in Preview.

reCAPTCHA Enterprise - reCAPTCHA Enterprise Fraud Prevention is generally available. reCAPTCHA Enterprise Mobile SDK v18.2.0 is now available for Android.

Cloud Run - Cloud Run integrations (Preview) are now available in asia-east1, europe-west4, us-east1, and us-west1. Cloud Run services can now connect to Firebase Hosting for custom domains and CDN capabilities, using Integrations (Preview). Cloud Run now logs container health check failures, including default TCP startup probe failures.

Anthos Service Mesh - Managed Anthos Service Mesh. Three images that contain a fix for FIPS compliance have successfully rolled out for managed Anthos Service Mesh: The image for 1.16.4-asm.8 is in the rapid release channel The image for 1.15.7-asm.8 is in the regular release channel The image for 1.14.6-asm.16 is in the stable release channel See Select a managed Anthos Service Mesh release channel for more information.

SAP Solutions - ABAP SDK for Google Cloud, version 1.0 is generally available (GA) Version 1.0 of the ABAP SDK for Google Cloud is generally available (GA). Compliance and sovereign controls for SAP on Google Cloud SAP workloads can leverage Assured Workloads to meet compliance and sovereign control requirements such as data residency, access control, support personnel, or other regulatory requirements.

Cloud Spanner - Support for logging the processing duration of your Cloud Spanner read and write requests is now available in Cloud Audit Logs.

Cloud Storage - Custom audit logging for Cloud Storage is now available in Preview.

Vertex AI - Generative AI Support for Vertex AI Generative AI Support for Vertex AI is now available in (Preview). Vertex AI Model Garden The Vertex AI Model Garden is now available in (Preview). Vertex AI Prediction You can now use G2 accelerator-optimized machine types to serve predictions.

VPC Service Controls - General availability for the following integration: Looker (Google Cloud core).

Workflows - v1. You can apply call logging to a workflow definition as well as to the execution of a workflow, and specify the level of logging required.

AlloyDB - The AlloyDB admin API now includes user-management methods. The storage per cluster limit has increased to 32 TiB. The columnar engine now supports columns with json and jsonb data types. AlloyDB for PostgreSQL is now available in the following regions: asia-south2 (Delhi) europe-southwest1 (Madrid) europe-west4 (Netherlands) europe-west8 (Milan) me-west1 (Tel Aviv) northamerica-northeast1 (Montreal) northamerica-northeast2 (Toronto) southamerica-east1 (Brazil) southamerica-west1 (Santiago) For more information, see AlloyDB Locations. The AlloyDB index advisor is now generally available (GA). The extensions pgtt and rdkit have been added to AlloyDB's supported extensions.

Anthos clusters on bare metal - 1.6 & 1.7 & 1.8 & 1.9 & 1.10 & 1.11 & 1.12 & 1.13 & 1.14 & 1.15. CentOS Linux 8 Support Deprecated CentOS Linux 8 reached its end of life (EOL) on December 31st, 2021.

AppEngine Flexible - .NET - .NET 6 is now generally available.

AppEngine Flexible Ruby - Ruby 3.2 is now generally available.

Batch - Documentation has been added to explain how to run Nextflow pipelines on Batch.

BigQuery - Object tables are now generally available (GA). BigQuery is now available in the Dallas (us-south1) region. You can now view BI Engine Top Tables Cached Bytes, BI Engine Query Fallback Count, and Query Execution Count as dashboard metrics for BigQuery. EXTERNAL_QUERY SQL pushdown optimizes data retrieval from external sources like Cloud SQL or Cloud Spanner databases. Differential privacy is now in preview and includes four differential privacy aggregate functions that can be used to anonymize data: AVG, COUNT, SUM, and PERCENTILE_CONT. A weekly digest of client library updates from across the Cloud SDK. INFORMATION_SCHEMA.MATERIALIZED_VIEW view and enhanced job statistics now let you monitor materialized view usage and refresh jobs.

Cloud Build - You can now create manual triggers, webhook triggers, or Pub/Sub triggers using Cloud Build repositories (2nd gen). You can now restrict the creation of Cloud Build builds, triggers, and repositories to a particular location using an Organization Policy Service constraint.

Cloud Composer - Cloud Composer 2.1.15 release started on May 12, 2023. (Cloud Composer 2) The default [celery]stalled_task_timeout value is set to 1200. (Available without upgrading in asia-south1 and europe-west1 regions) Cloud Composer 2 shows an account selection screen when Airflow UI is opened for the first time. (Available without upgrading in asia-south1 and europe-west1 regions) In Cloud Composer 2, reduced the propagation time of a revoked Cloud IAM permission that blocks access to the Airflow UI. (Airflow 2.4.3 and 2.5.1) Python packages upgraded: Added new packages: dbt-bigquery and google-cloud-documentai. (Cloud Composer 2 with Airflow 2.5.1 and 2.4.3) Version 6.0.0 of the CNCF Kubernetes Provider package (apache-airflow-providers-cncf-kubernetes) introduces a backwards incompatible change. (Cloud Composer 2) The default version of Airflow is changed to 2.5.1. Cloud Composer 2.1.15 images are available: composer-2.1.15-airflow-2.5.1 (default) composer-2.1.15-airflow-2.4.3. Airflow 2.3.4 is no longer included in Cloud Composer images. Cloud Composer versions 2.0.11 and 1.18.7, have reached their end of full support period.

Dataproc Metastore - Administrator interface is generally available (GA).

Dataproc Serverless - New Dataproc Serverless for Spark runtime versions: 1.1.14 2.0.22 2.1.1.

Datastream - Datastream now supports backfill for PostgreSQL tables of any size.

Deep Learning VM - M108 update This update of the M108 release includes the following: The following Deep Learning VM images are now available: Tensorflow 2.12 CPU with CUDA 11.8 and Python 3.10 (tf-2-12-cpu-debian-11-py310) Tensorflow 2.12 GPU with CUDA 11.8 and Python 3.10 (tf-2-12-gpu-debian-11-py310).

Eventarc - Eventarc is available in the europe-west12 (Turin, Italy) and me-central1 (Doha, Qatar) regions.

Cloud Functions - Cloud Functions now supports the Node.js 20 runtime at the Preview release level.

Identity Platform - Firebase App Check is available in Preview.

Google Kubernetes Engine - The g2-standard machine family with NVIDIA L4 is generally available for node pools in clusters running GKE version 1.22 and later. (2023-R10) Version updates GKE cluster versions have been updated. Now in GA for both GKE Standard and Autopilot clusters with GKE version 1.26 and later, you can add more IPv4 secondary Pod ranges to a new or existing cluster with the --additional-pod-ipv4-ranges flag.

GKE - (2023-R10) Version updates Version 1.25.8-gke.500 is now the default version.

Google Kubernetes Engine Stable - (2023-R10) Version updates Version 1.24.11-gke.1000 is now the default version.

Google Kubernetes Engine Rapid - (2023-R10) Version updates Version 1.26.3-gke.1000 is now the default version.

Google Kubernetes Engine Regular - (2023-R10) Version updates Version 1.25.8-gke.500 is now the default version.