GCP free tier and credits - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Understanding GCP Free Tier and Credits

📖 Scenario: You are starting to learn Google Cloud Platform (GCP). You want to understand how the free tier and credits work so you can try services without unexpected costs.

🎯 Goal: Build a simple GCP project setup that shows how to track free tier usage and apply credits to your billing account.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a dictionary called free_tier_services with exact service names and their free tier limits

Add a variable called monthly_credits with the exact value of 300

Write a function called calculate_remaining_credits that takes used_credits and returns remaining credits

Add a final configuration dictionary called billing_info that includes free_tier_services, monthly_credits, and a sample used_credits value

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Cloud users and developers often track free tier limits and credits to avoid unexpected charges.

💼 Career

Understanding cloud billing basics is essential for cloud engineers, developers, and IT managers to optimize costs.

1

Create the free tier services dictionary

Create a dictionary called free_tier_services with these exact entries: 'Compute Engine': '1 f1-micro instance per month', 'Cloud Storage': '5 GB standard storage', 'BigQuery': '1 TB queries per month'

GCP

# Create the free_tier_services dictionary with exact entries
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a Python dictionary with the exact keys and values given.

2

Add monthly credits variable

Add a variable called monthly_credits and set it to the integer 300 representing the $300 free credit amount.

GCP

free_tier_services = {
    'Compute Engine': '1 f1-micro instance per month',
    'Cloud Storage': '5 GB standard storage',
    'BigQuery': '1 TB queries per month'
}
# Add the monthly_credits variable below
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Just assign the number 300 to the variable monthly_credits.

3

Write function to calculate remaining credits

Write a function called calculate_remaining_credits that takes one parameter used_credits and returns the remaining credits by subtracting used_credits from monthly_credits.

GCP

free_tier_services = {
    'Compute Engine': '1 f1-micro instance per month',
    'Cloud Storage': '5 GB standard storage',
    'BigQuery': '1 TB queries per month'
}

monthly_credits = 300

# Define calculate_remaining_credits function below
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Define a function with one parameter and return the difference.

4

Create billing info dictionary

Create a dictionary called billing_info with keys 'free_tier_services', 'monthly_credits', and 'used_credits'. Set 'free_tier_services' to the free_tier_services dictionary, 'monthly_credits' to the monthly_credits variable, and 'used_credits' to the integer 120.

GCP

free_tier_services = {
    'Compute Engine': '1 f1-micro instance per month',
    'Cloud Storage': '5 GB standard storage',
    'BigQuery': '1 TB queries per month'
}

monthly_credits = 300

def calculate_remaining_credits(used_credits):
    return monthly_credits - used_credits

# Create billing_info dictionary below
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a dictionary with the exact keys and values as described.