GCP Resource Optimizer

Maximize value from GCP resources and credits through strategic allocation.

Credit Burn Strategy

Credit Expiration Planning

When managing expiring credits:

1. Audit current usage: gcloud billing accounts describe ACCOUNT_ID
2. Calculate burn rate: Total credits ÷ Days remaining = Required daily spend
3. Identify high-value uses: What creates lasting value vs. ephemeral compute?

High-Value Credit Uses

Lasting value (prioritize):

• Training ML models (artifacts persist)
• Building container images
• Generating datasets
• Running batch processing on accumulated work

Ephemeral (use strategically):

• Compute instances (gone when shut down)
• Development environments
• Testing infrastructure

Cost Optimization Patterns

Compute Engine

Right-sizing instances:

# Check recommendations
gcloud recommender recommendations list \
  --project=PROJECT_ID \
  --location=ZONE \
  --recommender=google.compute.instance.MachineTypeRecommender

Cost-effective machine types:

Need	Recommended	Why
General workload	e2-medium	Best price/performance
Memory-intensive	n2-highmem	Better RAM ratio
CPU burst	e2-micro/small	Burstable, cheap
ML training	n1 + GPU	Required for accelerators
Spot-tolerant	Spot VMs	60-91% discount

Preemptible/Spot VMs:

• 60-91% cheaper than standard
• Can be terminated with 30s notice
• Good for: batch jobs, fault-tolerant workloads, development
• Bad for: production, stateful services

Cloud Run

Optimizing Cloud Run:

# Minimize cold starts and costs
spec:
  template:
    spec:
      containerConcurrency: 80  # Maximize requests per instance
      timeoutSeconds: 300
    metadata:
      annotations:
        autoscaling.knative.dev/minScale: '0'  # Scale to zero
        autoscaling.knative.dev/maxScale: '10'  # Cap costs
        run.googleapis.com/cpu-throttling: 'true'  # CPU only when processing

Cloud Storage

Storage class optimization:

Class	Use Case	Cost/GB/mo
Standard	Frequent access	~$0.020
Nearline	Monthly access	~$0.010
Coldline	Quarterly access	~$0.004
Archive	Yearly access	~$0.0012

Lifecycle rules:

{
  "lifecycle": {
    "rule": [
      {
        "action": {"type": "SetStorageClass", "storageClass": "NEARLINE"},
        "condition": {"age": 30}
      },
      {
        "action": {"type": "SetStorageClass", "storageClass": "COLDLINE"},
        "condition": {"age": 90}
      },
      {
        "action": {"type": "Delete"},
        "condition": {"age": 365}
      }
    ]
  }
}

BigQuery

Cost control:

-- Set maximum bytes billed
#standardSQL
-- @maximumBytesBilled 10000000000
SELECT * FROM dataset.table

Partitioning for cost reduction:

CREATE TABLE dataset.table
PARTITION BY DATE(timestamp_column)
CLUSTER BY user_id
AS SELECT * FROM source_table

Budget Alerts

Set up budget alerts:

gcloud billing budgets create \
  --billing-account=BILLING_ACCOUNT_ID \
  --display-name="Monthly Budget" \
  --budget-amount=100USD \
  --threshold-rule=percent=50 \
  --threshold-rule=percent=90 \
  --threshold-rule=percent=100

Resource Cleanup

Find Unused Resources

# Unused disks
gcloud compute disks list --filter="NOT users:*"

# Unused IPs
gcloud compute addresses list --filter="status=RESERVED"

# Idle VMs (by CPU)
gcloud monitoring time-series list \
  --filter='metric.type="compute.googleapis.com/instance/cpu/utilization"' \
  --interval="start=2024-01-01T00:00:00Z"

Cleanup Script

#!/bin/bash
# cleanup_unused.sh - Review before running!

# List (don't delete) unused resources
echo "=== Unused Disks ==="
gcloud compute disks list --filter="NOT users:*" --format="table(name,zone,sizeGb)"

echo "=== Reserved IPs ==="
gcloud compute addresses list --filter="status=RESERVED" --format="table(name,region,address)"

echo "=== Snapshots older than 30 days ==="
gcloud compute snapshots list --filter="creationTimestamp<$(date -d '30 days ago' -Iseconds)" --format="table(name,diskSizeGb,creationTimestamp)"

Architecture Patterns for Cost

Serverless-First

Request → Cloud Run → Firestore → Done
         (scales to zero)  (pay per op)

vs.

Request → GKE → Cloud SQL → Done
         (always running)  (always running)

Batch Processing

Pub/Sub → Cloud Functions → BigQuery (batch load)
                           (cheaper than streaming)

Development vs Production

Dev environment:

• Spot/preemptible VMs
• Smaller machine types
• Scale-to-zero services
• Shared resources

Prod environment:

• Committed use discounts (1-3 year)
• Right-sized dedicated instances
• Redundancy only where needed

Monitoring Setup

# Enable billing export to BigQuery
gcloud beta billing accounts describe ACCOUNT_ID

# Query costs
#standardSQL
SELECT
  service.description,
  SUM(cost) as total_cost
FROM `project.dataset.gcp_billing_export_v1_*`
WHERE _PARTITIONTIME >= TIMESTAMP_SUB(CURRENT_TIMESTAMP(), INTERVAL 30 DAY)
GROUP BY 1
ORDER BY 2 DESC

References

• references/pricing-cheatsheet.md - Quick pricing reference
• references/cost-queries.md - BigQuery cost analysis queries