HOW TO PASS — “GOOGLE CERTIFICATE ASSOCIATE CLOUD ENGINEER”
Before getting into the main subject, a quick introduction and background about myself.
I am an experienced IT professional with over 20 years of experience and I am associated with one of the world’s best IT Services company. Though my current work profile does not involve direct hands on work on cloud technologies, I do get involved extensively in solution design, solution architecting, and mobilization functions related to cloud migration projects, particularly a journey to cloud road map for our clients in transitioning their current IT landscape from a legacy Data Center centric approach to a flexible Hybrid cloud environment involving both public and private cloud solutions.
Google Cloud certified Associate Cloud Engineer certification is my fourth certification in my cloud learning journey to acclaim myself as a Hybrid Public Cloud professional. Earlier I completed AWS Solution Architect — Associate & Professional and MS Azure Solution Architect (Exam — 70534 that time)
Before getting into the preparation part, let me upfront tell you that I found the “Google Cloud Associate Cloud Engineer” certification to be a tough one, even compared to AWS professional exam at some parts. AWS being the most popular cloud provider, you might find many training, online learning platforms, sample tests, dumps and other references but Google exams does not have much as compared to AWS or Azure. There are no sample questions/dumps that will be available for reference which might exactly match the real exam. Hence, there are no short cuts for the preparation. From preparation timeline standpoint, my honest assessment is that you need at least 2 months, if not 3 months of preparation, with an average of 3 to 4 hours of daily studies and labs, however for me, I could not give the required time and I had to complete the exam in 1 month and few days as I had some time constraints and tight timelines, considering my professional responsibilities.
Coming to the preparation part. There are 5 main areas of the preparation that I had used: -
1. Trainings
2. Labs
3. Focusing on Important topics/areas
4. Referring Sample Questions & Answers
5. Referring Blogs / References from others.
1. Training –There are 3 popular online/on demand learning portals that I came across. I did not go through any class room training, so I can not comment upon organizations/institutes who provides such training.
a) COURSERA TRAINING — Preparing for the Google Cloud Associate Cloud Engineer Exam — I did not go through this training but this a google authorized training and offered by Google. This is a structured 7 weeks training.
b) ACLOUD GURU TRAINING (ACG) — Google Certified Associate Cloud Engineer 2020 — I went through this training, as I had a free account in this platform, thanks to my company. I must say this is a very good training. Mattias Andersson, the instructor is a gem and with his slow and detailed explanations and the step by step approach in the challenge labs, helped me a lot in the preparation. Another plus point of this training is that it comes bundled with a — “Everything you need to know about GKE” Kubernetes Engine (GKE) session conducted by Nigel Poulter. Some areas which did not draw much attention to me for ACG was the “Chapter — 14” — “Service Breadth”. This, to me was too theoretical and subjective, it could have been better by bringing in some hands one labs or running through few steps in the Cloud console. Another not so plus point on ACG was the “Exam Simulation Test”, which was making itself unnecessarily complicated by keeping 5 or 6 options to every question, when the real exam will only have 4 options to choose. Also, question scenarios were same for majority of the questions which few juggleries of words to have different answers to every question. Overall — this is a very good training for passing this certificate.
c) LINUX ACADAMY — Google Cloud Certified Associate Cloud Engineer — I did not plan for this training but later decided to go for this training for one month subscription of USD49 , which entitles you to all the courses available in the platform. This course was equally good and Ben Lambert, the instructor was sound and clear on the course contents and knowledge. In fact, in some of the areas like the — Pricing Calculators, Deployment Management using App Engine Standard / Flexible, Cloud Function, Storage Options, Cloud SDK configurations were well explained with ongoing labs. One more positive side of the course was the practice exam. Although no questions were same in the real exam, but the pattern of the questions were like that of the real exam. The practice test in Linux Academy was much organized and relevant compared to ACG. The only negative part for me was that I had to pay for this course!
