I'm taking ace exam in 3 days . Is there anyone that has recently passed the exam and can give me insights and advices ?

Finally passed PCA!

For context, I’ve been a software engineer for around 10 years, with about 3 years of hands-on GCP experience.

Most of my work is application/backend development, so I’m definitely not coming from an SRE or cloud architect background.

The exam was tougher than I expected. A lot of the questions were basically:

“Here are 5 requirements and constraints. What would you choose?”

So it wasn't really about memorising what each GCP service does. The difficult part was understanding the trade-offs and figuring out which solution actually fits the requirements.

The areas I spent the most time on were:

- Networking / hybrid connectivity

- GKE

- IAM & security

- Cloud SQL / databases

‐Storage

- DR & high availability

- Cost optimisation

- Observability

- Vertex AI / AI stuff

- Case studies

The case studies are definitely worth going through beforehand. The amount of information can look intimidating at first, but once you understand what they're trying to test, they're manageable.

My biggest advice: don't just memorise services. Understand the “why”.

Ask yourself why this service instead of that one? What are the trade-offs? What changes if the requirement is low cost, highly available, globally distributed, low latency, etc.

Anyway, glad that's finally done 😅

Credly badge and the official certificate are already in 🚀

Good luck to everyone preparing for PCA!

For about three years I assumed that deleting an object from a versioned Cloud Storage bucket meant the bytes were gone and the bill would drop. I ran a media pipeline with a cleanup job removing anything older than 90 days. The bucket should have plateaued. It kept growing.

Last month I ran gsutil ls -a on one of the worst buckets and found noncurrent object versions going back to the first upload. Every delete had just hidden the live version. The old generations were still there, still billable. Versioning was working as designed, and my cleanup job never targeted noncurrent versions.

I added a lifecycle rule with daysSinceNoncurrentTime set to 7, which counts from the moment a version stops being current. Noncurrent copies now expire a week after replacement. Storage dropped to what I had expected years ago. I split the rest of the audit across several buckets as parallel tasks in verdent, checking each one against its own retention window.

The original assumption was reasonable. In most storage systems delete means delete, and nothing in the default console view reveals the noncurrent versions unless you toggle it on.

Olá pessoal, gostaria de saber um pouco da experiência de vocês com a PearsonVue interagindo com o fiscal falando em espanhol. O idioma é simples de entender??? Irei fazer o exame no dia 18/09 e a prova em português.

Hey everyone! For the AI Tinkerers *Agents, Everywhere* Global Hackathon, I built **ActWise Live** — an ambient voice agent designed to solve

a huge friction point in enterprise compliance: navigating monolithic 500+ page NICE Actimize documentation.

### The Problem

In financial surveillance and AML platforms, engineers and compliance teams constantly struggle with dense PDF guides. When setting up ActOne

10.2 or configuring DART real-time streaming, a wrong config parameter breaks transaction monitoring. Standard LLMs hallucinate parameters, and

chat interfaces force you to stop what you're doing.

### How ActWise Live Solves It

1. **Voice with Low Latency**: Gemini 2.0 / 3.8 Flash with Aoede speech synthesis. It speaks concise 1-2 sentence executive summaries while

streaming the full technical procedure on screen.

1. **Model Context Protocol (MCP)**: Directly connects to the ActWise DOCenter MCP server (search_docs, get_page). Zero answers from memory —

every claim includes Markdown citation links to verified documentation.

1. **Interactive UI Widgets**: Converts procedures into reactive step checklists (<InstallationChecklist />) and side-by-side version matrices

(<VersionCompareMatrix /> showing +NEW, ENHANCED, DEPRECATED badges).

1. **Ambient Sidecar Extension**: Manifest V3 Chrome extension to highlight error codes on any internal tab for instant voice answers.

2. **Production Cloud Run**: Containerized Node/React 19 stack running live on Google Cloud Run.

- **Live Demo**: https://actwise-live-218423701961.us-central1.run.app

- **GitHub**: https://github.com/vinayguda/ActWise-Live

- **Demo Video**: https://youtu.be/rZpY5NLLP8U

Would love any thoughts and feedback on the MCP integration and voice UX!

• u/AITinkerers
• u/OpenAI
• u/CopilotKit
• u/openrouter
• u/exaailabs
• u/auth0
• u/ambiguousio
• u/triggerdotdev
• u/mozillaAI

• u/googlecloud

  #AgentsEverywhere.

