Exam Essentials

Know the major storage system types, including caches, persistent disks, and object storage. Caches are used to improve application performance by reducing the need to read from databases on disk. Caches are limited by the amount of available memory. Persistent disks are network devices that are attached to VMs. Persistent disks may be attached to multiple VMs in read-only mode. Object storage is used for storing files for shared access and long-term storage.

Know the major kinds of data models. Relational databases are used for transaction processing systems that require transaction support and strong consistency. Cloud SQL and Cloud Spanner are relational databases used for transaction processing applications. BigQuery uses a relational model but is designed for data warehouses and analytics. The object model is an alternative to a file system model. Objects, stored as files, are treated as atomic units. NoSQL data models include document data models and wide-column...