Google Cloud Professional Cloud Developer is an exam not be under estimated. Its up there on the difficulty level and not one exam I was able to breeze through.
The GCP Cloud Developer certification is clearly one challenging exam but absolutely passable with the right preparation.
The exam not only challenges the developers ability around “developing” application but it also entails objectives outside of this area such as cloud monitoring and securing your cloud which are generally areas that have not been a focus for developers.
There are several areas of focus that one studying for the exam would want to really understand.
Below is a short summary of study points to help aid in your study success.
KUBERNETES EXAM.. I mean Cloud Developer exam.
There was a good amount of Kubernetes questions for sure and perhaps the algo popped with a bunch of special questions right off the bat just for me.
- Taking the exam you must have a concise background for Kubenetes Engine (kubectl/gcloud cli commands)
- You must know what the Error Codes 400/403 are in several contexts.
- Know the complementary services around containers and Kube but also how to monitor containers. The easiest way to install Stackdriver monitoring is let it happen at deployment..
Complementary services are…….
GCLOUD COMMANDS
gcloud commands are part of the objectives and of course were on the exam in several areas such as projects, kubernetes engine and gsutil
- Gcloud Commands to learn before exam.
gcloud container clusters create hello-cluster — num-nodes=3
gcloud config set compute/zone us-central1-b
gcloud container clusters create hello-cluster — num-nodes=3
Compute Services
- Know your use cases for data services. Connecting to Services(Cloud Storage, App Engine, Kubernetes Engine, Cloud Pub/Sub, Cloud Dataflow and Cloud Endpoints).
- App Engine had some questions focused on A/B testing, deployment and Memcache. Blue –Green Deployment Model — How to implement for a Case Study QA Testing process.
- How to reduce the chance of security errors in a CI/CD Pipeline. (Security Scanner) App Engine
- Cloud Endpoints Notes for Exam Oath 2.0 & Firebase NGINX-based proxy & distributed. Access your App Engine Instances Use to reduce your development cycle / Java and Python
- Memcache was focused on how to flush it and when to use it
- App Engine supports what gateway interfaces and know details about them??
- App Engine and IAP.. Yes, I said it IAP and its not a dance. Know why to use it and how to enable it. Identity Aware Proxy caught me off guard..
- App Engine Task Queues.. Cron Jobs or Task Queues.. App Engine To process work generated in App Engine in code outside of App Engine use a pull queue A push queue can only be accessed from within App Engine A pull queue requires you to explicitly delete a completed task
- App Engine command to deploy versions
gcloud app deploy app.yaml –v a
- Cloud Functions respond to events. Know the use case, workflow and two types of functions variants (bakground and foreground)
Data Ingestion focused on what service to use what Streaming, Batch and Application data.
Check out my GCP Cloud Developer practice exams on Udemy.com
Cloud Spanner and horizontal scaling
- Cloud Spanner. At least 4 questions. Know use case, how to scale and minimize costs, Spanner has two important connection decisions — The instance configuration and the node count
- Know what the Keys structures are in Spanner and UUID. Hash the key and store it in a column.
- Know the differences between Cloud SQL Vs Cloud Spanner below
Regional(Vertical) vs Global (Horizontal)
- CloudSQL is fully relational database for supporting customized table views, stored procedures, tons of indexes and ACID compliance. It supports MySQL and PostgreSQL (Vertical)
- It is a REGIONAL RESOURCE:) Hint
- Cloud Spanner is the first and only Global Scale relational database service that is both strongly consistent and horizontally scalable.
- Cloud Spanner is a tool really for scaling globally (Horizontally).
- Cloud SQL is your standard SQL databases and scales like. You can select machine type, hard disk type and size, region and zone.
BigQuery is BIG on this exam…
- Ensure you know BigQuery inside and out to pass this exam. (Reminds me of the Data Engineer exam just not as hard) Over 6 questions were directly tested on BigQuery so study it this weekend. Know how to ensure performance (reduce latency) in queries, know how to connect to services, load data from various sources, validate Query
- Know the use cases between BigQuery Vs BigTable
Query Service vs Data Warehouse
- •BigQuery is what you use when you have collected a large amount of data, and need to ask questions about it. (It’s Serverless)
- •BigTable is a database which is designed to be the foundation for a large, scalable application.
- •Use BigTable when you are making any kind of app that needs to read and write data, and scale is a potential issue.(Warehouse)
- •Use BigQuery when you have collected a large amount of data, and then need to ask questions about it (Query).
Identity and Access Management (IAM)
- IAM Permissions basics. Know what service accounts are, know how to setup up audit logs for auditors and logging best practices. Customize Permissions for Hybrid cloud applications. Use service for secure authentication and not API keys
- Org Nodes, Projects, folders and the hierarchy in GCP. GCDS is nice to know around use cases with orgs.
- This IAM Decision tree is worth its weight in gold.
- Know how to control access around services with BigQuery. Datasets are what? “Collection of tables” and thus learn ACLs’, service accounts, etc.
- OS Login simplifies SSH access management by linking your Linux user account to your Google identity. Use OS Login to manage SSH access to your instances using IAM without having to create and manage individual SSH keys. OS Login maintains a consistent Linux user identity across VM instances and is the recommended way to manage many users across multiple instances or projects.
