News Roundup for Google Cloud Platform - Here's What's New for June, 2018.

If you're a Google Cloud user, then you'll know how important it is to stay ahead of the curve with this innovative technology. As leaders in the worlds of machine learning, big data, and productivity, Google is constantly adding new features to their system. That's why it's so important to regularly audit your experience and make sure that you're getting the most out of the GCP.

To help you keep track of just some of the latest updates to be revealed on the Google Cloud, we've thrown together a quick roundup of the announcements that we consider to be crucial to today's IT admins and mid-market companies. Let's take a look.

1. Cloud Composer "Beta" Released
2. Stackdriver Kubernetes Monitoring
3. Big Table Access Spreads
4. New Solutions Added to Google Compute Engine
5. Cloud AI and Big Data Updates
6. Networking Upgrades
7. Hosted API, Storage, and Security

Designed to help you get more out of your cloud workflow, the Cloud Composer on GCP helps today's admins to author, monitor, and schedule pipelines for their cloud and on-premise data center. Because the cloud composer is built on the well-known Apache Airflow system, using the Python programming language, it's easy to adopt and use. The system makes orchestrating workflows simple, with one-click deployment and stunning graphical representations that enhance the troubleshooting procedure. Cloud composer also allows for the connection of pipelines through orchestration tools, which makes it the ideal system for merging multi-cloud and hybrid environments.

Stackdriver Kubernetes monitoring was also recently released by the GCP as a solution that allows admins to observer their Kubernetes system in a more comprehensive and managed way. Perfect for operators and developers, the new solution integrates logs, metrics, and metadata from a Kubernetes environment to help you better understand your application's behavior. This increased observability allows you to focus more of your time on building the ideal app, and less on managing your infrastructure.

The Stackdriver system has also had an additional upgrade to allow users to export important metrics into their system and evaluate the performance and usage of their network. The internal load balancing service could help with improving resource utilization.

If your company is all about Big Data, then you may be pleased to learn that Google's "BigTable" service is now available across additional zones, in North America, and the UK. The service can now be accessed in the Montreal and Canada regions, London in the UK, and Virginia in the US. If you're not familiar with Cloud BigTable, it's the same NoSQL big data service that Google uses to power things like Analytics, Gmail, and Maps.

If you're a fan of the Google Compute Engine, the scalable virtual machines that run in the Google data centers, then there's been plenty of news released recently that's sure to get you excited. For instance, a new IAM role on Google's compute engine will now allow administrators to give access to their virtual machines to users outside of their company. This OS login feature is now generally available and provides greater control over permissions.

The GCE now also allows you to create virtual machines from existing templates in your system. This can seriously reduce your creation time and make it easier to launch new solutions for your company. Additionally, "Iceblink 4T" machines are now available with 3.75 TB of system memory and 160 vCPUs. These systems are designed for companies with, particularly demanding workloads.

On the AI side of the Google network, there's only been one major update recently, and that's been to the "Dialogflow" component. There's a new "Beta" feature in the console which can now allow you to create snapshots and previous versions of agents. You can also manage custom environments in your Dialogflow system with options for production and staging.

From a Big Data perspective, Cloud Dataflow has seen two significant updates for usability in the last month. Side input metrics now allow you to see how specific inputs improve the performance of your pipeline, while Cloud Dataflow's "Auto Zone" job placement allows your system to automatically select the best region zone for your job request. This helps you to make the most out of your tasks and reduce the risk of latency.

Cloud Pub/Sub has also received two updates. StreamingPull and GRPC have now been added to PubSub to help client libraries on the Google Cloud deliver lower latency and throughput for clients. Additionally, the Cloud PubSub auditing logs are now available to the public.

From the networking side of things, Google has also introduced a range of new upgrades. For instance, Cloud DNS has now added new security extensions in the form of DNSSEC - this extension on the standard DNS protocol uses cryptography for public keys to authentic DNS responses and prevent attacks against user domains. There's also the new option to toggle firewall rules in the Google Cloud Platform too.

You can simply disable, or re-enable rules as you see fit, without deleting them completely. This means that you can diagnose, observe, and change the behavior of your network according to your preferences. Google has also released "CDN Signed URLs" which offer clients limited access to private cloud resources without the need for further authentication.

One of the things that make Google Cloud Platform so special, is the fact that you can essentially build your own preferred experience through APIs. For instance, Google has just introduced the "Google Maps" platform, which can be integrated into the GCP console to offer users access to "Routes", "Maps", and "Places".

From a security feature, the biggest update has been to the Cloud Console, which now allows for the "Record of Processing" feature added for the purpose of GDPR compliance. For storage, Google has also added "instance-level" management to Cloud BigTable.

To make sure that you're up to date with the latest features of the Google Cloud Platform, or if you want to ensure that you have the best applications correctly installed, reach out to Coolhead Tech. We're experts in the Google Cloud.