Lets find out more if this exam is for you!
Cloud Computing is an ever in demand skillset that companies and government entities are now clearly in need of.
Passing the Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect exam will distinguish you as a leader in this constantly evolving area of development.
Before discussing my insight into the exam guide here is the official blurb from Google Cloud about what a Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer is about. Ill will follow up with my thoughts about the exam after the following.
- A Professional Cloud Architect is responsible for translating customer requirements into a solution that uses Google Cloud services
- They are skilled at using Google Cloud Platform to build software delivery pipelines, deploy and monitor services, and manage and learn from incidents.
- The Cloud Architect exam is not just about Cloud Architecture, it’s about how Google looks at development and how Google encourages understanding of its best practices. What this means is that Google takes a very analytical approach to deploying applications and is very clear about its best practices.
Prospective Organizations that would benefit from the exam.
From an organization perspective I would also add that enterprise focused organizations would also gain value from the certification.
- IT Vendors
- Solutions Integrators
- Software Vendors
- Enterprise Development Organizations
- Consulting Organizations
Why should you take this challenging Exam?
I lay out four reasons to consider this exam over other industry Cloud architecture certifications.
- The first reason is the exam will validate your knowledgeable in not only Google Cloud services but also cloud architectures, cloud migrations and cloud design.
- DevOps and Kubernetes are ever expanding areas when it comes to demand for certified professionals. Passing this exam will clearly demonstrate you have the knowledge.
- Google Cloud is an ever-expanding area as well and having a Google Cloud certification can provide value to your career. This especially true when a significant amount of your competition likely has AWS or Azure already. AWS and Azure certification holders’ numbers are much greater than Google Cloud. Distinguishing yourself is very important now adays and obtaining a Google Cloud Certification is one way to do this.
- The job market for IT professionals has been clearly documented to be shrinking and the pool of qualified professionals is expanding. Obtaining this career changing certification could very well be the difference between working or not working.
Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect – All in one Guide
Order now on Amazon.
High Level Review of Exam Guide Section Objectives
The objectives listed above is the extent of detail that is provided by the certification body which is by Google Cloud.
What I am going to now cover is each objective at a macro before we proceed to the next few chapters where the detailed objective coverage starts.
Exam Guide Section 1 – Designing and planning a cloud solution architecture
In this section the main focus is around cloud design areas such as performance, elasticity, networking, storage and several other areas. Migration planning to Google Cloud from VM and Data storage is also covered so understanding how to move VMS and storage from on premises is helpful for the exam. Being able to translate business requirements to a technology solution is heavily tested.
Exam Guide Section 2 – Managing and provisioning a solution infrastructure
In this section the main focus is on a wide array of Google Cloud services and the deployment of these services. Services covered are data storage services such as Cloud SQL, Cloud Storage, BigQuery and more. Network services covered are Cloud VPC, Cloud Interconnect, Cloud VPN and many more. Compute Services are also covered and these focus on all the services from Compute Engine to Cloud Run. Lastly, Cloud Deployment Manager and third-party services could also be seen on the exam as well.
Exam Guide Section 3 – Designing for security and compliance
In this section the main focus is all about ensuring a robust but also secure cloud environment. The objectives focus on what cloud services could be used to secure the development environment but also production. Services such as Cloud IAM, KSM, Cloud VPC, GKE capabilities and App Engine security are covered. Compliance is covered lightly as well mainly around what tools are available and dealing with audits and providing access to auditors. Google Cloud Enterprise best practices are a main focus for this section.
Exam Guide Section 4 – Analyzing and optimizing technical and business processes
This section, perhaps the widest in content, covers a macro view of cloud architecture, cloud development and cloud devops best practices. This section validates your knowledge as a cloud developer where you can take an application design and bring to fruition thru frameworks and best practices such as SDLC or Waterfall. The section then will test your capability to understand what pre-sales requirements are around listening to stakeholders (customers) and then taking those requirements to translate both the functional and non- functional requirements to a cloud design in Google Cloud.
Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect – All in one Guide
Order now on Amazon.
Exam Guide Section 5 – Managing implementation
This section is focused on how to deploy a cloud solution and how to test that solution with appropriate tools. The section covers both development and devops tools so really understanding rolling out pipelines and connecting the cloud services is critical. Understanding, how integration can occur with APIs such as Rest or Open APIs is critical for the exam. Lastly, understanding the breakdown of how the SDK/CLI actually works is needed from installing the CLI to using services such as using the BigQuery estimating tool.
Exam Guide Section 6 – Ensuring solution and operations reliability
This section is both about Google Stackdriver which at the time of writing is being rebranded to Google Operations and about DevOps services along with best practices. The exam at the time of writing is going to refer to Stackdriver. The first part of the section focuses on monitoring, logging and just about everything you can do with Stackdriver. This section part focuses not only on CI/CD best practices but how to deploy a secure pipeline on Google Cloud. The section revolves around how to use Deployment Manager, Kubernetes Engine, Cloud Source Repositories, Cloud Build and Container Registry with some coverage with third party DevOps tools.