Welcome to issue #286 March 21st, 2022

News

Unlock more choice with updates to Google Cloud’s infrastructure capabilities and pricing - Google Cloud is adjusting infrastructure product and pricing structure to give customers more choice in how they pay for what they use.

Introducing Last Mile Fleet Solution: Maximize fleet performance from ecommerce order to doorstep delivery - Starting today, Last Mile Fleet Solution is available to help fleet operators create exceptional delivery experiences, from start to finish.

What’s new with Cloud Memorystore for Redis - Learn about the latest releases for Memorystore for Redis, Google Cloud managed Redis service.

Google Cloud VMware Engine now a part of VMware Cloud Universal program - Google Cloud and VMware expand partnership to accelerate customers' cloud migration journey.

Customer Care portfolio: Flexible, scalable, robust support - The Google Cloud Customer Care portfolio offers a range of technical support options designed to optimize hybrid work environments.

Ready to solve for the future? Data Cloud Summit '22 is coming April 6 - Hear from customers, leaders and builders from Google Cloud at Data Cloud Summit 2022 to get the insight you need for your data organization.

Articles, Tutorials

Infrastructure, Networking, Security, Kubernetes

Timely progress towards around-the-clock carbon-free energy - Adoption of Time-based Energy Attribute Certificates (T-EACs) by partners is helping us meet our goal of using 24/7 carbon-free energy by 2030.

Powering Security Operations with context-aware detections, alert prioritization and risk scoring in Google Chronicle - In case you missed it, join us for Google Cloud Security Talks focused on security operations and modernizing your approach to threat detection and response with Google.

Security Analyst Diaries #2: Detect-alert-respond, context is key everywhere in security operations. - Context-aware detections, alert prioritization, and risk scoring in Chronicle.

Enabling NetOps with GCP Network Topology - Use cases in which Network Topology helps users.

Using Workload Identity to access Google Cloud Pub/Sub from GKE - Using Workload Identity to access Pub/Sub service from Node application deployed on Kubernetes.

Ambassador with Google Kubernetes Engine - Setting up and using Ambassador - API Gateway on GKE.

Does Kubernetes deliver on its promise of portability? - Migrating Kubernetes workload from Azure to GCP.

Google Cloud Anthos Series - Part7 - Part7: Anthos Marketplace Applications.

App Development, Serverless, Databases, DevOps

How to build reliable systems (with unreliable components): A conversation - “VM End to End,” which is a series of curated conversations between a “VM skeptic” and a “VM enthusiast”. This time they brought in Steve McGhee to tell us more about how to get reliability out of things.

Creating Eventarc triggers with Terraform - Learn how to create Eventarc triggers with Terraform.

Scaling quickly to new markets with Cloud Run—a web modernization story - Moving from on-prem to cloud using serverless containers and PHP, a French news outlet more easily expands to reach new markets.

How the CARTO platform enables the creation of advanced data visualizations with Google Maps Platform and deck.gl - Our team built an example app that visualizes a variety of data sources that show the potential for electrification of truck fleets in Texas. This app showcases the different types of advanced data visualizations that can be created with Google Maps Platform and deck.gl. Today, I want to share more details about the source of the data for these visualizations and how the CARTO platform enables this workflow.

Celebrating Pi Day with Cloud Functions - We're celebrating Pi Day 2022 with serverless pi calculations and a new Pi API demo using Cloud Functions (2nd gen).

Deploy 2nd gen GCP Cloud Functions with Nx Workspace - Deploying and using 2nd Cloud Function.

Industry-leading reliability, global scale & open standards with Google Cloud Databases - Read how Google Cloud database services provide you the best options for industry-leading reliability, global scale & open standards, enabling you to make your next big idea a reality.

Tutorial: Setting Up Approval Processes with Slack Apps - Slack App to manage GCP IAM permission requests.

How to find duplicate objects in our Google Cloud Storage (GCS) buckets - Bash script to check for find the same files in the Cloud Storage bucket using MD5 hashes.

Big Data, Analytics, ML&AI

Governing your data in Google Cloud - Key data governance solutions you can find in Google Cloud.

Data Governance in the Cloud - part 2 - Tools - Data governance tools and technologies to ensure security, compliance, and drive data democratization.

Cloud Data Fusion: Update deployed pipelines through REST API - Using Data Fusion API to update pipelines.

