One question resolves almost every config-placement decision
If this value leaked, would that be an inconvenience or an incident? The answer picks the right mechanism every time.
Speaker notes
- Walk a few rows of the decision table: a database password is Secret Manager (exposure is the incident); a database hostname is Parameter Manager or a ConfigMap (non-sensitive, doesn't need Secret Manager's audit overhead); a feature flag is Parameter Manager (changes without redeploy, format-validated); a TLS private key is Certificate Manager plus Secret Manager.
- State the one unifying question this whole table reduces to: if this value leaked in a log line or a misconfigured RBAC grant, would that be an inconvenience or an incident? Inconvenience-tier goes in a ConfigMap or Parameter Manager; incident-tier goes in Secret Manager, full stop.
- This slide is deliberately a synthesis, not a new concept — every mechanism named here was introduced on an earlier slide; matching consequence-of-exposure to mechanism is the practical skill this whole section built toward.
Deck map
01
One pipeline, built deliberately
02
PCDE sections 1-2, and where this course sits in the track
03
ACE operates a resource; PCDE designs the system
04
One tooling project, not one pipeline per environment
05
Dev, staging, and prod should never share one policy
06
What actually crosses the project boundary: a token, never a key
07
A hand-run command leaves no record of why
08
Local Terraform state is a production incident waiting to happen
09
Cloud Foundation Toolkit and Fabric FAST: forked, never left unmodified
10
Terraform for foundations, Config Connector for workload-coupled infra
11
Git decides, automation reconciles — no human runs apply
12
Cloud Build's whole job: source in, tested artifact out
13
Built-in substitutions are automatic; user-defined ones need an underscore
14
An unfiltered branch trigger is a budget incident waiting to happen
15
Three repository modes, and scanning stops at the virtual layer
16
Cheap checks first, expensive checks last
17
Cloud Build produces; Cloud Deploy promotes — never the reverse
18
Four objects: DeliveryPipeline, Target, Release, Rollout
19
Canary limits exposure; blue/green makes the cutover atomic
20
A human gates production; automation gates everything else
21
Meridian's full path: merge to production, one continuous record
22
Credentials go in Secret Manager; configuration goes in Parameter Manager
23
An ENV baked into a Dockerfile is still build-time injection
24
One question resolves almost every config-placement decision
25
Ephemeral environments need a TTL, or they're not actually ephemeral
26
Rapid, Regular, Stable — and a maintenance exclusion set too late doesn't help
27
A compromised pipeline is every environment it deploys to
28
SLSA grades the pipeline's trustworthiness, not any single artifact
29
Default-deny, or an unlisted cluster accepts anything
30
Only /home survives a session — everything else is rebuilt fresh
31
Every chapter of this course, in one sequence
32
Readiness checklist