この概要をお読みいただくと、Google Cloudの全体像を理解しやすくなります。ここでは、一般的な機能に関する簡単な説明のほか、理解を深めるために役立つドキュメントも紹介しています。何が利用でき、各部分がどのように連携して機能するかを知ることは、進め方を決めるのに役立ちます。また、さまざまなシナリオで Google Cloud をお試しいただけるように、いくつかのチュートリアルへのリンクも用意しています。
Google Cloud は、コンピュータやハードディスク ドライブなどの物理アセット一式と、仮想マシン（VM）などの仮想リソースで構成されています。これらは世界中にあるデータセンターで稼働しています。各データセンターはいずれかのリージョンにあり、アジア、オーストラリア、ヨーロッパ、アフリカ、中東、北米、南米に位置するリージョンが利用できます。各リージョンは、リージョン内で互いに隔てられたゾーンの集合です。各ゾーンは文字の識別子とリージョン名を組み合わせた名前で識別されます。たとえば、東アジアのリージョンのゾーン a は、asia-east1-a という名前になります。
Google Cloud アプリケーションの最適化を開始するにあたり、これらのリージョンとゾーンがどのように相互作用するかを理解することが重要です。たとえば、あるリージョンのディスクを別のリージョンのコンピュータにアタッチすることはできたとしても、通常はしません。なぜならレイテンシが発生し、パフォーマンスが低くなるからです。幸いなことに、 Google Cloud ではそのようなことはできないようになっています。ディスクは同じゾーン内のコンピュータにしかアタッチできません。
Google Cloud には、リソースを簡単に作成、管理できるクライアント ライブラリが用意されています。 Google Cloud クライアント ライブラリは、主に次の 2 つの目的で API を公開しています。
アプリ API はサービスへのアクセスを提供します。アプリ API は、Node.js や Python などのサポートされた言語のために最適化されています。ライブラリはサービスのメタファを中心に設計されているので、サービスとより自然に連携し、記述するボイラープレート コードを少なくすることができます。ライブラリはまた、認証と承認のためのヘルパーを提供します。
管理 API はリソース管理のための機能を提供します。たとえば、自分自身の自動化ツールを構築したい場合、管理 API を使うことができます。
[[["わかりやすい","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["問題の解決に役立った","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["その他","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["わかりにくい","hardToUnderstand","thumb-down"],["情報またはサンプルコードが不正確","incorrectInformationOrSampleCode","thumb-down"],["必要な情報 / サンプルがない","missingTheInformationSamplesINeed","thumb-down"],["翻訳に関する問題","translationIssue","thumb-down"],["その他","otherDown","thumb-down"]],["最終更新日 2025-09-04 UTC。"],[[["\u003cp\u003eGoogle Cloud comprises physical and virtual resources located in global regions and zones, offering redundancy and reduced latency.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eResources in Google Cloud are accessed through services that can be global, regional, or zonal, determining their scope and availability.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eAll Google Cloud resources belong to a project, which acts as an organizing entity with a unique ID and number for managing settings, permissions, and resources.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eInteractions with Google Cloud services can be done through the web-based Google Cloud console, the command-line interface via the gcloud CLI, or client libraries.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eGoogle Cloud offers a price list for individual services and a pricing calculator to estimate overall costs for workloads.\u003c/p\u003e\n"]]],[],null,["# Google Cloud overview\n\nThis overview is designed to help you understand the overall landscape of\nGoogle Cloud. Here, you'll take a brief look at some of the commonly\nused features and get pointers to documentation that can help you go deeper.\nKnowing what's available and how the parts work together can help you make\ndecisions about how to proceed. You'll also get pointers to some tutorials that\nyou can use to try out Google Cloud in various scenarios.\n\nFor general information on cloud computing, see\n[Advantages and disadvantages of cloud computing](/learn/advantages-of-cloud-computing).\n\nGoogle Cloud resources\n----------------------\n\nGoogle Cloud consists of a set of physical assets, such as computers and\nhard disk drives, and virtual resources, such as virtual machines (VMs), that\nare contained in\n[data centers](/about/locations)\naround the globe.\nEach data center location is in a *region* . Regions are available in\nAsia, Australia, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, North America, and South\nAmerica. Each region is a collection of *zones* , which\nare isolated from each other within the region. Each zone is identified by a\nname that combines a letter identifier with the name of the region. For example,\nzone `a` in the East Asia region is named `asia-east1-a`.\n\nThis distribution of resources provides several benefits, including redundancy\nin case of failure and reduced latency by locating resources closer to clients.\nThis distribution also introduces some rules about how resources can be used\ntogether.