Notes from my recent Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect certification
I have recently taken this test in January 2020. Finally got some time during the holidays to prepare and got certified.
The intent of this post is not to post the questions directly, but to give an idea on how the questions & their options are; in the test.
The test consists of 50 questions which needs to be completed in 2 hours. The timer is shown on the screen, so you can keep track. 2hrs is sufficient enough to go through the questions and then review once again.
Please note that almost all of the questions are scenario based, there are no direct questions like, what is NoSQL managed service offered by GCP etc., There are few questions which have multiple correct answers to select from; this will be mentioned in the question.
I started preparing in November ‘19 but had to take lot of breaks due to holidays/work etc., Anyway, I have gone through Linux Academy (LA)course by Matthew Ulasien. It’s the only course I have gone through and it goes deep enough into all concepts which is sufficient for passing the exam. Even did the Labs that are given in the each section.
Apart from the course itself, my suggestion is to go through the best practices section for each service in GCP. Most of the questions end with, “what is the google recommended way for the scenario”, etc., Also, briefly take a look at each service and try to create at least one instance, the purpose is to notice the options provided in each page and click on the REST/command line equivalent and take a note.
I am a certified AWS SAA too, probably that is why I could pass this test with minimal labs. If you did not work on GCP or any cloud, I would highly suggest to do few qwiklabs labs or at least carefully (very) follow hands-on lessons in the LA course.
Just a reference, the topics covered during my test are ,
Case Studies: 11 questions, MountKirk (5), Terram Earth (3), dress4Win (3). Main thing to notice, is that, almost all of these 11 questions are not directly related to the case study solution at all.
For example; one question provided life cycle management rules as options to support storing files for 1 year. Another one; how to automate infra provisioning etc., in GCP
Prepare solution for the technical requirements and also beyond , like what would be an option to future proof (cloud technology advancements) their systems etc.,
Many questions directly or indirectly dependent on the following sections, Compute Engine, Databases , stack driver. So prepare these topics with more emphasis.
In depth topics:
Cloud SQL and various options like read/failover etc., how to setup MSSQL HA, improve performance, auto storage increase option etc., BigQuery and its partitioning options and roles etc., Datastore indexing options and how to optimize its performance etc., BigTable was in many options but none of them suits; so probably learn basics on BigTable like, its very costly but provides sub-milli-sec latency etc.,
Testing options in CI/CD model; latency based testing scenarios etc., Compliance for GDPR/PCI and how to use DLP for the same; Security using SA for VMs, IAM policies overview;
VPC scenario based questions with main concentration on firewalls; various hybrid network options, how to use network tags, VPN gateways, concentrate on their bandwidths and Google recommendations.
App Engine Flex vs Standard again scenario based questions, won’t be direct like which can scale to zero etc., GKE when to use deployment manager and kubectl/gcloud, imperative vs declarative, pods log streaming etc.,
GCS life cycle rules, versioning etc., storage transfer options like transfer appliance etc., when to use gsutil/transfer appliance/rehydration.,
BigData tools, brief overview of what each does is pretty good enough for choosing the right choice. Keep an eye for which can accept streaming options, Dataprep, DataStudio, which services are auto integrated etc.,
Managed instance groups, how they are created, template instance, groups, images, what are the google recommendations etc., Autoscaling, load balancers, health checks and finally how stack driver fits into this etc.,
Automation tools that are available, like deployment manager, cloud launcher, marketplace, CI/CD recommendations/practicers in general, jenkins, spinnaker basics, git tags etc.,
Read about what does cloud architect do, what is his/her role in the management, how does one make sure the solution is compliant/secure and highly available etc., I have noticed at least 5 questions which has nothing to do with GCP in general but more to do with cloud architect-ing …
Since the questions are all scenario based, be prepared to read lengthier questions then the ones on the practise tests. Try to sit for 90mins on each practice test you take even though its not necessary. Linux academy practise test has close similarity to the actual one, but, the actual questions are even lengthier than LA ones.
I hope these notes help you attain your certification, all the best and let me know if this helped in your pursuit.
Google Cloud Certified Professional Cloud Architect ← Linux Academy course link.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/prasanthkanikicherla/ ← My LinkedIn.
