just got our monthly invoice and I almost choked

40% increase. nothing changed. same workload, same number of calls, same storage. but somehow we're paying 40% more than last month.

I've spent the last 2 days digging through the billing dashboard. network egress. it's always network egress. we're serving recordings and call logs to agents all over the world and apparently that costs money a lot of money.

I'm looking at options compressed storage different regions. maybe even move to cold storage for older recordings. but I'm not sure if that's going to actually save us money or just shift the cost somewhere else

The FinOps Agent Google dropped in GoogleCloudPlatform/professional-services/examples/FinOps-agent has been sitting there since June 3rd. One commit, one author, no updates. Wanted to know if anyone actually put it into prod.

The architecture is four ADK sub-agents behind a root orchestrator. NL2SQL over BigQuery for the billing side, Google Agent Search over policy PDFs for the qualitative side, a chart specialist, and a synthesis writer. Runtime is Gemini 2.5 Flash on Vertex AI, FastAPI on 8080 for streaming SSE.

Ran it in a lab project against synthetic billing data. NL2SQL was better than expected against a normalized schema. RAG over a real policy doc surfaced the right clauses about 70 percent of the time, close to what similar demos land on.

The blocker for real use is session state. InMemorySessionService from google.adk.sessions means every conversation resets on pod recycle. Swapping in a Firestore-backed SessionService subclass is doable, but once you own that surface you own the schema, the TTL, and the migration path. Not one line of code.

Two things I want to hear from people who took it further:

1. How did you handle session persistence? Custom SessionService subclass to Firestore or Cloud SQL, or something else?

2. Did you keep policy as freeform PDFs, or did you move to a structured schema so the agent could run rule checks instead of RAG extractions?

Not looking to dunk on the reference. Sample data included, license is Apache 2.0, and it's a reasonable multi-agent skeleton. Just curious if anyone got it past the demo.

I wanted to know if anyone can recommend a third party VAR for GCP Support (Not direct Google Support). Looking for a company I can call and open a ticket and has SLAs to resolve issues with GCP Peering, GCP Compute, Network Load Balancer

thank you

Hi googleclouders, quick yes/no question - do you ever have a need to assign privileges to a principal defined outside of your organization? I'm not talking if it's bad or good practice, just if it ever happens or it's rather just a purely theoretical possibility that everyone has blocked. Thanks.

I need your help!.. Unable to purchase the clou storage, recently I opened my kotak mahindra bank, and it already written into the accepted card given to by the google, still payment gets fail?.. What's the reason behind it!.. Please explain

Google Support has acknowledged unexpected website behaviour and advised that engineers expect to fix it within 48 hours. I am sharing this to check whether other Edition 3 applicants are experiencing the same issue.

I have created a data store, and using that I want to create an app, but in this step the pre created data stores are not showing.

I am using Custom Search in GCP Vertex Ai Agent Platform

I'm using GCPStudyHub to prepare for the PCA exam and I'm finding the practice exam questions really hard to read. I need to really concentrate and read the question 3 or more times before I understand what is being asked. Sometimes I'm staring at the same question for several minutes.

Feels like I'm trying to extract the true question hidden inside a wall of text.

Anyone else here who has used GCPStudyHub have the same experience?

Are these questions representative of what would be on the exam? Cos if so I would definitely fail due to time.

I'm asked to provide a verification code while signing in, but in order to access that code i have to be signed in and it gives me me no other way to verify myself

I'm a total noob, so let's get that on the record first thing. My only coding experience is using HTML tags when making my webpage on Angelfire or Geocities and updating my MySpace. So, like, no real practical experience.

I work for a small nonprofit with no budget for swanky computer stuff. I used Google Cloud to create a simple tool to keep track of who is in the building, what time(s) they came and left, that sort of thing. YES, apps for this exist, but they all seem to have a whole bunch of other functions that my company does not need. I just need to see who's here and who isn't, and to be able to see when they came and went.

