PCA-4 Quick, GCP Professional Architect - OpEx/CapEx, TCO, Capacity, Utilization, LAN & Data Center - YouTube

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It's very important to the process of understanding Google Cloud and passing the
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certification exam, that you go through the question and attempt answering it
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yourself first. So pause the video, work through the question, we'll catch up in just
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a little while and I'll show you how I do it.
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This project scenario is based on the TerramEarth case study. Which of TerramEarth's
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legacy enterprise processes will experience significant change as a
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result of increased Google Cloud Platform adoption? We're given a list
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of items, and we need to figure out which of these items is going to cause a
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significant change in the new process after adopting Google Cloud Platform as
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opposed to the legacy enterprise processes. The way we'll approach this is
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to list out each of the items, and then figure out if there's been or if there's
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expected to be a change from the legacy process. First one, OpEx and CapEx.
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What are these things? CapEx is capital expenditure. The amount
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or the expenditure that you have to do when starting out the business for
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usually large ticket items. For example setting up a data center, buying a large
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number of machines, doing all the networking, these are things that need to
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be done right at the start to even get the basic business moving. So the cost of
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this is going to be quite high, but its payoff is going to be over a long period
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of time. OpEx on the other hand, is operational expenditure. The cost of
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running the business on a daily basis. With traditional systems, we are going to
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have a large CapEx because we need to plan for buildings, networking and
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emissions. Whereas on the Cloud, somebody else is doing that for us.
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So as a company, we don't need to bother as much about CapEx especially when it
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compares to just the technical diplomats. OpEx on the other hand is expected
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to increase, because unlike the CapEx which you've bought once and then you
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can use it to the hilt, OpEx is going to increase based on usage. So the Cloud
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is pay/use, therefore the more you use your operational expenditure is going to increase.
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And if you use less it is going to reduce from that. But overall, the
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operational expenditure for Cloud use is going to be higher than what it would be
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for legacy enterprises. So is there a change? My answer is a strong yes for this.
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LAN change management, we won't have to deal with LAN changes on the Cloud.
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Somebody else is going to take care of
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that for us, in this case the Google Cloud. So this task is
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now entirely eliminated or is way less. We still need to find out and understand
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how the VPC works, how the Virtual Private Cloud works and we need to plan
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for it. But overall LAN changes is not going to be a headache. So is there going
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to be significant change because of that? My answer is yes, there is going to be
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the huge drop. How about Capacity planning? Capacity planning is required so that we
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can acquire the resources that will meet peak demand. On the Cloud, we don't have
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to necessarily plan for peak capacity or resources because it can scale as
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required. So our capacity planning requirements are going to drop
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significantly, because the provisioning can happen automatically based on
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increase in requests and in load. Is Capacity planning completely eliminated?
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The answer would be no, we still need to have a fair amount of planning for this so
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that we can budget for how much we are going to spend. So for things like
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that, use the Google Cloud Pricing Calculator, and we can estimate the
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budget that we need to set aside for adpoting whatever solutions we choose
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within Google Cloud. Overall, is there a change in capacity planning? My answer's yes.
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How about TCO calculations? Our total cost of ownership involves other things
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like OpEx and CapEx, LAN management, the people who are going to be working on
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the project, allocation of some of these resources. So there is still going to be
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TCO calculations that need to be done. The line items might vary a bit, the
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value of those line items might change, but I think the process of doing TCO
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calculations is still going to be there. So I could argue that there is not much
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of a change there, but there is going to be some change. So this might not be a
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strong change, but there's at least some weak change. Maybe later in comparison to
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the other points, we can eliminate one of these. How about Utilization measurement?
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Now, utilization and capacity planning are kind of related according to me.
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If there is going to be a lot of utilization, we need to plan for capacity
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accordingly. But in the case of Cloud, we don't need
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to plan as much for capacity in advance, we can scale as it is required. So utilization
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measurement is not going to have big impact, however we still need to plan for
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it to an extent. But that information is also given to us to quite an extent by
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Google Cloud, using the logs, using Stack Driver Monitoring, we are able to get
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instrumentation and information about how our resources are being utilized. So
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is the task of utilization measurement reduced? I would say the answer is yes.
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It is automatically provided, or it is available to us via solutions like
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Stack Driver, and we don't need to do as much. Moreover, our utilization will
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directly impact the resource allocation because
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we could use Load Balancers and Automatic Scaling to achieve this.
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Therefore, I don't believe there's going to be as much a need to spend time in
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utilization measurement as we did on legacy systems. So therefore, is there a change?
