Home Courses Google Cloud Platform in 5 Days Day 2
Day 02 Compute

Compute Engine and Kubernetes

VMs, managed instance groups, GKE cluster creation, and the Autopilot mode that eliminates node management. Deploy a production-grade container workload.

~1 hour Intermediate Hands-on Precision AI Academy

Today's Objective

VMs, managed instance groups, GKE cluster creation, and the Autopilot mode that eliminates node management. Deploy a production-grade container workload.

01

Cloud Run: Serverless Containers

Cloud Run runs Docker containers without managing servers. It scales to zero (no traffic = no cost) and handles scaling automatically.

Dockerfile
FROM python:3.11-slim
WORKDIR /app
COPY requirements.txt .
RUN pip install -r requirements.txt
COPY . .
CMD ["uvicorn", "main:app", "--host", "0.0.0.0", "--port", "8080"]
Deploy to Cloud Run
# Build and push to Artifact Registry
gcloud run deploy my-service \
  --source . \
  --platform managed \
  --region us-central1 \
  --allow-unauthenticated

# Or build/push manually
gcloud builds submit --tag gcr.io/PROJECT_ID/my-app
gcloud run deploy my-app --image gcr.io/PROJECT_ID/my-app
Compute Engine VM
# Create a VM
gcloud compute instances create my-vm \
  --machine-type e2-micro \
  --zone us-central1-a \
  --image-family debian-12 \
  --image-project debian-cloud

# SSH into it
gcloud compute ssh my-vm --zone us-central1-a

# Stop when done to avoid charges
gcloud compute instances stop my-vm --zone us-central1-a
ℹ️
Cloud Run is the right choice for stateless HTTP services — APIs, web apps, microservices. Use Compute Engine when you need persistent disk, specific OS configuration, or long-running non-HTTP workloads.
📝 Day 2 Exercise
Deploy an App to Cloud Run
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Day 2 Summary

→
← Previous
Day 1: GCP Console and Core Concepts
Next →
Day 3: Storage: GCS and Cloud SQL
→

What's Next

The foundations from today carry directly into Day 3. In the next session the focus shifts to Cloud Storage, BigQuery, and Databases — building directly on everything covered here.

Supporting Videos & Reading

Go deeper with these external references.

YouTube
Compute Engine and Kubernetes — Video Walkthroughs Community tutorials and walkthroughs covering the concepts in this lesson.
→
YouTube
Compute Engine and Kubernetes Explained Deep-dive explanations and live-coding sessions from top educators.
→
Official Docs
Official Documentation Primary reference documentation for the technologies covered in this lesson.
→
GitHub
Open Source Examples Real-world codebases demonstrating the patterns taught in this lesson.
→

Day 2 Checkpoint

Before moving on, verify you can answer these without looking:

  • What is the core concept introduced in this lesson, and why does it matter?
  • What are the two or three most common mistakes practitioners make with this topic?
  • Can you explain the key code pattern from this lesson to a colleague in plain language?
  • What would break first if you skipped the safeguards or best practices described here?
  • How does today's topic connect to what comes in Day 3?

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Continue To Day 3
Day 3: Storage: GCS and Cloud SQL
→