Home Courses Google Cloud Platform in 5 Days Day 1
Day 01 Foundations

IAM, Projects, and the GCP Hierarchy

GCP organizations, folders, projects, and the IAM model that binds them. Service accounts, roles, and the principle of least privilege applied to real cloud architectures.

~1 hour Intermediate Hands-on Precision AI Academy

Today's Objective

GCP organizations, folders, projects, and the IAM model that binds them. Service accounts, roles, and the principle of least privilege applied to real cloud architectures.

01

Resource Hierarchy

GCP organizes resources in a hierarchy: Organization → Folder → Project → Resource. Most developers start at the Project level. Each project has its own billing, APIs, and permissions.

gcloud CLI Setup
# Install: cloud.google.com/sdk
gcloud init
gcloud auth login
gcloud config set project YOUR_PROJECT_ID

# Useful commands
gcloud projects list
gcloud services list --enabled
gcloud services enable compute.googleapis.com
gcloud config list
Enable APIs
# APIs must be enabled before use
gcloud services enable \
  run.googleapis.com \
  storage.googleapis.com \
  bigquery.googleapis.com \
  aiplatform.googleapis.com
💡
Set a billing budget alert in the GCP console (Billing → Budgets) before experimenting. GCP free tier covers most of this course, but mistakes can generate charges. Set an alert at $5.
📝 Day 1 Exercise
Create Your First GCP Project
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Day 1 Summary

Next →
Day 2: Compute: Cloud Run and GCE
→

What's Next

The foundations from today carry directly into Day 2. In the next session the focus shifts to Compute Engine and Kubernetes — building directly on everything covered here.

Supporting Videos & Reading

Go deeper with these external references.

YouTube
IAM, Projects, and the GCP Hierarchy — Video Walkthroughs Community tutorials and walkthroughs covering the concepts in this lesson.
→
YouTube
IAM, Projects, and the GCP Hierarchy Explained Deep-dive explanations and live-coding sessions from top educators.
→
Official Docs
Official Documentation Primary reference documentation for the technologies covered in this lesson.
→
GitHub
Open Source Examples Real-world codebases demonstrating the patterns taught in this lesson.
→

Day 1 Checkpoint

Before moving on, verify you can answer these without looking:

  • What is the core concept introduced in this lesson, and why does it matter?
  • What are the two or three most common mistakes practitioners make with this topic?
  • Can you explain the key code pattern from this lesson to a colleague in plain language?
  • What would break first if you skipped the safeguards or best practices described here?
  • How does today's topic connect to what comes in Day 2?
Continue To Day 2
Day 2: Compute: Cloud Run and GCE
→