Cloud-Build tests are too flaky

[bashir2]

We have had this issue to a lesser extent for a long time but recently it feels we are getting more false negatives. To merge PR #635, I had to trigger the e2e tests 5 times until it finally succeeded (without any code changes). Some of the failures are due to remote artifact repositories going down (e.g., Ubuntu) but others are not clear why.

Here are the links to the 5 runs:

• 472c2de6
• c3b9fc47
• 398921fa
• dc2938da
• 8c47981c