Google Cloud Platform Newsletter

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With the last issue for 2025, I want to thank you for your support and wish you all the best in the New Year.

Articles, Tutorials

Infrastructure, Networking, Security, Kubernetes

The “Undeletable” GCP Project: A Tale of Hidden Dependencies - Handling an "undeletable" Google Cloud project.

App Development, Serverless, Databases, DevOps

FireStore Development with MCP, Java, and Gemini CLI - Leveraging Gemini CLI and the underlying Gemini LLM to build Model Context Protocol (MCP) AI applications in the Java Programming language.

Gemini CLI Beyond the Basics: Choosing the Right MCP Authentication - Go beyond the basics with the Gemini CLI. Learn how to choose and configure the right authentication for your MCP servers.

Big Data, Analytics, ML&AI

BigQuery Token-Aware RAG: Hybrid Keyword/Semantic Search with Cost Caps - RAG demos are adorable right up until the first invoice.

Mastering Google Cloud Pub/Sub: Engineering lessons from the trenches - This article shares crucial lessons and best practices for optimizing Google Cloud Pub/Sub, transforming it into a resilient and high-performance event bus.

BigQuery data insights - BigQuery data insights leverages Google's Gemini AI to automatically generate natural language descriptions for data tables and their columns, significantly enhancing data discoverability.

LookML Project Analyzer - A Simple Tool to Bring Order to Your LookML Chaos.

Jumpstart your BigQuery analysis with notebook templates - A guide to the new BigQuery notebook gallery and the top templates for accelerating your data exploration, visualization, and ML workflows.

Multi-Regional Inference With Vertex AI - This article details a robust strategy for building multi-regional, mission-critical inference workloads on Google Cloud's Vertex AI, overcoming the limitation of global load balancers in dynamically routing to region-specific endpoints.

Vertex AI Agent Designer in the Google Cloud console — Google ADK (Agent Development Kit) - Vertex AI Agent Designer in the Google Cloud console offers a low-code, visual environment for designing and testing AI agents, including the ability to configure subagents and integrate various tools. Once designed, the visual prototype can be easily transitioned to code using the Agent Development Kit for further development and deployment.

Slides, Videos, Audio

Kubernetes Podcast - #264 Kubernetes 1.35 Timbernetes, with Drew Hagen.

Releases

AlloyDB - Change: The extension vector, which includes pgvector functions and operators, is updated to version 0.8.1.

Backup and DR Service - Feature: Enhanced performance for restore and clone of VMware VMs. Expanded Linux CBT support for new kernels on RHEL 8 and 9. Security: Addressed multiple OpenSSH vulnerabilities, including CVE-2025-26465 and CVE-2025-26466. Fixed: Resolved issues with DB2 migration scripts and various SAP HANA backup failures, including differential and log backups. Improved system stability and diagnostics by enhancing logging, adding log rotation, and correcting unit reporting in dashboards. Corrected the data copy reporting for Persistent Disk (PD) based backups, ensuring it accurately reflects zero data copied.

BigQuery - Feature: The BigQuery Data Transfer Service can now transfer data from PostgreSQL to BigQuery. This feature is generally available (GA).

Chronicle - Announcement: Understand your Google SecOps billing components A new document is available that helps you understand your Google Security Operations billing components. The document provides information about how to track your usage and the related cost. For more information, see Understand your Google SecOps billing. Feature: ThreatConnect IOC V3 Connector Google SecOps now supports the ingestion of Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) from ThreatConnect using the v3 REST API. This updated connector replaces the existing v2-based integration and introduces several enhancements: Advanced Filtering with TQL: Use ThreatConnect Query Language (TQL) to perform highly targeted searches based on complex criteria like confidence scores, tags, or specific timeframes. Efficient Single-Call Data Ingestion: Ingest complete indicator objects—including attributes, tags, and security labels—in a single API call to reduce overhead and improve performance. Synchronization Gaps: Changes in ThreatConnect (for example, ThreatAssessmentScore, confidence, tags) are now replicated into the platform every 30 minutes. Data ingested through this connector is identified by the new log type THREATCONNECT_IOC_V3. For more information, see Collect ThreatConnect IOC logs using the v3 API.

Cloud Composer - Issue: Environments with Cloud Composer 2 versions 2.16.0 and 2.16.1 might experience a known issue with the reporting of metrics. You can observe a few skipped data points in the reported metrics and see error messages about the airflow-monitoring pod restarts in the environment logs. This issue doesn't affect the environment's functionality. The environment is still operational and the environment health and monitoring information is reported correctly. You can ignore the error messages.