2. Labs — Labs are absolutely must for this exam. There is no way that one could pass this exam without hands on lab. The good part about Google Cloud is that Google offers a free credit of USD300 that can last up to 12 months in GCloud Console . This would be more than enough to make your hands dirty on GCloud console and SDK. Another way to practice hands on lab is to get registered with Quick labs. Quick lab also offers certain free usages, however considering the free tier that google offers, I opted trying in the actual google platform than a simulated google environment. Worth mentioning here that Google also has something called Google Code Lab site , offered by Google developers for hands on coding experience. It will be a good idea to play around here as well.
All in all — the main point is to make sure that you complete each lab under ACG or Linux Academy for each and every service, at minimum once. Worth mentioning here that the labs should not only done in the console but through command lines including the “alpha and “beta” commands as well. There are two ways to access the command line interface — one through inbuild cloud shell (activated through google console) & the other through SDKs configured in your local machine. It is important to know which are the services that gets installed by default and how to check the same and install additional services through command line interface.
3. Focusing on Important topics/areas — Google cloud associate exam is to test hands on knowledge for each service. However, based on my observations, I found the following services & areas are important and the questions are more in these areas.
a. Billing and Billing account management, setting up billing exports and billing alerts, difference between billing users Vs. billing admin, when to use which one under scenario-based questions. etc. For sure — there will be at least 3 to 4 questions in these areas.
b. Compute Engine instances (GCE) creation — command line syntaxes, persistent disks Vs. preemptible disks and when to use which one, startup scripts usage — meta data usage, access scope usage, Managed and Unmanaged instance groups, instance templates, autoscaling. Stack driver monitoring and filtering logs.
c. Security — One very repeat very important area, at least 5 to 6 question will come from this area like — roles, permissions, bindings, users, groups, Primitive roles, Predefined roles, custom roles, Security Groups (default Vs. custom), billing access controls, Audit Logs
d. Kubernetes Engine — I was told by many netzines, that there will be many questions on K8S but for me in my actual exam I got may be 2 or 3 questions on K8S and the rests were a combination of K8S, App Engine (GAE) — standard Vs. Flexible, Cloud Function. But Kubernetes being googles service, expect multiple question in this area. Make sure to complete both ACG and Linux academy labs on K8S. Especially — when to use kubctl command Vs. Gcloud command — Cluster management, nodes, services, Pods, deployments, daemonset, stateful Vs. stateless.
e. App Engine and Cloud Function — Make sure to have a though understanding and differences between GAE — flexible vs. standard, Cloud Function, when to have a Serverless approach, relations between pub/sub and App Engine/Cloud function usage. Expect at least 8 to 10 question combined between K8S, GAE, Cloud Function put together.
f. VPC and Networking — For sure there will be at least 4 to 5 question on this topic — VPC and subnet usage — Front End Vs. Backend, Service account and tags related usages, basic understanding of CIDR blocks and — Large NW Vs. Small NW from CIDR standpoint, Broadcast IP, default routes, global Vs. regional NW services. I remember I got totally lost one question as it was so confusing between 1 subnet creation in 2 VPC Vs. 2 subnet creation in 1 VPC, Vs. regional Vs. Global. The question was very tricky!
g. Cloud Storage Options — GCS — object stores Vs. Key Value stores, Bigtable, Big Query, Datastore, DataProc, Cloud SQL, Cloud Spanner, Cold Line Vs. Near Line, Structured Data Vs. unstructured data, Sequential Vs. non sequential data. Again expect at least 4 to 5 questions in these topics. I strongly recommend referring to Google’s Flow chart on storage option- this was nicely explained by Ben in Linux Academy and should also be available in Google site.
At the end, these are not only the topics or services but I am sure if you touch base each of the above areas — you are almost there to clear it !
4. Referring Sample Questions & Answers — As for everyone including myself, at the end, its nothing like preparing a set of sample questions (so called dumps) and you see the exact question in the real exam. But I am sorry — this may not be the case for Google. I prepared at least 300 to 400 questions (around 150 from Whiz labs), around 100 from Linux Academy and ACG put together and several other questions that I came across from the internet and I can confirm that except for 1 question — none were true carbon copies! Having said — I still feel it is important to go through some sample questions and answers (several times) because that shapes your mind on the type of the questions. Best set of questions that I came across was Linux Academy questions, but do not expect that the exact question will come in the real exam. Also, please be very careful if you are referring free dumps from the web, as you would be vulnerable to get wrongs answers. Whiz labs is OK types but not very good, there were many typos and English grammatical mistakes in the questions that I came across but for some the questions, they have given a good explanation. Worth paying few extra dollars and refer such sample questions — brain dumps / Whiz labs / Dumps for sure etc.
