Google Cloud: resource hierarchy, IAM, logging and billing for administrators
How Google Cloud organizes resources (organization, folders, projects, resources) and how the organization resource relates to Google Workspace and Cloud Identity; regions and zones; IAM principals, basic, predefined and custom roles, allow policies and inheritance; service accounts and why to avoid service account keys; the Organization Policy Service; Cloud Audit Logs; Cloud Monitoring alerting; Cloud Billing accounts, budgets and labels; and VPC firewall rules at concept level.
- Level
- Intermediate
- Length
- About 55 minutes
- Contents
- 3 lessons · 1 video · final exam
- Status
- Published · updated 2 Oct 2026
- Google Cloud
Skills you'll practise
- Explain the Google Cloud resource hierarchy and tell a project ID, project name and project number apart
- Read an IAM allow policy and identify which principals hold which roles, including inherited access
- Choose predefined or custom roles instead of basic roles, and an alternative to service account keys
- Distinguish the Organization Policy Service from IAM and pick the right one for a requirement
- Identify the four Cloud Audit Logs types and which are written by default
- Explain what a Cloud Billing budget does and does not do, and how labels support cost reporting
- Explain implied VPC firewall rules and why a new VM may not accept incoming connections
Course outline
- 1.Google Cloud administration essentialsVideo · 3 min
- 2.The resource hierarchy, projects, regions and zonesLesson · 17 min
- 3.IAM, service accounts and organization policiesLesson · 20 min
- 4.Audit logs, alerting, billing and firewall rulesLesson · 18 min
- 5.Google Cloud: resource hierarchy, IAM, logging and billing for administrators: knowledge checkKnowledge check · 16 questions
- 6.Final exam9 questions · passing it completes the course, so people who already know the material can test out
Sources it draws on
The lessons and questions are written from these references, so learners can go back to the original.
- Google Cloud docs: Resource hierarchy
- Google Cloud docs: Creating and managing organization resources
- Google Cloud docs: Creating and managing projects
- Google Cloud docs: Regions and zones (Compute Engine)
- Google Cloud docs: IAM overview
- Google Cloud docs: Roles and permissions
- Google Cloud docs: Understanding allow policies
- Google Cloud docs: Using resource hierarchy for access control
- Google Cloud docs: Manage access to projects, folders, and organizations
- Google Cloud docs: gcloud projects get-iam-policy
- Google Cloud docs: Service accounts overview
- Google Cloud docs: Best practices for managing service account keys
- Google Cloud docs: Workload Identity Federation
- Google Cloud docs: Introduction to the Organization Policy Service
- Google Cloud docs: Secure by default organizations
And 11 more.
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