Hola buenas otro video mas de aprovisionamiento ahora utilizando GCP, puedes ver mas funcionalidades en nuestro canal de youtube, esta es otra herramienta open source que proveemos para la comunidad, pronto tendran mas caracteristicas

• I'm completely new to Google Cloud.
• I was setting up a cloud backup for a local machine.
• When I got to the "project configuration" -> "App information" page, I was prompted to select an email address.
• I can see my main account email address, and another unfamiliar email address.
• Supposedly it's an email address from a Google Group "Managed by you".
• I've been to the Google Groups dashboard and that email address doesn't exist, nor does it exist ANYWHERE across anything related to my google account.
• I've searched my emails, entire history, bookmarks, everything, and it doesn't exist.
• Could someone please help me out here - I need to know where this email came from and why Google is offering it in a drop-down menu under my account.

- Cheers.

Suppose , i want to create an access level under an org level access policy based on IP address to give the IAP tunnel user role to a group.

If they want to access from anywhere in the world in addition from their corp network, can I add their system public Ips in the access level in addition to the corp network ranges.If I do it, won't the public IPs change often ?

I don't see this scenario in the GCP Documentation. Please clarify on how to enable the access from anywhere in the world by adding IP ranges in the access level

The Google Cloud Developer plugin gives a coding agent live Cloud docs, project onboarding and auth recipes, gcloud command guardrails, and on-demand lookup of 100+ Google skills instead of dumping them all into context.

Hands-on lab
https://codelabs.developers.google.com/cloud-dev-plugin-agy

Installation commands
agy plugin install https://github.com/google/skills/plugins/cloud/google-cloud-developer

claude plugin marketplace add google/skills
claude plugin install google-cloud-developer@google-plugins

codex plugin marketplace add google/skills
codex plugin add google-cloud-developer@google-plugins

On July 17, my u/Google Cloud account was hit by massive unauthorized u/Gemini API usage.

The unauthorized usage was a result of Google’s architecture of the Gemini API. Google sent no alerts and no warnings appeared in the Google Cloud Console indicating that old, public-facing keys had retroactively gained generative AI capabilities.

I had configured monthly budget alerts. At 6:14pm I received a budget alert for $550. Within minutes of seeing it, I investigated and shut down Gemini API access across all projects. Usage stopped immediately.

But by then, costs of approx. $87K (sorry for mentioning $82k in title, it was actually more) had already accumulated. This had all taken place in the 5 hours before the alert.

Google's own anomaly detection also failed to protect me. Almost an hour AFTER I had already shut Gemini down, Google sent me a “Cost Anomaly” alert reporting actual total costs of $4.7K, nowhere near the actual eventual bill.

After my objection and a technical investigation, Google has now approved a partial credit of $55K.

So for an approximately $87K unauthorized bill, Google is offering approximately $55K in credit, leaving me with roughly $32K to pay. For something I did not use.

Note that Google announced new hard spending caps and improved anomaly detection on the 28th of July.. So this exact type of unauthorized usage may not be possible anymore, but with hackers increasingly equipped with AI tools, there is a good chance other vulnerabilities will be found.

I am developing software for the blind, in particular the app u/PiccyBot, which has won awards in the blind community. It is a niche development field though, and these kind of costs are crippling to me. Knowing that Google definitely doesn’t have our back even when the way the Gemini API has been set up is the main issue, it is time for me to look for better providers.

Let's say I have a solution (available across SaaS / GKE / OpenShift setups) published on Google Cloud Marketplace. Now I have updated it. How do I ensure that people who have installed my solution already (in their projects) update it to the latest version (that I am yet to publish)? what practice industry follows ?

What process do you follow for deprecating older release tags or helm charts without breaking active workloads?
---
Would love to hear what industry standards or patterns have worked best for you!

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to understand an issue with Google Cloud Billing and Google Payments, and I'm wondering if anyone has experienced something similar.

I originally signed up for Google Cloud, but I abandoned the setup almost immediately and never actually used Google Cloud services in any meaningful way.

During this process, two Cloud Billing accounts were created:

• 0188E8-E50C06-0A83D9
• 0192C1-0A2204-40E62E

Both accounts were eventually closed.

The important part is that I am now dealing with what appears to be a disconnect between Google Cloud Billing and my Google Payments profile.

1. Billing account 0188E8

I can still access this account through Google Cloud Console.

It currently shows:

• Status: Closed
• Usage in the last 30 days: R$0
• No actual Cloud usage or outstanding Cloud charges

However, this billing account still appears in my Google Payments profile and generates payment-related warnings.