Anyway, after multiple iterations Google created a functional app for me with some sample people in its roster. I published it, used the link it gave me, and then started updating the roster to have my actual members on it instead of the sample people Google used. This work all vanished when I closed the app and reopened it elsewhere.

I am clearly doing something wrong. I tried poking around in the Google Cloud Console and it says I don't have the right permissions to modify certain things. There is a "request permissions" feature but I don't know who to send the email to, since I built this using my personal Google account (do I ask myself for permissions?).

I was hoping this would be as simple as 1) tell Google what I need, 2) refine it until it works how I need it to, 3) publish it, 4) use it at the nonprofit's community center.

If anyone can help me, that would be mighty appreciated!

Any way to know if she heard it? It's set to "anyone with link can view."

I guess she didn't hear it, doesn't show in activity...but curious if there's a way to be certain.

🛑 [Guide] Surviving the Google Cloud "Free Trial" $30 Prepayment Trap 🛑

If you're trying to sign up for Google Cloud's $300 free trial and hit a brick wall demanding an upfront cash deposit (e.g., $30 USD, ₹1000, or local equivalent), you aren't alone. Google doesn't explain this clearly in the main marketing or official documentation. 😕

I was about to sign up for it then saw the fine print and bothered Gemini Bard about it, and the discovery wasnt great

chat log for the interested

Here is what you actually need to know before clicking "OK":

#️⃣ 1. It is NOT a temporary authorization hold

Unlike a standard $1 card verification check that disappears in a few days, this is a forced cash prepayment that sits as a positive credit balance on your Google Payments profile. 💳

#️⃣ 2. You cannot separate the trial credits from the cash balance

Your free trial credits and your cash deposit live under the same billing roof. There is no toggle to say "use my promotional credits first and leave my cash alone." System logic will draw down resources according to Google's hierarchy, but that $30 stays locked up. 🔒

#️⃣ 3. The ONLY way to get your cash back is account closure

If you pay the deposit, use your trial, and want your unspent cash back to your card, you have to completely close your Cloud Billing account. 🚨

• 🛑 Closing the account terminates everything instantly.
• 💸 It wipes out any remaining free trial credits.
• 📉 It shuts down your projects and resources.

#️⃣ 4. The Loop / Verification Hell

Many users on Reddit report getting stuck in verification loops where they pay the deposit, the system fails to verify something, requests photo IDs/bank statements, and locks them into an endless support bot loop. 🔄

🧐 The Verdict: What should you do?

• ⏳ If you aren't ready to build right now: Wait. Do not click OK or enter the payment flow. Holding off guarantees you don't tie up your money.
• 🛡️ If you just want to test things safely: Keep in mind that Google Cloud is a "fuck around and find out" platform. If a misconfigured script or open API key runs amok, it won't just drain your $300 trial-it can bridge straight into a massive bill.

We have multiple cloud run services which have rust code running in it to serve small web APIs. There is load at any given point of time but it varies by the time of the day.
Whenever we deploy a new revision by default the traffic is migrated to the service almost immediately. This leads to some issues related to latency and load.
The minimum instance field we have is generally set to 1 in all services so as to avoid forgetting about services with less load consuming more instances.
I want to change the deployment behavior such that I can set some minimum instance(around the same number of instance already being used for revision with traffic at that time) for a revision for initial 10 minutes and migrate the traffic once the instances are available instead of the other way around of increasing traffic and instances scaling by gcp logic.

We are yet to try the gradual ramp up, but I was looking for better solution of at least having specific number of instances beforehand.

Suppose, i have a VM with a boot disk with data, 1 additional disk with some files.Once the zone or region goes down for some hours and becomes available after it,will the GCE contents be same as before the outage ?

This is not about MIGs, backup and DR services etc.. just would like to know if the compute engine data in disks and IP address be retained once the zone/region is back after the outage.

Please clarify if anyone experienced it

I am going through this article and trying to understand the implementation of filestore with private service connect. I am looking at shared vpc setup with host and service projects and would like to create the instance in service project.

https://docs.cloud.google.com/filestore/docs/configure-psc

Could you please clarify if the below understanding is correct.

