How to prepare for Google Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer (GCP) exam in 2021?

8 min readAug 3, 2021

Google Cloud Platform has appeared out to be one of the universally appreciated cloud platforms. In no time, it has fortunately managed to give high competence to the already existing giants in the cloud platform Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. Google Cloud platform has achieved the highest status, and the Google Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer certification is greatly advised for its applications in analytics, machine learning, and cloud-native.

I believe that holding a Google Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer certification boost your professional background. The value, this certification holds means that one should be very careful while preparing for this exam to stand out from the rest. Therefore, I am writing this blog with the motive that it will prove to be helpful to all the aspirants who are struggling with the preparation guidance, study material, and resources, etc. So, let’s begin.

What is the Google Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer (GCP) exam?

The principal prospect of the Google Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer (GCP) Exam is to screen the caliber and proficiency of professionals in applying the tactics of the cloud platform. Candidates are selected in handling the responsibility in the efficient development of operations, and to balance service security and delivery speed. Moreover, the Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer Exam is primarily designed for these professionals:

On-premises IT system administrators
Cloud solution architects and application developers
DevOps professionals with industry experience
Aspiring DevOps professionals with limited GCP experience
On-premise system engineers

For more details look at Google Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer (GCP).

Exam details

The Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer will consist of around 102 multiple-choice, and multiple select questions. Candidates will be assessed based on these questions. As far as the exam duration is concerned, this exam will be for a duration of 4 hours. An application fee of $200 (plus tax where applicable) is to be paid to take the exam.

Expertise Validated

Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer is the Best Cloud Engineer Certification as it validates the expertise of the candidates in:

Applying site reliability engineering principles to any service
Optimizing service performance
Implementing service monitoring strategies
Building and implementing CI/CD pipelines for a service
Managing service incidents

Preparation guide for Google Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer (GCP) exam

Preferring the best exam preparation strategy is very important to crack any certification exam. When it comes to the Google certification Exam, it is of ultimate importance that you make the right choice and head towards a successful, and worthwhile career in the Google cloud platform. So let’s begin with the preparation with Google Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer Study Guide.

1. Getting familiar with the course outline

Before heading towards your preparation journey, you must get yourself familiar with the course outline of the Google Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer Exam. Take a glance at the topics that needed to be covered for the exam and you need to pay focus on:

Topic 1: Applying site reliability engineering principles to a service

1.1 Balance change, velocity, and reliability of the service:

Discover SLIs
Define SLOs and understand SLAs
Agree to the consequences of not meeting the error budget
Construct feedback loops to decide what to build next
Toil automation

1.2 Manage service life cycle:

Manage a service
Plan for capacity

1.3 Ensure healthy communication and collaboration for operations:

Prevent burnout
Foster a learning culture
Foster a culture of blamelessness

Topic 2: Building and implementing CI/CD pipelines for a service

2.1 Design CI/CD pipelines:

Immutable artifacts with Container Registry
Artifact repositories with Container Registry
Deployment strategies with Cloud Build, Spinnaker
Deployment to hybrid and multi-cloud environments with Anthos, Spinnaker, Kubernetes
Artifact versioning strategy with Cloud Build, Container Registry
CI/CD pipeline triggers with Cloud Source Repositories, Cloud Build GitHub App, Cloud Pub/Sub
Testing a new version with Spinnaker
Configure deployment processes

2.2 Implement CI/CD pipelines:

CI with Cloud Build
CD with Cloud Build
Open source tooling
Auditing and tracing of deployments

2.3 Manage configuration and secrets:

Secure storage methods
Secret rotation and config changes

2.4 Manage infrastructure as code:

Terraform / Cloud Deployment Manager
Infrastructure code versioning
Make infrastructure changes safer
Immutable architecture

2.5 Deploy CI/CD tooling:

Centralized tools vs. multiple tools
Security of CI/CD tooling

2.6 Manage different development environments

Decide on the number of environments and their purpose
Create environments dynamically per feature branch with GKE, Cloud Deployment Manager
Local development environments with Docker, Cloud Code, Skaffold

2.7 Secure the deployment pipeline:

Vulnerability analysis with Container Registry
Binary Authorization
IAM policies per environment

Topic 3: Implementing service monitoring strategies

3.1 Manage application logs:

Collecting logs from Compute Engine, GKE with Stackdriver Logging, Fluentd
Collecting third-party and structured logs with Stackdriver Logging, Fluentd
Sending application logs directly to Stackdriver API with Stackdriver Logging

3.2 Manage application metrics with Stackdriver Monitoring:

Collecting metrics from Compute Engine
Collecting GKE/Kubernetes metrics
Use metric explorer for ad hoc metric analysis

3.3 Manage Stackdriver Monitoring platform:

Creating a monitoring dashboard
Filtering and sharing dashboards
Configure third-party alerting in Stackdriver Monitoring
Define alerting policies based on SLIs with Stackdriver Monitoring
Automate alerting policy definition with Cloud DM or Terraform
Implementing SLO monitoring and alerting with Stackdriver Monitoring
Understand Stackdriver Monitoring integrations
Using SIEM tools to analyze audit/flow logs
Design Stackdriver Workspace strategy

3.4 Manage Stackdriver Logging platform:

Enabling data access logs
Enabling VPC flow logs
Viewing logs in the GCP Console
Using basic vs. advanced logging filters
Implementing logs-based metrics
Understanding the logging exclusion vs. logging export
Selecting the options for logging export
Implementing a project-level / org-level export
Viewing export logs in Cloud Storage and BigQuery
Sending logs to an external logging platform

