About Google Cloud Architect Professional Certification
I have passed Google Cloud Architect Professional certification in Dec 2019. I am now Google Cloud Architect :). I managed to meet my goal only at the last week of December, when there was less workload and I was heads-down preparing for the exam.
I have been working on Google Cloud Platform since last two and half years and before that I worked on AWS for about one year. So I had very good hands-on on cloud technologies. Having cleared multiple certifications from different vendors, I was curious to see how Google structured the exam. I started preparing for exam late in 2019, the trainings, courses, hands-on with exam patterns, different services/resources and real-world enterprise scenarios really helped me to understand different aspects of Cloud technology especially GCP. I thoroughly enjoyed the entire process.
If you have an aspiration to become Google Cloud Architect, here are some tips for you. These are based on my experiences of preparing for the exam and observation from actual exam.
A Certification for Architect
The good thing about this exam is it does not check you as tool specialist. You have to think as a Cloud Architect. The scope of this exam is not only GCP Products but you should be aware other concepts like GDPR, HIPPA, PCI, DevOps and Testing, etc.
The scope of the Google Cloud Architect Certification is broad. IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, Networking, Storage, Security, Testing, Monitoring, etc.
Read about GCP’s offering
Make sure that you understand overall GCP services and it’s offering. This is basic requirement.
- Understand service’s ‘How-to’ and ‘Concepts‘ sections in Google Documentation.
- Do hands-on
- Configure using GCP console
- Configure using API
- Configure using library, Deployment manager
- Understand how the product is integrated with other service, IAM role required, load-balancers, etc. Read about best practices of the product/service.
- How it can be monitored.
- How it can be configured to make it highly available.
- Quotas, Limitations
- How Billings are formulated what can be done to reduce the cost.
Hands-on
Practice, Practice, Practice. The more you practice the more you will understand the GCP’s resources. I highly recommend to do multiple Qwiklabs.
Google offers free $300 for 12 months. Create your Google Cloud account using your gmail and practice as much as you can.
Scenarios and Case-Studies
The great thing about Google Cloud Architect Certification is, the exam is scenario based. It means, most of the questions are like real-world problem statement and you need to find the best solution to the problem
Google has already published their case studies for the exam.
(Mountkirk, Dress4Win and TerramEarth). Each one of them introduces a fictitious company, their solution, their objectives and their challenges. It is strongly recommended to spend time studying these documents before the exam, and I would also encourage people to think about a target GCP architecture for each case study. In the exam, there is a significant amount of questions on the case studies (probably >20%). But most other questions are also scenario-based event if they don’t directly relate to the case studies.
Make sure you understand the GCP architecture and design one give a problem statement. For more information, check this
Courses and Study Material
There are many courses available but not all are sufficient to pass the exam.
I started with Coursera’s Architecting with Google Cloud Certification but this is not sufficient. Preparing for the Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect Exam is more aligned with real exam content.
I also studied, Linux Academy course for Cloud Architect, this helped me to understand core concepts and its more of exam oriented. I had to go out of my confort zone, I am not good at Networking
Other References
Apart from Courses and Documentations, I have also read lots of blogs, solutions. Following are some references
- Decision Trees, Google like decision trees, the link is collection of all decision trees and flowcharts.
- Tutorials: Google-provided tutorials and Community-provided tutorials. These are step by step examples to solve specific use cases.
- https://www.gcppodcast.com/, Subscribe to GCP podcasts and youtube channel.
- GCP blogs, this is good for you keeping upto date with GCP.
- Medium blogs
- GCP Solutions, I always followed this links to understand GCP Architecture for different use cases
- Codelabs, this is also useful for learning different use cases.
Exam
As mentioned earlier, the exam is scenario based not tool based. Remember that as a Professional on GCP you are also expected to know solutions, products, and project processes outside GCP also. Not all best answers are GCP products. e.g. you will need to know when VM is the best option for solving a particular use case not what are the options available for provisioning a VM in GCP environment.
Following are some tips useful during exam
- There are 50 questions in 120 minutes so its 2.4 minutes per questions, Some questions are very lengthy and answers too. Skip the questions and you can review it later.
- Download the use cases and get familiar with them prior to taking your certification.
- Not all best answers are GCP products.
- Think about the Architecture in question before looking at answers.
- Try to apply elimination rule.
- Practice the exam before attempting the actual exam. I also attempted Linux Academy practice exam.
I passed first attempt . Still there was that horrible moment before it flashes up pass or fail on screen where I held my breath releasing it in relief when I saw the pass!
I have achieved many certification, I really think that the Google Professional Cloud Architect is one of my favourite certifications. Not only because it tests you on you ability to solve business problems, but also because it forces you to practice a lot if you want to succeed.
Wish you the very best with your GCP certifications. You can reach out to me at LinkedIn and Twitter, especially for short term consulting on GCP :)
