Why Compute Engine provides VM flexibility in GCP - See It in Action

Why Compute Engine Provides VM Flexibility

📖 Scenario: You are learning about Google Cloud's Compute Engine and how it allows you to create virtual machines (VMs) that fit your exact needs.Imagine you want to set up a VM for a small website, but later you might need a bigger VM for more users. Compute Engine lets you choose the right size and change it anytime.

🎯 Goal: Build a simple Python dictionary that represents VM configurations showing how Compute Engine provides flexibility by allowing different CPU and memory options.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a dictionary with VM types and their CPU and memory specs

Add a variable to select a VM type

Use a loop to display the selected VM's specs

Add a final statement that confirms the VM configuration

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Cloud engineers often need to choose VM sizes that fit their workload needs without wasting resources. Understanding VM flexibility helps optimize cost and performance.

💼 Career

Knowing how to configure and select VM types is essential for roles like cloud administrator, cloud architect, and DevOps engineer.

1

Create VM configurations dictionary

Create a dictionary called vm_configs with these exact entries: 'small': {'cpu': 1, 'memory': 3.75}, 'medium': {'cpu': 2, 'memory': 7.5}, and 'large': {'cpu': 4, 'memory': 15} representing CPU cores and memory in GB.

GCP

# Create the vm_configs dictionary with specified VM types and specs
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use curly braces to create a dictionary. Each key is a VM type string, and each value is another dictionary with keys 'cpu' and 'memory'.

2

Select a VM type

Create a variable called selected_vm and set it to the string 'medium' to choose the medium VM configuration.

GCP

vm_configs = {
    'small': {'cpu': 1, 'memory': 3.75},
    'medium': {'cpu': 2, 'memory': 7.5},
    'large': {'cpu': 4, 'memory': 15}
}
# Set selected_vm to 'medium'
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Assign the string 'medium' to the variable selected_vm.

3

Display selected VM specs

Use a for loop with variables spec and value to iterate over vm_configs[selected_vm].items() and assign the specs to variables cpu_cores and memory_gb accordingly.

GCP

vm_configs = {
    'small': {'cpu': 1, 'memory': 3.75},
    'medium': {'cpu': 2, 'memory': 7.5},
    'large': {'cpu': 4, 'memory': 15}
}
selected_vm = 'medium'
# Use a for loop to assign cpu_cores and memory_gb from vm_configs[selected_vm]
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Loop over the items of the selected VM's specs dictionary. Use an if-else to assign cpu_cores and memory_gb.

4

Confirm VM configuration

Create a variable called vm_summary and set it to a string that says exactly: "Selected VM 'medium' has 2 CPU cores and 7.5 GB memory."

GCP

vm_configs = {
    'small': {'cpu': 1, 'memory': 3.75},
    'medium': {'cpu': 2, 'memory': 7.5},
    'large': {'cpu': 4, 'memory': 15}
}
selected_vm = 'medium'
for spec, value in vm_configs[selected_vm].items():
    if spec == 'cpu':
        cpu_cores = value
    elif spec == 'memory':
        memory_gb = value
# Create vm_summary string with exact text
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Assign the exact string to vm_summary using double quotes and single quotes as shown.