3.5 Implement logging and monitoring access control:

Set ACL to restrict access to audit logs with IAM, Stackdriver Logging
Set ACL to restrict export configuration with IAM, Stackdriver Logging
Set ACL to allow metric writing for custom metrics with IAM, Stackdriver Monitoring

Topic 4: Optimizing service performance

4.1 Identify service performance issues:

Evaluate and understand user impact
Utilize Stackdriver to identify cloud resource utilization
Utilize Stackdriver Trace/Profiler to profile performance characteristics
Interpret service mesh telemetry
Troubleshoot issues with the image/OS
Troubleshoot network issues

4.2 Debug application code:

Application instrumentation
Stackdriver Debugger
Stackdriver Logging
Stackdriver Trace
Debugging distributed applications
App Engine local development server
Stackdriver Error Reporting
Stackdriver Profiler

4.3 Optimize resource utilization:

Identify resource costs
Identify resource utilization levels
Develop a plan to optimize areas of greatest cost or lowest utilization
Manage preemptible VMs
Work with committed-use discounts
TCO considerations
Consider network pricing

Topic 5: Managing service incidents

5.1 Coordinate roles and implement communication channels during a service incident:

Define roles
Handle requests for impact assessment
Provide regular status updates, internal and external
Record major changes in incident state
Establish communications channels
Scaling the response team and delegation
Avoid exhaustion/burnout
Rotate / hand over roles
Manage stakeholder relationships

5.2 Investigate incident symptoms impacting users with Stackdriver IRM:

Identify probable causes of service failure
Evaluate symptoms against probable causes; the rank probability of cause based on observed behavior
Perform an investigation to isolate the most likely actual cause
Identify alternatives to mitigate the issue

5.3 Mitigate incident impact on users:

Rollback release
Drain/redirect traffic
Turn off experiment
Add capacity

5.4 Resolve issues:

Code change/fix bug
Verify fix
Declare all-clear

5.5 Document issue in a postmortem:

Document root causes
Create and prioritize action items
Communicate postmortem to stakeholders

2. Follow Cloud DevOps Engineer learning path

Google offers candidates with the best Cloud DevOps Engineer learning path that covers all the modules that are included in the exam. The best part of following this learning path is that it is updated and expert-revised. Therefore, one should not leave this golden opportunity to learn and enhance your knowledge. However, the Cloud DevOps Engineer learning path is as follow:

3. Use Google Cloud Documentation

Google Cloud documentation is also helpful to all the aspirants. Since, it covers Cloud basics, build-in solutions, best practices, and provide you with all sort of Google cloud products and tools, etc.

Take a look at the Google Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer Cheatsheet to ease your revision and preparation.

Let’s look at some additional resources available that can help enhance your preparation and training.

4. Google Cloud Essentials

In this introductory-level quest, the aspirants will get hands-on practice with Google Cloud’s fundamental tools and services. Google Cloud Essentials is the recommended first Quest for the Google Cloud learner. This provides the candidate with practical experience that they can apply to their first Google Cloud project. From writing Cloud Shell commands and marshaling their first virtual machine, to running applications on Kubernetes Engine or with load balancing. This can be easily done with the help of Google Cloud Essential. Since it is the prime introduction to the platform’s basic features.

5. Engineering Book & Workbook

GCP provides a set of books on Site Reliability Engineering, which will help sharpen your skills.

In Building Secure & Reliable Systems: In this book, various experts from Google have shared their best practices that can help any organization in designing scalable and reliable systems. Also, the book contains a guide to the preparation of strategies that are fundamentally secure for an organization.
The Site Reliability Workbook: This book beautifully showcases the methodology of using SRE principles and their practical applications. The book also contains several practical examples, from GCP customers, of Google’s experiences and case studies.
Site Reliability Engineering: In this book, the SRE team members have explained their engagement with the entire software lifecycle. And also, how this has enabled Google to build, deploy, monitor, and maintain the world’s largest software systems.

6. Take Practice Tests

While preparing for any examination the most important step is to take Practice tests. These tests are expert-revised that help you to check your preparation level, build your confidence and time management but also helps you to get familiar with different types of questions that are frequently asked in the examination. Moreover, the Practice test consists of questions from basic to advanced levels in a systematic manner.

Take Free Practice Test for Google Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer exam!

7. Explore Different Online Training Sites

Choosing the best Training site is one of the most important steps to prepare for any examination. These sites provide you with the best and expert-revised study material and online tutorials that prove to be very helpful in your journey to crack the Google Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer exam. Below are some popular and efficient training providers:

8. Join Online Study Groups

Joining online study platforms or groups is the most appropriate way to prepare for any examination. These study groups help you by giving proper assistance. And also gives you a platform to discuss your doubts with peers and professionals. These study groups have proved to help aspirants to improve their time management skills and motivate them to work hard to score better. Moreover, having a professional’s guidance helps keep you updated with any changes falling in any examination.

Concluding Remarks

We have reached the end of this blog. I believe I was successful to guide you with my best knowledge. We discussed some of the most important factors before starting to prepare for the GCP DevOps Engineer exam like the preparation methods, study material, practice tests, and what not! But in the end, you have to prepare for the exam. So, make the best out of the time you have. Nothing is impossible if you decide to give your best and hard work. Devote some time to study every day and stay regular. Moreover, don’t forget to revise everything at the end of the day and keep systematically taking practice tests. All the best!