GCP Cloud Services Cheat Sheet

Updated 2026-05-25

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Google Cloud Platform (GCP) provides a comprehensive ecosystem of cloud services spanning compute, storage, databases, networking, security, and data analytics. As a fully-managed cloud provider, GCP abstracts infrastructure complexity while giving developers fine-grained control over resources when needed. Two critical mental models underpin GCP services: global resources (like IAM and Cloud Storage) that span regions, and regional/zonal resources (like Compute Engine and Cloud SQL) that remain within specific geographic boundaries. Understanding this distinction helps you architect for both performance and compliance—global services optimize for availability and durability, while regional services optimize for latency and data residency requirements. With Google Cloud Next '26 introducing the Agentic Data Cloud, AI-native capabilities are now embedded across databases, analytics, and compute, making GCP's AI/ML integration deeper than ever.

What This Cheat Sheet Covers

This topic spans 14 focused tables and 170 indexed concepts. Below is a complete table-by-table outline of this topic, spanning foundational concepts through advanced details.

Table 1: Compute ServicesTable 2: Storage ServicesTable 3: Database ServicesTable 4: Networking FundamentalsTable 5: Load BalancingTable 6: Container & OrchestrationTable 7: Serverless ComputeTable 8: Data Processing & AnalyticsTable 9: AI & Machine Learning ServicesTable 10: API Management & IntegrationTable 11: Security & IdentityTable 12: Operations & MonitoringTable 13: CI/CD & DeploymentTable 14: Advanced Networking

Table 1: Compute Services

VMs, managed instance groups, and specialized compute options form the foundation of most GCP workloads. Machine family selection—general-purpose, compute-optimized, memory-optimized, or accelerator-optimized—drives both performance and cost more than almost any other decision.

Service	Example	Description
Compute Engine	`gcloud compute instances create my-vm --machine-type=e2-medium --zone=us-central1-a`	• Customizable virtual machines running Linux or Windows • supports predefined, custom, and specialty machine types across N1, N2, E2, C2, C3, C4, M-series, and GPU/TPU-attached families
Machine types	`n2-standard-4` (4 vCPUs, 16 GB) `e2-micro` (2 vCPUs, 1 GB)	Predefined vCPU/memory configurations: general-purpose (E2, N1, N2, N2D, N4), compute-optimized (C2, C3, C4), memory-optimized (M1, M2, M3, M4), and accelerator-optimized (A2, A3, A4, G2) families.
Managed instance groups (MIGs)	`gcloud compute instance-groups managed create my-mig --template=web-template --size=3`	Collection of identical VMs managed as a unit with autoscaling, auto-healing, load balancing, and rolling updates.
Instance templates	`gcloud compute instance-templates create web-template --machine-type=n2-standard-2`	• Reusable VM configuration blueprints defining machine type, boot disk, and network settings • required by MIGs for autoscaling
Spot VMs	`--provisioning-model=SPOT`	• Interruptible instances at up to 91% discount with no maximum runtime limit • can run indefinitely until Google reclaims capacity; ideal for fault-tolerant batch jobs.
Preemptible VMs	`--preemptible` flag	• Short-lived instances at up to 80% discount that Google terminates with 30-second notice • max 24-hour runtime; Spot VMs are the preferred successor with no runtime cap.
Cloud Batch	`gcloud batch jobs submit --config=job.json`	• Fully managed batch job scheduler provisioning VMs automatically per job • no custom job-scheduler setup required; ideal for HPC, ML training, and large-scale data processing.

Table 1: Compute Services

Service	Example	Description
Compute Engine	`gcloud compute instances create my-vm --machine-type=e2-medium --zone=us-central1-a`	• Customizable virtual machines running Linux or Windows • supports predefined, custom, and specialty machine types across N1, N2, E2, C2, C3, C4, M-series, and GPU/TPU-attached families
Machine types	`n2-standard-4` (4 vCPUs, 16 GB) `e2-micro` (2 vCPUs, 1 GB)	Predefined vCPU/memory configurations: general-purpose (E2, N1, N2, N2D, N4), compute-optimized (C2, C3, C4), memory-optimized (M1, M2, M3, M4), and accelerator-optimized (A2, A3, A4, G2) families.
Managed instance groups (MIGs)	`gcloud compute instance-groups managed create my-mig --template=web-template --size=3`	Collection of identical VMs managed as a unit with autoscaling, auto-healing, load balancing, and rolling updates.
Instance templates	`gcloud compute instance-templates create web-template --machine-type=n2-standard-2`	• Reusable VM configuration blueprints defining machine type, boot disk, and network settings • required by MIGs for autoscaling
Spot VMs	`--provisioning-model=SPOT`	• Interruptible instances at up to 91% discount with no maximum runtime limit • can run indefinitely until Google reclaims capacity; ideal for fault-tolerant batch jobs.
Preemptible VMs	`--preemptible` flag	• Short-lived instances at up to 80% discount that Google terminates with 30-second notice • max 24-hour runtime; Spot VMs are the preferred successor with no runtime cap.
Cloud Batch	`gcloud batch jobs submit --config=job.json`	• Fully managed batch job scheduler provisioning VMs automatically per job • no custom job-scheduler setup required; ideal for HPC, ML training, and large-scale data processing.