NCAA® March Madness®: Bracketology with Google Cloud

In this series of labs you will learn how to use BigQuery to analyze NCAA basketball data with SQL and end with building a Machine Learning Model to predict the outcomes of NCAA March Madness basketball tournament games.

App Modernization with Apigee

Apigee enables you to create APIs and manage them for the benefit of other developers who might need to use your software. Apigee Edge enables you to quickly expose backend services as APIs. These "API Products" offer different capabilities and levels of service, with consumption managed by Apigee. Istio is an open source framework for connecting, securing, and managing microservices, especially services that are hosted in a Kubernetes cluster. This Quest of hands-on labs gives you practice in using Apigee for API creation and management functionality when you decide to modernize an application backend on Google Kubernetes Engine and an Istio based service mesh.

Kubernetes in the Google Cloud

Kubernetes is the most popular container orchestration system and the Google Kubernetes Engine was designed specifically to support managed Kubernetes deployments in the Google Cloud. In this advanced-level quest, you will get hands-on practice configuring Docker images and containers, and deploying fully-fledged Kubernetes Engine applications. This quest will teach you the practical skills needed for integrating container orchestration into your own workflow.

Challenge: GCP Architecture

This quest of "Challenge Labs" gives the student preparing for the Google Cloud Certified Professional Cloud Architect certification hands-on practice with common business/technology solutions using GCP architectures. Challenge Labs do not provide the "cookbook" steps, but require solutions to be built with minimal guidance, across many GCP technologies. All labs have activity tracking and in order to earn this badge you must score 100% in each lab. This quest is not easy and will put your GCP technology skills to the test. Be aware that while practice with these labs will increase your knowledge and abilities, we recommend additional study, experience, and background in cloud architecture to prepare for this certification.

G Suite: Integrations

This Quest of hands-on labs demonstrates the power of integrating Google Cloud Platform services and tools with G Suite applications. With integration technologies such as App Script and the Clasp Command Line environment, you will create and publish web apps and add-ons for G Suite products: Sheets, Docs, Forms, and Slides. With App Maker you will build a ready-to-use app that has a Google Cloud SQL Database, Google Maps integration, and a Mobile Responsive Design. Other labs create direct connections to GCP data sources-- using the BigQuery API, Sheets, and Slides to collect, analyze and present data.

Networking in the Google Cloud

Networking is a principle theme of cloud computing—it’s the underlying structure of GCP and it’s what connects all your resources and services to one another. This fundamental-level quest will cover essential GCP networking services and will give you hands-on practice with specialized tools for developing mature networks. From learning the ins-and-outs of VPCs, to creating enterprise-grade load balancers, Networking in the Google Cloud will give you the practical experience needed so you can start building robust networks right away.

Data Engineering

This advanced-level quest is unique amongst the other Qwiklabs offerings. The labs have been curated to give IT professionals hands-on practice with topics and services that appear in the Google Cloud Certified Professional Data Engineer Certification. From Big Query, to Dataproc, to Tensorflow, this quest is composed of specific labs that will put your GCP data engineering knowledge to the test. Be aware that while practice with these labs will increase your skills and abilities, you will need other preparation too. The exam is quite challenging and external studying, experience, and/or background in cloud data engineering is recommended.