How did I ace Google Cloud Associate Cloud Engineer in 2022?

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Analytics Vidhya

8 min readFeb 25, 2022

Learning cloud has been my primary skill on my to-do list since March of 2021 but back then I had no clue from where should I begin and which one should I choose(AWS or Azure or GCP) all I used was Heroku cloud to deploy some applications as it was free which only had a platform as a service as an offering. So my knowledge was very limited. But as time passed my curiosity kept on increasing and fast-forwarding to December of 2021 my organization asked me to go ahead and take cloud certification which proved to be a golden opportunity for me to learn cloud in detail.

So from there onwards, my journey on the learning cloud actually began! by the time I am writing this blog I have already cleared the associate cloud engineer exam so I thought let’s share my experience about my preparation for the exam and clear it in one go!.

Topics

Why did I choose Google Cloud?
How did I prepare?
How was the exam?
My advice

Why did I choose Google Cloud?

This is the most likely question that comes to our mind before learning cloud, which one should I choose? (AWS or Azure or GCP). All three of them are really good but AWS has the highest market share for quite some time and followed by Azure and GCP.

The 2 reasons why I choose Google Cloud over the other two were,
1. My organization specifically asked me to learn Google Cloud.
2. I have a keen interest in machine learning.

Before even learning GCP I was doing some machine learning as it interested me a lot, so while I was researching about GCP I came to know that it offers one of the best machine learning services amongst the other clouds and has a dedicated AI platform called as Vertex AI which as a managed platform consisting all the tools you need to implement an ML-based solution i.e from ingestion of data till the deployment of the models.

So this made me even more curious to learn GCP over the other two.
But if you are just a beginner then simply go with either of the clouds because all of them are really good and the current trend is going multi-cloud i.e enterprises are now opting for multiple cloud platforms for deploying their applications, so once you become good with a single cloud then you can switch to others easily!

How did I prepare?

This is the crucial part as the amount of time you spend with GCP the more you become good at it. Keeping this in mind I will tell how I prepared for the exam in 2 months and also I will link all the resources I used to learn from one by one.

Initially, I enrolled on a course on Udemy called “GCP Associate Cloud Engineer” by Ranga Karanam(in28minutes) which is a very good course and covers all the important aspects of the GCP and its fundamentals so this is a very good start.
After completing this course I moved on to Youtube and watched a few playlists by Google Cloud itself, these a short but crips videos which contain lots of info about various services offered by GCP.
While panning through Youtube I came across an amazing channel called Awesome GCP owned by Satish VJ. He has made playlists on Associate and Professional certifications where he discusses the practice questions and explains all the questions and answers in detail definitely check it out.
Just learning theory is not sufficient for the exam so you need to do some hands-on so I would recommend two options first, go and create a free tier account on GCP and practice. Second, sign up for qwiklabs and do hand on labs offered by them you can get a free subscription for 1 month so you can choose from multiple learning tracks provided by qwiklabs.
Another channel called Cloud Advocate owned by GK also covers important topics and shows practical implementations which is also a very good watch.
If you like to read a lot then I will strongly suggest going through the book “Official Google Cloud Certified Associate Cloud Engineer Study Guide” by Sullivan Dan a very good book that contains detailed explanations for all the topics that will be asked in the exam.
Lastly, I went through a course on Coursera offered by Google Cloud itself called “Preparing for the Google Cloud Associate Cloud Engineer Exam” which is a last-minute preparation that covers the important aspects from the exam point of view.
There is another channel on Youtube called The Cloud Girl by Priyanka Vergadia which I also recommend as a quick revision before the exam.
And before you take the exam I strongly suggest taking the official practise test provided by Google Cloud itself, this will familiarize you with the kind of question that you may get.

That is it! these are all the resources I have used to learn and clear the exam you can also let me know if I missed something!. Now let's go to the next crucial topic.

How was the exam?

Okay so assuming that you have prepared well for the exam now let's focus on the exam itself. Here are a few things you need to know about the exam.

But before we go forward please don’t assume that as this is an associate-level exam so it will be easy, you have to study and understand the concepts in order to clear it.

The GCP ACE expects you to be good with the fundamentals of GCP so it's more about the breadth of your knowledge and some amount of depth as well.
Google provides the exam guide where they have mentioned all the topics you should know before giving the exam so check it out.

Here are some important topics from my experience of giving the exam.

IAM (identity, roles, policy, Principle of Least Privilege)
Managing billing and billing accounts, cost estimation and pricing calculator
Cost-effective implementation and Google recommended practices
Types of load balancers (TCP, UDP, HTTP/S, SSL-Proxy, Network LB)
Cloud KMS (key management system)
Networking and Security (VPCs, subnets, firewalls, Cloud armour, Identity aware proxy, service accounts)
Different types of disks (persistent disk, SSD, and their types)
App Engine (standard, flexible, versions, traffic splitting) & Cloud Run
Deployment manager and marketplace
Logging, Monitoring, Debugging and Tracing
Serverless and Cloud Functions
Auto healing and health checks for VMs and SSH keys
Different types of databases ( Cloud SQL, Spanner, Big Table, Firestore & Big Query)
Google Kubernetes Engine (node pools, pods, deployments, replica sets, services) (don’t forget to learn this)
Cloud SDK and gcloud commands
Data flow, Data proc, Data studio, Pub/Sub

These were some important topics according to me that appeared while I was taking the exam.
I would strongly suggest learning the gcloud command as this is the only exam that not only asks about using services but also knowing how to use the gcloud commands along with their arguments/flags it takes for example kubectl for Kubernetes, bq for Big Query and cbt for Big Table.

for understanding the command structure refer to this cheat sheet and run those commands so that you will get a better idea of it.

Now coming to the exam structure,

It can be taken in a remote proctored way or by visiting the exam centre nearest to your location.
The cost of the exam is $125.
The exam will consist of 50 questions in the form of MCQ, but some questions might have 1 correct answer or 2 correct answers it will be stated beside the questions themselves.
The duration of the exam is 120 minutes i.e 2hrs which means you have approximately over 2 minutes to answer each question.
But Google does not specify the marking structure or marks distribution of each topic and all we know is there will be no negative marking for the questions so don’t miss any question attempt all of them.
Google also doesn't tell how much did you score or what is maximum marks you can get, all you get is whether you cleared it or not.
The passing percentage is also not revealed but should be around 80% from what I have heard so far.
Once you clear the exam you won’t get the certificate immediately but it will take around 8–10 days for Google to review your test and send you the certificate on your registered mail.
Here is the link for registering for the exam

That being said let us move to the final part!

My advice

If you are really committed to giving the exam then make sure you go and book your slot as early as possible because unless you do that you will not study efficiently or feel you are not prepared and maybe start procrastinating.

Please don’t simply run behind those dumps because it's easy to mug up all the answers, but the main reason for getting certifications is to acquire those skills in the first place else there is no point in doing it.

Keep a calm mind and take your time don’t get into a race of getting certified quickly, enjoy your time learning. Don’t forget to do the hands-on practice as it will become easier for you to answer the questions.

Bonus tip:- One strategy I would suggest you is to eliminate the wrong options first that will reduce the chances of selecting the incorrect options and there might be a scenario where two options are really close to each other both of them may seem correct then, in that case, read the question 2–3 times find out what differentiates the two options and select the appropriate one.
Before submitting the test make sure you review all selected options once again.

That's all from my side folks, overall my journey of learning cloud was very enriching and I am happily writing this as it will you to ace this exam too so I wish you all the very best for your journey on learning Google cloud and clearing the exam!

Also if you have any queries or doubts regarding the same feel free to reach me out on Linkedin.