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What is a service account in Google Cloud?

Last updated on September 25, 2022 @ 8:45 pm

A service account in Google Cloud is a unique user account that is used to access Google Cloud Platform services. A service account gives you full access to all the resources that the account contains, including buckets, services, and data.

You can use a service account to create projects, instances, and tasks, and to access Google Cloud Platform APIs.

A service account is a good choice for applications that need full access to all the resources that the account contains. For example, a web application that needs to access a MySQL database that is hosted in Google Cloud Platform would need a service account.

PRO TIP: A service account is an account that belongs to your application or a virtual machine (VM), rather than to an individual user. When you authenticate to a GCP resource using a service account, you are authenticating as the service account, not as a user.

A service account is also a good choice for applications that need to access Google Cloud Platform resources from multiple locations. For example, a company that wants to use Google Cloud Platform to store its data in the US and Europe would need a service account for each location.

A service account is not a good choice for applications that only need to use a subset of the resources that the account contains. For example, a web application that needs to access a small chunk of data stored in a bucket that is owned by a service account is not a good choice.

A service account is also not a good choice for applications that need to access Google Cloud Platform resources from a single location. For example, a company that wants to use Google Cloud Platform to store its data in the US would not need a service account.

Kathy McFarland

Kathy McFarland

Devops woman in trade, tech explorer and problem navigator.