5. Blogs and other references — Try to spend some time going through Google Next sessions available in you tube but honestly I did not, except for 1 or 2. Also, I heard that there is an official Google study guide — Titled “Official Google Cloud Certified Associate Cloud Engineer Study Guide” by “Dan Sullivan” (Sybex) and you can get the same e-book from Amazon. I did not go through.
Few other interesting sites/blogs that I came across are: -
· A good site on GCP Flowcharts for some of the common services.
· Official Google site on the details of the Associate Cloud Engineer certification details
· Google Command Line Cheat Sheet
· BEST PRACTICES FOR ENTERPRISE -MUST READ BEFORE EXAM
The day and the actual exam — The exam is registered through Web Assessor site, register in the site, schedule your date, time and exam location by paying the required exam fee.
A special mention here and it could be wrong as well that some people in the net had mentioned that Google (like other’s viz — AWS) try out beta questions in select days, generally on working days — Monday to Friday and uses old question during weekends. I was not aware of this before scheduling the exam and came to know later. But looking at my question and appearing the exam on a working day (Monday) — I doubt it could be correct — my question paper was tough for me and I was almost certain after first few questions that I will not be able to make it this time. However, this is not something you should worry, when you are preparing things thoroughly and have confidence to yourself.
The exam is for 2 hours duration for 50 question and I can confidently say that the time is more than enough. I finished the actual exam in just 1 hour and few minutes -so you will have enough time to revise the “marked” questions.
Arrive the exam site well in advance, make sure to visit rest room before the exam, carry very less items with you as you will be asked to keep all your belongings in lock and key. Google exam even does not even allow to provide a blank page and pen (unlike AWS).
The exam, as per standard starts with certain instructions, code of business ethics, non-disclosure agreements etc. and then finally starts with the 1st question. Each question will have 4 options and you will be asked to select 1 (sometimes two, though as far as I remember, I did not get any question which had multiple answers to select).
Read the entire question thoroughly including all the 4 options of answer, if needed multiple times, do not worry about time — you will have enough time in hand. If you are not 100% sure (which happened for many questions in my case), try to apply the logic of elimination principle — you could easily eliminate 2 questions out of 4 and you will typically land up with selecting one answer between 2 options (in many questions), if you are still not sure — have your self confidence and go for the one which your third sense tells — trust me — you will be right! In my case, I was almost certain after first 4 or 5 questions that I will not be able to clear the exam but as you go through the questions — gradually you will gain the momentum and confidence. Make sure to mark the questions for review as appropriate, do not worry about time — you will have enough time.
Another tip is to try to find some “key words” in the question and the answer — this is a very helpful tip, viz. if you find the word — “horizonal scaling” in storage — look for the word “Cloud Spanner” in the answer, if — “Hadoop” , look for “Dataproc” , if “petabyte scale sequential data storage — look for “Big table” , if “Docker” in GAE look for “GAE- Flexible, if “message queue” — then “pub/sub” , between “Security groups” and “tags” and if the question says — Google recommended best practice, then likely answer would be SG. If you find the word “monitoring” in K8S question, then look for “daemonset” in the answer and so on. These are tips you will gain confidence through the sample question and answer preparations and that’s one advantage of going through sample questions.
Google does not provide any immediate result — at the end of the exam once you click on submit — the page will take you to provide any feedback and then the last page will just tell you — pass or fail. After about a week (in my case just 2 days) you will receive your certificate which you can download. I am yet to receive that as it
Well, that all I think, it’s bit of a long blog, but I purposefully kept it long so that people who are seriously interested will find it useful in some or other ways, once you reach this point.
At the end, good luck and all the very best!
