GCP – The overwhelmed person’s guide to Google Cloud: week of November 14
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New and shiny
Three new things to know this week
- Ground Gemini’s answers with Google Search in Vertex AI and Google AI Studio. There’s brand new support in Google AI Studio for connecting the Gemini model’s output to verifiable sources of data through Google Search. This functionality is already part of Vertex AI, but both platforms now support dynamic retrieval. This means that grounding only happens if we predict that the query needs it. See how it works in Vertex AI, and learn how to get started in Google AI Studio.
- Use Google’s own Arm-based CPUs. The Axion CPU is now ready for you! Get some excellent price performance and better energy efficiency by deploying C4A VMs powered by our first Arm-based processors.
- Business process automation service gets AI upgrade, increased sophistication. It’s likely flying below your radar, but take a look at Google Cloud Application Integration. You can model out workflows for connecting systems in all sorts of ways. There’s now Gemini Code Assist functionality to help you build integrations, model out data transformations, create test cases, and even apply complex retry strategies.
- Build and Deploy Gen AI Applications on Google Cloud with Genkit and Go. Join us on November 19th for a hands-on workshop to build and deploy a generative AI app on Google Cloud! Use Genkit, Vertex AI, and Go to create and automate a reusable app deployment pipeline—perfect for beginners and pros alike.
Watch this
Learn advanced RAG techniques. Watch this excellent video series to get up to speed on LLM fundamentals. This edition looks at retrieval augmented generation and enhancing quality of responses.
Community cuts
Every week I round up some of my favorite links from builders around the Google Cloud-iverse. Want to see your blog or video in the next issue? Drop Richard a line!
- “Perfect” is a strong word, but yeah, we’re pretty good. Simon at SADA makes the case that you should be looking at Google Cloud for your AI work because of our models, security posture, tools, and expertise. Who am I to disagree?
- Build an ETL pipeline locally and then transition to the cloud. Thomas looks at the exercise of taking a working data pipeline and using our data and compute services to get it running successfully in Google Cloud.
- What exactly is Firebase? It’s been part of Google for a while and is used by mobile devs around the world. Now it’s appealing to new audiences, and this post from Hermant explains what it offers to modern developers.
Learn and grow
- In-person Workshop! AI In Action – AlloyDB and Vertex AI Agent Builder. Level up your AI skills with a hands-on journey in building knowledge-driven chat applications! Dive into AlloyDB and Vertex AI Agent Builder to create intelligent, interactive customer solutions. Sign up now! New York – 11/20, Toronto – 11/22, Bay Area – 12/3, Seattle – 12/5.
- Let’s modernize our old apps. Here’s a great code lab that walks you through, step-by-step, the process to modernize an old PHP app. Learn what it takes to containerize the app, automate the path to production, add generative AI features, and introduce modern operations.
- Running Apache Airflow? You have choices. If you’re orchestrating data, there’s a good chance you’ve come across Apache Airflow. This post points out that you can run it yourself on VMs, use a more managed GKE environment, or embrace a fully managed service with Cloud Composer.
- Cloud Workstations is ready for devs in government. You deserve nice things, wherever you may work. Those in restricted environments sometimes have to settle for less. But now, Cloud Workstations is FedRAMP High Authorized. Curious about Cloud Workstations? Stanal has a good new overview post.
- Standard storage format, and all the BigQuery goodness. We just shipped a preview of BigQuery tables for Apache Iceberg. Use this open format to store data, but get all the lakehouse goodness that BigQuery offers.
One more thing
Gemini is used across Google to create helpful AI experiences. Jeff highlights Sundar’s message about the billions of Google users with access to Gemini.
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