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My answer is again yes. How about data centre expansion? I think this
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is a clear yes. We won't need to be managing data centers anymore. We have
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passed on the burden of that to Google Cloud in this case, and we can
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drastically or completely eliminate those taska. Therefore there's a
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significant change in data center expansion too. Given all these
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conclusions that I have drawn based on my argument, let's go see which option
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we can choose now. The only thing we have been able to kind of eliminate is
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any option with TCO calculations, which is option B and D.
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It's arguable that there is going to be a significant
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change in all three of options A and C. What we are going to do now is go back
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to these line items and see if we can argue it harder, or figure out if there
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is a particular part of the question that is being answered. What do they mean
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when they say there's a significant change? Are they asking for any change, or
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are they asking for a significant drop alone. If it's an increase, maybe that's
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not something we're interested in, but we only want to see if there is a drop.
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It's obviously not clear from the question because it just says, is there a
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significant change? But given that we are not able to eliminate the remaining
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options, we are going to have to reconsider this question. Let's start
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with the bottom in this case. Data center expansion, is there a huge change?
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The answer is yes. But it's a significant drop and not an increase.
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So based on our new argument that we're looking for only things which causes an increase,
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I would say the answer is no. There is a change, but it's not an increase.
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On a similar note, we can also say no to LAN change management
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because there's significant drop, we won't have to bother about LAN change
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management anymore. So LAN change management and data center expansion are very similar,
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and therefore both have to be known. If any one is known, the other one has to be known.
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Similarly, for capacity planning and
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utilization measurement, is there a change? My argument originally was, yes
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there is a change, but both of these are a significant drop. It is not an increase.
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So if we're taking the approach that the question maybe means a significant
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increase of change, we are going to have to eliminate both capacity planning and
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utilization measurement. Now going back to the options, what do we have?
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There are absolutely none. At least one of them eliminates all of
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the different answer options that we have. This question has been one of the
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toughest that I have seen on the practice exams.
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The problem with this question has been that because it is a little soft
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argument, you can probably argue it whichever way you want. You could
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probably answer it in another way and come up with a completely different
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answer and I can come up with something else. Maybe the person who planned this
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question or who wrote this question had something completely different in mind.
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But I'm very interested to know what is the answer that you came up with when you
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went through this question yourself. For me, even though I finally found out the
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right answer looking at the Google practice exam, I still have been unable
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to figure out what should be the right answer in this case. So even after
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knowing the correct final answer, I am not able to come up
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with arguments that validate or corroborate that.
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Yet let's try out what's the next step. Now, for me something like data center
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expansion is a clear indication that there is a change but it is a positive
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change. So I'm just going to eliminate data center expansion, just because I'm
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in this weird situation now where I've got nowhere to go, I'm having to clutch
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at straws, and say okay maybe data center expansion is a clear out and
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therefore, anything with that I'm going to eliminate. So for me C and D is out,
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and probably it's going to be one of A and B. What do we have in A and B now?
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Having eliminated data center expansion in both, let's look at what we have as strong
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positives in the other two. Now OpEx and CapEx is there in both and we already
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said it was strong yes for a change. There is an increase in OpEx and a
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decrease in CapEx, but it works under circumstances. Capacity planning, it
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didn't work for us really, but both of them have capacity planning so we are
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going to assume that both of these are fine. Whoever thought of this question,
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maybe they saw huge difference in capacity planning and that's fair. So we
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are left with the remaining two now, LAN change management and TCO calculations.
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For me, in LAN change management there is a huge change. We don't have to do that at all.
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Similar to the idea of data center expansion, this is not our concern.
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TCO calculations, my argument was that, yes there are some changes but the line
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items are going to be similar with difference in the values. So my vote is
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for LAN change management, that it changes significantly and TCO
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calculations not so much. So I'm going to go for option A with the arguments that I've
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have placed in front of you, and hopefully you have come up with some
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answer yourself too.
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However, the right answer according to the practice exam is option B.
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Capacity planning, TCO calculations and OpEx/CapEx allocation is apparently
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the significant change as a result of increased GCP adoption compared to
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legacy enterprise processes. Like I said, even after knowing the answer I cannot
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come up with arguments that corroborate that or that support ths. So honestly, I
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don't know how to deal with this particular question and hopefully
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we won't get questions like this in the exam, but if you've got a different
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argument to it that you think is better and suppose option B, I would like to
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hear it. Again, wishing you the best on the exam and hoping you won't get a vague
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question like this without a clear question, and without possibly clear
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options or options that you can argue for and against equally. It's something
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that I do not wish on you. If you thought that content is great, you
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absolutely must check out all our new upcoming content. So subscribe, right away!