GCP Cloud Composer 1.x Tuning - This blog posts describes monitoring and tuning tips for Cloud Composer.

Stream Processing - Part 1 - Streaming basics using Beam and Scala.

Stream Processing - Part 2 - Dynamic aggregations in data-driven windows.

Plotting Bar Charts in BigQuery Using a SQL User Defined Function (UDF) - Minimise context switching and make your workflow faster.

Evaluate arithmetic expressions without values using BigQuery - What about evaluating arithmetic expressions with the column name in place of the value? And in a scalable way? And using SQL?

Using Vertex AI for rapid model prototyping and deployment - Democratizing access to ML pipelines: bridging the gap between prototype and production models using low-code solutions provided to you by Vertex AI.

Various

#FirebaserFriday: Frank van Puffelen - A monthly mini-profiles on Firebase team members, aka “Firebasers”, from all around the world!

How to Prepare For The Google Cloud Digital Leader Certification Exam - This blog reviews experience studying and taking the Google Cloud Digital Leader certification exam.

10 Resources to Learn Data Science on Google Cloud - Top resources to learn one of the most in demand skills for data scientists.

Slides, Videos, Audio

GCP Podcast - #296 SQL Commenter with Nimesh Bhagat and Morgan McLean.

Kubernetes Podcast - #172 Argo, with Jesse Suen.

Security Podcast - #56 Rebuilding vs Forklifting and How to Secure a Data Warehouse in the Cloud.

Releases

Anthos clusters on bare metal - 1.8. Release 1.8.9 Anthos clusters on bare metal 1.8.9 is now available for download. Fixes: The following container image security vulnerabilities have been fixed: CVE-2021-43824 CVE-2021-43825 CVE-2021-43826 CVE-2021-21654 CVE-2021-21655 CVE-2021-23606 CVE-2021-21657 CVE-2021-21656 CVE-2021-23635. Known issues: For information about the latest known issues, see Anthos on bare metal known issues in the Troubleshooting section.

Anthos clusters on VMware - Anthos clusters on VMware 1.8.8-gke.1 is now available. Fixed high-severity CVEs: CVE-2021-41190 CVE-2022-22826 CVE-2021-45960 CVE-2022-22827 CVE-2021-46143 CVE-2022-22825 CVE-2022-24407 Fixed critical CVEs: CVE-2022-23852 CVE-2022-22823 CVE-2022-23990 CVE-2022-22822 CVE-2022-22824 Fixed issue where osImage field is not updated for Windows Server OS node pools during cluster upgrade.

AppEngine Standard Ruby - The Ruby 3.0 runtime for App Engine standard environment is now available in Preview.

Cloud Asset Inventory - The following resource types are now publicly available through the Export APIs (ExportAssets and BatchGetAssetsHistory), the Feed API, and the Search APIs (SearchAllResources and SearchAllIamPolicies): Dialog ES API dialogflow.googleapis.com/ConversationProfile dialogflow.googleapis.com/KnowledgeBase. The following resource types are now publicly available through the Export APIs (ExportAssets and BatchGetAssetsHistory) and the Feed API: Network Connectivity API networkconnectivity.googleapis.com/Hub networkconnectivity.googleapis.com/Spoke.

BigQuery - The BigQuery slot recommender is now available in Preview. You can now explicitly specify a schema for BigQuery external tables created over Parquet, ORC, and Avro file formats.

Cloud Composer - Cloud Composer 1.18.3 and 2.0.7 release started on March 17, 2022. Starting from June 1, 2022, new versions of Cloud Composer will no longer support Python 2. The apache-airflow-providers-google package has operators for Cloud Composer, starting from version 6.4.0. The Logs tab in Cloud Console is now generally available (GA). Environment labels are now propagated to the environment's bucket. Improved the syncing of DAGs and plugins to Airflow components. (Cloud Composer 1) It is no longer possible to select the e2-micro machine type. Cloud Composer 1.18.3 and 2.0.7 images are available: composer-2.0.7-airflow-2.2.3 composer-2.0.7-airflow-2.1.4 composer-1.18.3-airflow-2.2.3 composer-1.18.3-airflow-2.1.4 composer-1.18.3-airflow-1.10.15 (default). Cloud Composer 1.15.0 has reached its end of full support period.

