Cost and Utilization
Once things are running, you optimize what you pay and how hard resources work. GCP surfaces machine-generated recommendations so you don't hunt for waste by hand.
Active Assist recommendations
Active Assist is the family of automatic recommenders. The main ones for the exam:
- VM rightsizing (machine type) - "this VM is oversized, shrink it."
- Idle resource recommenders - idle VMs, unattached persistent disks, idle IP addresses, idle Cloud SQL instances.
- Committed use discount (CUD) recommender - suggests commitments based on your steady usage.
- IAM recommender - flags over-granted roles and suggests least-privilege.
Active Assist surfaces a recommendation - it doesn't resize or delete anything by itself. You (or an automation you build) must apply it. "Automatically detect an oversized VM" = rightsizing recommender; acting on it is a separate step.
Committed use discounts (context)
CUDs trade a 1-year or 3-year commitment for a discount on steady-state usage; distinct from sustained use discounts (automatic, for running a VM much of the month) and preemptible/Spot (cheap, can be reclaimed).
Cloud Hub
Cloud Hub is a central operations console giving a cross-project overview of workloads, health, incidents, and cost/utilization signals in one place - the "single pane of glass" for operating your GCP estate.