Running Kubernetes well is deceptively hard. The control plane is just the beginning — you still have to care about node pool sizing, OS patching, add-on upgrades, autoscaler tuning, CNI compatibility, observability, and a hundred other things that have nothing to do with your actual workloads. Both AWS and Google Cloud have responded to this with “managed mode” cluster variants: EKS Auto Mode and GKE Autopilot. The pitch is the same: hand us the node layer and we’ll keep it running, just the way you they like.

All my projects start in the same manner, a cool little script, an idea or technology I want to work with or just something curious to me. The literal second I have something compiling I (or the AI Model of the week) would make a Dockerfile for it.

However, a while ago I was working with Google’s BuildPacks, a way to containerize applications for Google Services supporting Multiple languages. I pulled the latest version and …..

The following are my notes / thoughts and guide to passing the Google Cloud Architecture exam in 2026.

I am unable to post direct questions / examples / answers I can only talk through tips, advice, tricks and topics I found useful.

ANY Listed examples/answers are made by myself based on how I interpret Google’s documentation and how I would answer such a situation!

Helpful links:

As always please refer to the exam certification page for details and guidelines: https://cloud.google.com/learn/certification/cloud-architect

I have always worked with or in Cloud/Platform teams aspiring to charge back developers for the cost of the cloud resources they consume, but I have never seen it effectively implemented. And while I do not encourage a blameful FinOps team hunting down teams for deploying a first cut application that reached high customer engagement. It is nice when others are mindful to help correctly size an application, opt for scheduling their instances and checking queries/APIs before rushing ahead.

This is the first post while building out the website, a lot will change over the coming weeks as I add:

• Better CI/CD
• AWS Hosting not just GCP
• SRE Monitoring and Clear Objectives (I love bringing chaos to systems I build)
• Open up the Github Repository
• Add interesting things I have noted over my last 5 years while consulting DevOps/Cloud/Platform Engineering

Where are we now?

Right now this website was built by a backend engineer (Who has some growing respect to front-end devs), built in Hugo, using Bootstrap 5.3 in the base template written again by the very same backend engineer, currently hosting out of Google Cloud Platform (GCP).