\n\nAccessing resources through services\n------------------------------------\n\nIn cloud computing, what you might be used to thinking of as software and\nhardware products, become *services* . These services provide access to the\nunderlying resources. The\n[list of available Google Cloud services](/products)\nis long, and it keeps growing. When you develop your website or application on\nGoogle Cloud, you mix and match these services into combinations that\nprovide the infrastructure you need, and then add your code to enable the\nscenarios you want to build.\n\nGlobal, regional, and zonal resources\n-------------------------------------\n\nSome resources can be accessed by any other resource, across regions and zones.\nThese *global resources* include preconfigured disk images, disk snapshots,\nand networks. Some resources can be accessed only by\nresources that are located in the same region. These *regional resources*\ninclude static external IP addresses. Other resources can be accessed only by\nresources that are located in the same zone. These *zonal resources* include VM\ninstances, their types, and disks.\n\nThe following diagram shows the relationship\nbetween global scope, regions and zones, and some of their resources:\n\nThe scope of an operation varies depending on what kind of resources\nyou're working with. For example, creating a network is a global operation\nbecause a network is a global resource, while reserving an IP address is a\nregional operation because the address is a regional resource.\n\nAs you start to optimize your Google Cloud applications, it's important to\nunderstand how these regions and zones interact. For example, even if you could,\nyou wouldn't want to attach a disk in one region to a computer in a different\nregion because the latency you'd introduce would make for poor performance.\nThankfully, Google Cloud won't let you do that; disks can only be attached\nto computers in the same zone.\n\nDepending on the level of self-management required for the\n[computing and hosting service](/docs/overview/cloud-platform-services#computing-hosting) you\nchoose, you might or might not need to think about how and where resources are\nallocated.\n\nFor more information about the geographical distribution of Google Cloud,\nsee [Geography and Regions](/docs/geography-and-regions).\n\nProjects\n--------\n\nAny Google Cloud resources that you allocate and use must belong to a\nproject. You can think of a project as the organizing entity for what you're\nbuilding. A project is made up of the settings, permissions, and other metadata\nthat describe your applications. Resources within a single project can work\ntogether easily, for example by communicating through an internal network,\nsubject to the regions-and-zones rules. A project can't access another project's\nresources unless you use [Shared VPC](/vpc/docs/shared-vpc) or\n[VPC Network Peering](/vpc/docs/vpc-peering).\n\nEach Google Cloud project has the following:\n\n- A project name, which you provide.\n- A project ID, which you can provide or Google Cloud can provide for you.\n- A project number, which Google Cloud provides.\n\nAs you work with Google Cloud, you use these identifiers in certain\ncommands and API calls. The following screenshot shows a project name, a\nproject ID, and a project number:\n\nIn this example:\n\n- **Example Project** is the project name.\n- **example-id** is the project ID.\n- **123456789012** is the project number.\n\nEach project ID is unique across Google Cloud. After you have created a\nproject, you can delete the project but its ID can never be used again.\n\nYou can create multiple projects and use them to separate\nyour work in whatever way makes sense for you. For example, you might have one\nproject that can be accessed by all team members and a separate project that can\nonly be accessed by certain team members.\n\nWhen billing is enabled, each project is associated with one billing account.\nMultiple projects can have their resource usage billed to the same account.