Contact Center AI Platform - Announcement: Google Cloud CCaaS 3.42.121 and 3.43.153 patches These patches fix a security vulnerability that could expose customers' Personally Identifiable Information (PII). There is no change to the agent experience. Announcement: Web SDK version 2 will be shut down on June 26, 2026. On June 26, 2025, we announced the launch of Web SDK version 3. Starting on June 26, 2026, the web SDK v2 will no longer function. Be sure to update your website to use the web SDK v3 before that date to avoid breaking your integration with the web SDK. We are no longer adding new features to the web SDK v2.

Dataproc Serverless - Announcement: New Serverless for Apache Spark runtime versions: 1.2.65, 2.2.65, 2.3.18

Cloud Functions - Feature: Support for Java 25 runtime is in General Availability.

Looker - Feature: Historical data cannot be accessed with the API Usage System Activity Explore for Looker instances that are running Looker 25.16 or later. Looker instances that are running Looker 25.16 or later must use the API Usage Hourly System Activity Explore.

Memorystore for Redis Cluster - Feature: You can use the Google Cloud console to manage backups. This feature is Generally Available.

Cloud Run - Feature: Support for Java 25 runtime is in General Availability.

VMware Engine - Announcement: VMware Engine ve2 nodes are now available in the Milan, Italy ( europe-west8-b ) zone in the Milan, Italy, Europe region ( europe-west8 ).

AlloyDB - Change: The extension vector, which includes pgvector functions and operators, is updated to version 0.8.1.

Backup and DR Service - Feature: Enhanced performance for restore and clone of VMware VMs. Expanded Linux CBT support for new kernels on RHEL 8 and 9. Security: Addressed multiple OpenSSH vulnerabilities, including CVE-2025-26465 and CVE-2025-26466. Fixed: Resolved issues with DB2 migration scripts and various SAP HANA backup failures, including differential and log backups. Improved system stability and diagnostics by enhancing logging, adding log rotation, and correcting unit reporting in dashboards. Corrected the data copy reporting for Persistent Disk (PD) based backups, ensuring it accurately reflects zero data copied.

BigQuery - Feature: The BigQuery Data Transfer Service can now transfer data from PostgreSQL to BigQuery. This feature is generally available (GA).

Chronicle - Announcement: Understand your Google SecOps billing components A new document is available that helps you understand your Google Security Operations billing components. The document provides information about how to track your usage and the related cost. For more information, see Understand your Google SecOps billing. Feature: ThreatConnect IOC V3 Connector Google SecOps now supports the ingestion of Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) from ThreatConnect using the v3 REST API. This updated connector replaces the existing v2-based integration and introduces several enhancements: Advanced Filtering with TQL: Use ThreatConnect Query Language (TQL) to perform highly targeted searches based on complex criteria like confidence scores, tags, or specific timeframes. Efficient Single-Call Data Ingestion: Ingest complete indicator objects—including attributes, tags, and security labels—in a single API call to reduce overhead and improve performance. Synchronization Gaps: Changes in ThreatConnect (for example, ThreatAssessmentScore, confidence, tags) are now replicated into the platform every 30 minutes. Data ingested through this connector is identified by the new log type THREATCONNECT_IOC_V3. For more information, see Collect ThreatConnect IOC logs using the v3 API.

Cloud Composer - Issue: Environments with Cloud Composer 2 versions 2.16.0 and 2.16.1 might experience a known issue with the reporting of metrics. You can observe a few skipped data points in the reported metrics and see error messages about the airflow-monitoring pod restarts in the environment logs. This issue doesn't affect the environment's functionality. The environment is still operational and the environment health and monitoring information is reported correctly. You can ignore the error messages.

Contact Center AI Platform - Announcement: Google Cloud CCaaS 3.42.121 and 3.43.153 patches These patches fix a security vulnerability that could expose customers' Personally Identifiable Information (PII). There is no change to the agent experience. Announcement: Web SDK version 2 will be shut down on June 26, 2026 On June 26, 2025, we announced the launch of Web SDK version 3. Starting on June 26, 2026, the web SDK v2 will no longer function. Be sure to update your website to use the web SDK v3 before that date to avoid breaking your integration with the web SDK. We are no longer adding new features to the web SDK v2.

Dataproc Serverless - Announcement: New Serverless for Apache Spark runtime versions: 1.2.65, 2.2.65, 2.3.18

Cloud Functions - Feature: Support for Java 25 runtime is in General Availability.

Looker - Feature: Historical data cannot be accessed with the API Usage System Activity Explore for Looker instances that are running Looker 25.16 or later. Looker instances that are running Looker 25.16 or later must use the API Usage Hourly System Activity Explore.

Memorystore for Redis Cluster - Feature: You can use the Google Cloud console to manage backups. This feature is Generally Available.

Cloud Run - Feature: Support for Java 25 runtime is in General Availability.

VMware Engine - Announcement: VMware Engine ve2 nodes are now available in the Milan, Italy ( europe-west8-b ) zone in the Milan, Italy, Europe region ( europe-west8 ).