What Devices Can You Use To Operate The Infrastructure On Google Cloud Platform?
You don’t have to sit next to a computer to maintain your cloud infrastructure. You can monitor the infrastructure and make changes also from mobile devices. That gives you opportunities to work whenever you want or react to incidents from anywhere. Let’s check what devices can you use to operate your infrastructure on Google Cloud Platform.
Nowadays, more and more companies are switching to a remote-first working approach. That means you can work from anywhere – your house, a café, a wild beach – as long as you have an internet connection. Even Google Cloud Platform has solutions for SysOp rolling stones.
About Google Cloud Platform
Google Cloud Platform (abbreviated to GCP) is a set of over 200 cloud services for software programmers, system administrators, and data engineers. Those are the same technologies Google uses to develop its applications and tools – i.a., Google Search, Google Ads, or Google Assistant.
The components of Google Cloud Platform can be freely selected to create an own infrastructure tailored to the business needs. The suite includes, among others:
- virtual machines and almost unlimited computing power,
- a service for Kubernetes cluster management,
- serverless developer platforms for rapid deployments and making changes, also in containerized applications,
- cloud databases,
- data warehouses and tools for Big Data analytics,
- object storage services,
- out-of-the-box machine learning and artificial intelligence models that allow faster development of innovative products,
- a platform for internet of things projects.
With the GCP services, you can host a simple website, an extensive application or develop an advanced system using AI models.
All GCP users have access to the same services – global corporations, medium and small businesses, or startups. The scale of use depends on the needs. Startups can use the same tools as PayPal, eBay, or Twitter do – and pay proportionally less, depending on actual consumption.
Google Cloud Platform on a computer
You can operate on Google Cloud Platform from a computer (PC or laptop) using a cloud console via a web browser. Many cloud users indicate that Google has the most intuitive interface among other popular cloud service providers (i.a., Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure).
The graphic console consists of dashboards showing the level of consumption of active services. You can customize the welcome panel to suit your needs – e.g., embed the most important numbers and charts.
On the left, you have a menu listing all Google Cloud Platform services grouped by their roles.
You can perform all the actions from the graphical UI, but you can also run the Cloud Shell command line in the console. With the GCP services, you can also communicate via API.
Google Cloud Platform on a mobile device
A mobile app can be helpful when you’re away from the keyboard. For example, suppose it’s Friday evening, you stand in a line for popcorn in a cinema, and get a notification from your boss saying, “I can’t log into vm-prod-3. Can you take a glimpse?”. From the line, you can enter the cloud console in a mobile app and check what’s wrong – no need to abandon the film and run back home to investigate from the computer.
With Cloud Console Mobile App, you can easily discover, monitor and respond to all issues – including projects, billing, or virtual machine instances. The application sends notifications so that you can react as soon as possible.
The mobile version of Google Cloud Platform console is available to iOS and Android devices.