\n\nA project serves as a namespace. This means every resource within each\nproject must have a unique name, but you can usually reuse resource names\nif they are in separate projects. Some resource names must be globally unique.\nRefer to the documentation for the resource for details.\n\nFor more information, see\n[Creating and managing projects](/resource-manager/docs/creating-managing-projects).\n\nWays to interact with the services\n----------------------------------\n\nGoogle Cloud gives you three basic ways to interact with the services\nand resources.\n\n### Google Cloud console\n\nThe [Google Cloud console](https://console.cloud.google.com/) provides a web-based, graphical user interface that you can\nuse to manage your Google Cloud projects and resources. When you use the\nGoogle Cloud console, you either create a new project or choose an existing\nproject, and then use the resources that you create in the context of that\nproject.\n\n### Command-line interface\n\nIf you prefer to work at the command line, you can perform most\nGoogle Cloud tasks by using\n[the Google Cloud CLI](/sdk/gcloud).\nThe gcloud CLI lets you manage development workflow and\nGoogle Cloud resources in a terminal window.\n\nFor example, you can create a Compute Engine virtual machine (VM) instance\nby running the\n[`gcloud compute instances create` command](/sdk/gcloud/reference/compute/instances/create)\nin the shell environment.\n\nYou can run `gcloud` commands in the following ways:\n\n- You can install the [Google Cloud CLI](/sdk/docs).\n The gcloud CLI lets you open a terminal\n window on your own computer and run commands to manage Google Cloud resources.\n\n- You can use [Cloud Shell](/shell/docs/features),\n which is a browser-based shell. Because it runs in a browser window,\n you don't need to install anything on your own computer. You can open the\n Cloud Shell from the\n [Google Cloud console](https://console.cloud.google.com/?cloudshell=true).\n\nCloud Shell provides the following:\n\n- A temporary Compute Engine virtual machine instance.\n- A [built-in code editor](/shell/docs/editor-overview).\n- 5 GB of persistent disk storage.\n- Pre-installed gcloud CLI and other tools.\n- Language support for Java, Go, Python, Node.js, PHP, Ruby and .NET.\n- Web preview functionality.\n- Built-in authorization for access to Google Cloud console projects and resources.\n\nFor a list of `gcloud` commands, see the\n[`gcloud` reference](/sdk/gcloud/reference).\n\nFor more information about Cloud Shell, see\n[How Cloud Shell works](/shell/docs/how-cloud-shell-works).\n\n### Client libraries\n\nGoogle Cloud provides [client libraries](/sdk/cloud-client-libraries)\nthat enable you to easily create and manage resources. Google Cloud client\nlibraries expose APIs for two main purposes:\n\n- *App APIs* provide access to services. App APIs are optimized for supported\n languages, such as Node.js and Python. The libraries are designed around service\n metaphors, so you can work with the services more naturally and write less\n boilerplate code. The libraries also provide helpers for\n [authentication and authorization](/docs/authentication).\n\n- *Admin APIs* offer functionality for resource management. For example, you can\n use admin APIs if you want to build your own automated tools.\n\nYou also can use the\n[Google API client libraries](https://developers.google.com/api-client-library/)\nto access APIs for products such as Google Maps, Google Drive, and YouTube.\n\nPricing\n-------\n\nTo browse pricing details for individual services, see the\n[price list](/pricing/list).\n\nTo estimate your total costs for running a specific workload on\nGoogle Cloud, see the\n[pricing calculator](/products/calculator).\n\n[Next: Learn about the services](/docs/overview/cloud-platform-services)\n\nTry it for yourself\n-------------------\n\n\nIf you're new to Google Cloud, create an account to evaluate how our\nproducts perform in real-world scenarios. New customers also get $300 in\nfree credits to run, test, and deploy workloads.\n[Get started for free](https://console.cloud.google.com/freetrial)"]]
