GCE
Let’s start with GCE, one of the core Google Cloud products.
The base resources for virtual machines (VMs) are a processor, memory, storage, and a network. We have many ways to configure VMs, based on our requirements and how to implement them, be it through the Cloud console, command line, or code implementation.
It might not come as a surprise to you that Google Cloud utilizes a hypervisor that is responsible for virtualization – hosting many virtual servers on one or more significant servers. Google Cloud uses a KVM-based hypervisor secured and hardened by Google itself: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/gcp/7-ways-we-harden-our-kvm-hypervisor-at-google-cloud-security-in-plaintext.
Throughout the chapter, we will refer to a VM as an instance, so please do not be confused when we switch between the two phrases. Similarly, we will refer to Google Compute Engine as GCE.
GCE machine families
Before we actually create our first GCE instance, it is...
