HOW TO PREPARE — GCP Professional Cloud Architect certification (2019)
Several months ago I have passed Google Cloud Architect certification.
Since we have a chance to spend some time on personal development and prepare to certification and I’d like to share my own opinion.
Overview
There are few options in order to prepare to the exam:
- take courses at a training center with a professional instructor
- take an online training on Coursera or Linux Academy or…
I would recommend enrolling the Linux academy online course Google Cloud Certified Professional Cloud Architect — https://linuxacademy.com/cp/modules/view/id/321.
I’m a fan of LA actually 😃
It would take around 30 hours to complete the course:
- The first part is an overview of GCP.
- The next part of the course depict main services: compute, storage, network, etc.
- The last part of the course cover Business Scenarios and Architecting Google Cloud Solutions topics.
- Finally you have a chance to pass Practice Exam on LA.
You can also train you skills on Coursera official Google Cloud training, like Preparing for the Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect Exam — https://www.coursera.org/learn/preparing-cloud-professional-cloud-architect-exam and others from this category.
I would also recommend passing official Cloud Architect practice exam several times — https://cloud.google.com/certification/practice-exam/cloud-architect
Questions
Google Hoodie
So the exam contains several types of multi and single choice questions. Most questions are scenario-based so you’ll need to find the best solution.
Some of questions was related to cost optimization and automation. Approximately 20% was about case studies so I would highly recommend deep diving into this topic. Currently Google published 3 case studies and you should definitely learn them carefully in order to save time on the exam.
Some questions appeal to practical experience for example how to run some command with appropriate parameters in command line. So I would recommend complete all the labs provided in the training. You can also get questions about GDPR or PCI compliances or keeping PII data so you need to learn that staff as well. Majority of questions would about to find some solution rather that show some “knowledge”. So you need to think as an architect.
The exam
- You have 50 questions to complete within 2 hours.
- No smartphone/smartwatch or paper is allowed.
- The timer is shown on the screen. So Manage your time carefully.
- The most important recommendation is to take all the easiest questions first and mark the ones you are not sure. This way you’ll keep some time to to get back to the most “difficult” questions later.
After you submit your answers, you’ll get the preliminary result: Pass or Fail. If you pass, you’ll get an email with the digital certification after a day or two. Google also provides some free gift from the merchant store for example hoodie or backpack.
What I don’t like about the exam?
- Google official Practice exam is much easier than the real one. For sure you can find some questions from the Practice exam on the real one but the real one cover much broad areas and scenarios.
- No official passing score. The minimum score to pass the exam is not public. It’s probably around 70–80% or so but Google doesn’t communicate it. So the result of the exam is binary: Pass or Fail. In case of failure (Google calls this “Non proficient”) and you don’t know where you have failed. In case you were succeeded you still don’t know what areas needs to be improved.
Finally…
I liked the preparation process. I learned really lots of GCP staff in order to be prepared. In additions lots of labs and business cases were reviewed that are close to the reals word scenarios. For me this is just very beginning of a long journey to GCP world.
Wish everyone good luck on that journey!
P.S. It’s not a hint but.. You definitely can learn all the dumps carefully for 2–3 days and pass the exam without deep preparation. But it does not help to deal with real cases on the real project.
Google Cloud emblem
