Ch 1 · Fundamentals
Domain 1
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Everything attaches to the project: IAM, billing, quotas, APIs.

Three identifiers, only one of them permanent.

Project ID

Immutable, globally unique, used in API calls

Project name

Mutable display label, not unique

Project number

Auto-assigned, used internally by some APIs

Deleting a project schedules a 30-day soft-delete window, not instant deletion — a real cost trap if a billing account stays attached to independently-billed resources during that window.

Region vs. zone

ConceptWhat it is
RegionIndependent geographic area (us-central1)
ZoneIsolated deployment area inside a region, own power/cooling
Not every product ships in every region on day one — verifying regional availability before designing is an explicit exam-guide consideration.