Compute Engine - General-purpose Tau T2D virtual machine instances are available in the following regions and zones: Northern Virginia (us-east4-a,b,c) South Carolina (us-east1-b,c,d) Frankfurt (europe-west3-a,b,c) Sydney (australia-southeast1-a,b,c) Taiwan (asia-east1-a,b,c) See VM instance pricing for details. Generally available: Compute Engine now supports Suspend and Resume in General Availability. Fixed the issue causing the Compute Engine API Quotas page in the Cloud Console to display duplicate API quota groups.

Config Connector - Config Connector version 1.77.0 is now available. Added support for IdentityPlatformConfig resource. Added support for ARM binaries.

Database Migration Service - Database Migration Service now supports version 14 of Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL.

Dataflow - Dataflow now supports the following Google-provided templates in GA: Pub/Sub Subscription to BigQuery Pub/Sub Topic to BigQuery Pub/Sub Avro to BigQuery Pub/Sub Proto to BigQuery Pub/Sub to Pub/Sub Pub/Sub to Cloud Storage Avro Pub/Sub to Cloud Storage Text Cloud Storage Text to BigQuery (Stream) Cloud Storage Text to Pub/Sub (Stream) Change Data Capture to BigQuery (Stream) Apache Kafka to BigQuery BigQuery export to Parquet (via Storage API) Firestore to Cloud Storage Text Cloud Spanner to Cloud Storage Text Cloud Storage Text to BigQuery Cloud Storage Text to Firestore Cloud Storage Text to Pub/Sub (Batch) Apache Cassandra to Bigtable Datastream to Cloud Spanner File Format Conversion Bulk Compress Cloud Storage Files Bulk Decompress Cloud Storage Files Firestore Bulk Delete Streaming Data Generator to Pub/Sub, BigQuery, and Cloud Storage.

Dataproc - New sub-minor versions of Dataproc images: 1.5.59-debian10, 1.5.59-ubuntu18, and 1.5.59-rocky8 2.0.33-debian10, 2.0.33-ubuntu18, and 2.0.33-rocky8. Dataproc Serverless for Spark now uses runtime version 1.0.6.

Cloud Functions - Cloud Functions has added support for the following new runtimes at the Preview release level: Java 17 Ruby 3.0.

KMS - Using Cloud EKM with a Virtual Private Network is now generally available.

Google Kubernetes Engine - Starting in GKE version 1.22, the Compute Engine persistent disk CSI driver is generally available for Windows clusters. The following GKE versions fix a known issue in which random TCP connection resets might happen for GKE nodes that use Container-Optimized OS with Docker (cos). (2022-R5) Version updates GKE cluster versions have been updated. If you specify --enable-dataplane-v2 in a Windows LTSC node pool running GKE version 1.22.7-gke.1300, Windows nodes cannot join the cluster.

Google Kubernetes Engine Rapid - (2022-R5) Version updates Version 1.22.7-gke.300 is now the default version in the Rapid channel. If you specify --enable-dataplane-v2 in a Windows LTSC node pool running GKE version 1.22.7-gke.1300, Windows nodes cannot join the cluster.

Google Kubernetes Engine Regular - (2022-R5) Version updates Version 1.21.9-gke.1002 is now the default version in the Regular channel.

Google Kubernetes Engine Stable - (2022-R5) Version updates Version 1.20.15-gke.300 is now the default version in the Stable channel.

Load Balancing - Starting October 1, 2022, we'll apply an outbound data processing charge of $0.008 - $0.012 per GB (based on region) to all Cloud Load Balancing products in order to maintain consistency and alignment with the variable costs of the services across our Cloud Load Balancing portfolio. Backend subsetting for internal TCP/UDP load balancers lets you scale your internal TCP/UDP load balancer to support a larger number of backend VM instances per internal backend service.

Cloud Memorystore - Read replicas are now Generally Available for Memorystore for Redis.

KF - 2.7.3. Fixed bug in App controller, made App.Status.RouteConditions as an optional field.

Cloud Storage Transfer - Between April 2, 2022 and December 31, 2022, transfers using Storage Transfer Service will not result in Cloud Storage charges for certain transfer scenarios.

Cloud Storage - On October 1, 2022, certain prices in Cloud Storage will be changing.

Traffic Director - A new client_zone label is added to the Connected Streams metric.

VPC Service Controls - Preview stage support for the following integration: Web Risk. Beta stage support for the following integration: Migrate for Compute Engine.

If you have suggestion, feedback or link you want to share feel free to email me at zdenko@gcpweekly.com

Have a great week,

Zdenko