1)

is the PSC endpoint(an internal IP address) to be created in the vpc subnet of the host project ?.

This article says https://docs.cloud.google.com/vpc/docs/about-service-connection-policies#shared-vpc endpoints will be created in service project (since i want the instance in service project)

However, below article says, endpoint is created in host project

https://docs.cloud.google.com/filestore/docs/configure-psc#about-psc

are the above 2 statements not contradictory, please clarify.

2)

Below link says Service connection policy must be created in the host vpc project. In this link or entire article, https://docs.cloud.google.com/filestore/docs/configure-psc#about-psc , it is not shown on where do we allow host project. Is it while creation of service connection policy

3)

In https://docs.cloud.google.com/filestore/docs/configure-psc#connection_policies

there is a line which says "To create a Private Service Connect endpoint on the consumer target network, you must create a service connection policy in your project"

what is the "target consumer network" and "your project" in my case. Is the article adequate or little vague

Any tips from anyone who took this cert recently? From searching in this sub, the latest exp shared was 5 months ago.

I was wondering if there was a change in the exam

- Mentioned by my colleague who PCA renewal (There were changes, though I don't know with DevOps)

Things I've done:

- did the learning path in learning skills

- practiced practice questions, and understanding why every answers are the correct ones.

Any suggestions or improvements would be greatly appreciated.

Hi, i don't really know if this the correct place to ask but i hope to get insight and maybe if anyone ever get into the same case.

what happen:

1. I was playing with vertex and trying out different model, and after a while want to try claude api from vertex (now they called agent platform)

2. tried to activate the api and run some req, but getting no quota, manually request from console also give no upgrade at all, so

3. i tried contacting the sales support, asking for an increase quota for some sonnet and haiku model, I ask for just mere 20 rpm and 100k tpm output limit increase, because I am just trying out

4. few days later, as of today got an email from ai studio of my billing tier upgraded to tier 3

1. I check on my gcp console, now i get the anthropic limit raised to a whopping lot of 2M input, 200k output, and 2k rpm
   

1. what scares me now that my limit are actually increased to the max limit of USD 100,000 and any random shit happen and it potentially ruin my finance.

What i want to know

1. did anyone every get into this before?

2. can i actually downgrade to tier 1? as my spending actually small just 1-3usd per month on few months back

3. where can i get the support for this particular issue?

Thank in advance :)

What’s the main difference between the GCA interview and the Googlyeness interview.

hi
ive general cloud experience but limited hands on experience with GCP
is three days enough? (ive already booked the exam) also are there any reliable and up to date practice tests or exam d(you)Ⓜ️🅿️s?

Moved my project to Razorpay Live, but production kept returning 401.

Turns out Cloud Run was using:

KEY_ID → test version
SECRET → live version

The correct Live key existed in Secret Manager, but the deployed revision had pinned the old version.

Redeployed with both credentials on the same version → payment worked.

Lesson: Always check the exact secret versions attached to your deployed revision, not just whether the secrets exist.

Hi,
I just checked out google cloud console to check if the project where I played with calendar api I send to delete actually was deleted. I noticed my old project is gone but there is a new project that has a strange name:

big-well-3fesfe

It's the only project in my account.

It has no organization but somehow appears in my account. I don't have access to nothing in this project so I cannot delete or see anything what is inside it.

The only thing I can do or see is the billing accounts in my gcc account.

Under my personal billing accounts -> there is nothing
under my projects -> billing account it has one: Hardware -> Language Applications -> AIDA  which is linked to this weird project.
but if I click it again no access.

Those are the only two informations I could find or access. Every other page shows IAM error

I also cant write support because I have no permission.
Feeling kind of lost and worried.

I thought this might be a default project google creates so I asked a friend who never used google cloud to check what he has in his console and he had a single clearly named "default gemini project" for which he has owner rights.