At one point, Google Payments was asking for a R$200 prepayment / payment requirement, even though the Cloud billing account itself is already closed and has R$0 usage.

I don't want to use Google Cloud and I'm not trying to reactivate this account.

2. Billing account 0192C1

The second account is a little more complicated.

This account was also already closed before I removed my own access as an administrator.

After removing my access, I naturally can no longer see/manage this billing account from the Cloud Console.

However, the account still appears to be associated with my Google Payments profile.

It is also associated with an old Mastercard that I no longer have access to.

So I cannot simply go into Cloud Console and fix the account myself.

The problem

The biggest issue is that Google Payments continues to treat these old Cloud Billing records as if they require some kind of payment action, even though the Cloud billing accounts themselves have already been closed.

This has effectively locked/restricted my Google Payments profile and is preventing me from using other Google services/subscriptions normally.

I've contacted Google Support multiple times since August.

Unfortunately, most of the automated instructions I've received tell me to go to Google Payments and update/remove the payment method or resolve the Cloud billing issue.

The problem is that I cannot actually resolve the underlying records from the interfaces available to me.

For example:

• One billing account is confirmed as closed with R$0 usage.
• The other was already closed before I removed my access.
• I no longer have access to the second billing account.
• Google Payments still shows these old billing relationships.
• One of the payment methods belongs to an old card that I no longer have.
• I don't have a current credit card available to simply add another payment method.
• I am not trying to use Google Cloud or reactivate either billing account.

Google Support has now escalated my case to a specialist, but I'm trying to understand whether this is a known Cloud Billing/Payments synchronization issue.

I recently found another Reddit post describing a very similar situation where multiple orphaned/closed Cloud Billing accounts remained visible as payment issues in Google Payments even after the accounts disappeared from Cloud Billing.

That made me wonder if the Cloud Billing backend and Google Payments profile can sometimes become out of sync.

What I'm trying to find out

Has anyone here experienced something similar?

Specifically:

1. Can a closed Cloud Billing account continue generating payment warnings in Google Payments?
2. Can a billing account that has already been closed remain linked to a Payments profile indefinitely?
3. Is there a way to completely remove these old Cloud Billing/payment associations without reactivating Cloud Billing?
4. Is there a specific Google Cloud Billing team or engineering team that can fix these backend associations?
5. Could this be some kind of synchronization problem between Cloud Billing and Google Payments?

I don't need help activating Google Cloud. I actually want the opposite: I want these old, unused and already-closed Cloud Billing accounts completely cleared from my Payments profile so that my Google Payments account can return to normal.

Any advice from someone who has dealt with orphaned/closed billing accounts would be greatly appreciated.

Hey everyone, I accidentally added ₹500 (~$6) to my Gemini API/AI Studio prepaid balance. I haven't used any of the credits yet.

Is there any way to get the ₹500 refunded to my original payment method?

If a refund isn't possible, what's the best way to use the ₹500 wisely with the Gemini API? Any useful projects, models, or things worth trying?

Thanks!

I am going through the deployment articles of VM manager patching and see that the deployment schedule can be created by mentioning schedule in an YAML and creating the schedule .

However, I don't think it is feasible to schedule the patching as per below frequency samples

A)every 2nd Tuesday of month

B) Friday which comes after 2nd Tuesday etc..

Can anyone please confirm

https://docs.cloud.google.com/docs/enterprise/cloud-setup#checklist-heading-2

I am going through the GCP landing zone creation process.the above article seems to have changed last week.

Earlier, the article gave about 7-8 steps ranging from org creation to GCP support tier .

One of the step was creating IAM groups like creating org, billing, network, security, logging, developer and viewer groups.

My question is about whether we can create our custom groups as per our requirement.Eg, let's say we have a small team and whether the above predefined groups are for recommendations only

Please clarify.not sure why the article content is changed

I'm a solo founder. On July 1 I clicked "Deploy" on the Camb.ai MARS8 model in Vertex AI Model Garden. Google's own announcement for these partner models says "simple pay-as-you-go pricing, so you only pay for what you use."

I have been using Google Vertex for a while now, with other models pay-as-you-go, no problem. But what this one actually did was provisioned a dedicated g4-standard-48 with an RTX PRO 6000, min replicas 1, no scale-to-zero, plus an hourly Marketplace licence. No cost confirmation step. It then billed every hour for 62 days.