Stackdriver Baby, its all about Stackdriver in these objectives…
- Do not even take the exam if your not confident in Stackdriver logging setup, setup alerts and you can spell out the difference between Stackdriver modules, workflows and to note that Debug and Trace heavily tested. Stackdriver APIS are a must know
Pipelines and GCP Services
- Cloud Build, Know your build steps, Automatic vs manual and integrate with Cloud Repositories. Custom builds steps (Memorize). Speed Up Builds and CI Pipelines
Cloud SQL
- Cloud SQL Use cases, Scaling. Connect with APIS, Understand Roles with Cloud SQL > Cloud SQL Client Cloud SQL Editor Cloud SQL Admin. Know how to connect via console and CLI. (Connections) SSL or w/o ssl , Connect App Engine to Cloud SQL
Infrastructure as Code
Deployment Manager Templates use what? YAML. I had a YAML statement to debug as well.
- Know that Cloud Marketplace uses deployment manager to deploy the marketplace solution.
Networking for Developers.
- Networking is GLOBAL in GCP not regional. Subnets provide what?
- Cloud VPN is a gateway to gateway service
- VPC were tested as well as why to use one. Peering and Shared VPCS.
Coding and Debugging programs
Yes what development exam would be complete without your run of the mill programming debug opps. The main area of focus was Java and Python.
- Microservices, why, what and how.
- Java code to review and debug. Time consuming but helpful if you all know you error codes
DevOPS and Pipelines
• Understand the tools and services with GCP to create a CI Pipeline
Github > Cloud Build > Dev > Prod
If your not familiar and very confident with Kubernetes then you may want to consider the course LFS258 with The Linux Foundataion which covers the objectives you would need to understand for the GCP Cloud Developer Exam.
•Deploy Isolated Application Environments
For Example –
1.Create a project for development
2. Create another for staging and production
Migration to GCP
- Cloud Spanner and Cloud SQL migration to GCP.
- Cloud Storage migration tools. (gsutil, storage migration tool)
Case Study
- Lastly, review the case study Hiplocal and determine ahead of the exam possible services that could be used ahead of time. This would save time.
- Dont be this deer dude because you didnt review the case study before hand.
Check out my GCP Cloud Developer Crash Course on Pearson Safari.
Below are the exam objectives.
Exam Objectives were spot on. View them here https://cloud.google.com/certification/guides/cloud-developer/
A Professional Cloud Developer builds scalable and highly available applications using Google recommended practices and tools that leverage fully managed services.
This individual has experience with next generation databases, runtime environments and developer tools. They also have proficiency with at least one general purpose programming language and are skilled with using Stackdriver to produce meaningful metrics and logs to debug and trace code.
The Professional Cloud Developer exam assesses your ability to:
- check Design highly scalable, available, and reliable cloud-native applications
- check Build and test applications
- check Deploy applications
- check Integrate Google Cloud Platform services
- check Manage application performance monitoring
RESOURCES
Below are some of the resources I used to prepare.
· GCP Cloud Developer Exam
https://cloud.google.com/certification/cloud-developer
Google Cloud Links
· Google Cloud Platform https://cloud.google.com/
· GCP Console https://console.cloud.google.com/
· GCP Storage https://cloud.google.com/products/storage/
· Documentation https://cloud.google.com/docs/
· Pricing https://cloud.google.com/pricing/
· Free Tier https://cloud.google.com/free/
· Code Labs https://codelabs.developers.google.com/
· Qwiklabs https://qwiklabs.com/dashboard
· Stackoverflow https://stackoverflow.com/
GCP Services
https://cloud.google.com/docs/overview/cloud-platform-services
App Engine and Cloud Endpoints
· Google App Engine
https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/
· Google App Engine Flexible Environment
https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/flexible/
· Google App Engine Standard Environment
https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard/
· Google Cloud Endpoints
https://cloud.google.com/endpoints/docs/
· Apigee Edge
http://docs.apigee.com/api-services/content/what-ap
igee-edge/
Java Cloud Endpoints
https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/java/endpoints/
● Python Cloud Endpoints
https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/python/endpoints/
● JavaScript clients
https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/python/endpoints/consume_js
Deploying and Managing Apps
· Cloud Source Repositories
https://cloud.google.com/source-repositories/docs/
· Deployment Manager
https://cloud.google.com/deployment-manager/docs/
· Google Stackdriver
https://cloud.google.com/stackdriver/docs/
Google Big Data Platforms
https://cloud.google.com/products/big-data/
Stackdriver Uptime Checks
https://cloud.google.com/load-balancing/docs/health-checks
Queries and Indexes
Java Queries
https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/java/datastore/queries
● Java Indexes
https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/java/datastore/indexes
Google Machine Learning Platform
https://cloud.google.com/products/machine-learning/
Google Cloud Best Practices for Enterprises
https://cloud.google.com/docs/enterprise/best-practices-for-enterprise-organizations/
Books
· Google Site Reliability Book
https://landing.google.com/sre/book/index.html (Ebook)
https://amzn.to/2JDDJ6p (Amazon)
· GCP Diagram Templates
https://cloud.google.com/icons/
· GCP to AWS Services
https://cloud.google.com/free/docs/map-aws-google-cloud-platform
· Kinsta Blogpost
Joe Holbrook, The Cloud Tech Guy
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