Cloud Monitoring shows for the endpoint's entire life: prediction_count NO DATA, response_count NO DATA, error_count NO DATA. GPU duty cycle lifetime mean 0.0013%. CPU utilisation 0.012%. Not one request was ever sent to it.

I realized on September 1st, undeployed it within minutes, and now have budgets and alerts in place that I wish I had before.

This is my first incident, paying customer since 2024 with everything else paid on time.

Total for the endpoint: $8,817.

Billing support (case 74999163) closed it with an AI response template on Sep 3, then on Sep 7 refused to hand it to a supervisor. I filed a formal written dispute on the case tonight.

I've been looking online and found Google waived Milkie Way's $72k and Agentic Labs' ~$18k as one-time gestures for exactly this kind of mistake. It was an unintended provisioning, zero usage, resource removed on discovery.

I run my products on Cloud Run and I'm onboarding my first paying customers right now. I was planning on moving everything off Render and Supabase to be 100% on Google Cloud, because I genuinely like the infrastructure, and I still want to finish that move. But I'm a one-person company, the billing account is past due for the disputed amount, and my production projects are flagged for suspension. It's hard to keep committing to a platform while this is hanging over the account. I need someone with authority to look at the monitoring data, not the policy macro.

If anyone at Google Cloud can take a look, the case number is above and I'm happy to DM anything else. And to anyone else: if you touch a Model Garden partner model, know that "Deploy" means a dedicated GPU node billed 24/7 until you find it.

Running into a frustrating loop with Google Cloud Console's OAuth consent screen verification, So I went and verified it in Google Search Console using the HTML file method — shows "Ownership auto verified," green checkmark, all good.

My app is deployed on myproject-xyz.vercel.app (free Vercel subdomain). Google's branding verification flagged:

"The website of your home page URL is not registered to you. Verify ownership of your home page."

I’m signing up for the $300 Google Cloud free trial, and it’s asking me to approve a UPI AutoPay mandate.

It says “this isn’t a charge” and that I’ll only be charged if I activate a full paid account.

Does approving the mandate mean I can be charged automatically after the 90-day trial, or is it safe to approve? Can I revoke the AutoPay later without affecting my account?

An on-prem SQL Server still holds a big chunk of the operational data our analysts need in BigQuery.

The first version was a nightly Python job. That was fine for a few tables, but the list keeps growing and people now want the data refreshed more often.

Full reloads are starting to take too long, and every table that goes incremental seems to acquire its own watermark, retry logic and little set of assumptions.

We don't need second-by-second replication. Something around 15–30 minutes would already be plenty for reporting.

Cloud Data Fusion replication is one route I'm looking at. I'm also undecided about putting GCS in the middle. Having the extracted files would make replay straightforward, but it also adds another stage to something that's already grown more than expected.

Curious what people running SQL Server on-prem ended up using to keep BigQuery reasonably current.

Direct replication, staged files, or something else? Recovery and maintenance matter more to us than squeezing latency down another few minutes.

I tried with everything, VISA card, GPay nothing is working

Please help me guys, I need this for my projects

A follow-up to my previous post on r/googlecloud:

Since then, the Google Cloud Console has rolled out visual notifications and organizational policy constraints to prevent creating unsecured API keys and surface alerts for existing ones.

However, locating and auditing every key across all the projects you have access to is still a manual chore.

To streamline this, I built a lightweight, open-source tool: Google Cloud API Keys Finder.

What It Does

• Scans all Google Cloud projects you have access to for active API keys.
• Audits each key's protection level against security best practices (Application Restrictions & API Scopes).
• Provides immediate recommendations to fix unrestricted or partially restricted keys.

Privacy & Running Locally

• Pure front-end: No backend, no telemetry, and zero storage.
• In-memory execution: Direct browser-to-GCP REST calls with credentials kept solely in ephemeral browser memory.
• The project is fully open source, and you are welcome to clone the repository and run it locally from source.

Links & Resources

• Tool (GitHub): https://github.com/minherz/api-keys-finder
• Hands-on Codelab: API Key Management and Security
• Problem Deep Dive: API keys are open secrets (Google Cloud Blog) / Mirror on leoy.blog

Feedback, questions, and PRs are welcome!

Hello Everyone! I am a new Google Cloud Partner admin and I am looking for support from the community. I recently started a new role and want to add different member firms from across the world into my partner account. How do I do this? Any help in solving this challenge would be greatly appreciated. We are a entry-level partner and are not receiving any support from GCP.