How I Passed the Google Cloud Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer Exam
TL;DR — If you are not familiar with Google SRE principles and the Cloud Operations Suite, you will not be prepared for this exam.
Why I Decided to Get Certified?
As mentioned in a previous blog post, I’ve created the personal goal of acquiring all 11 of the available GCP certifications as a way to gain more knowledge around GCP. While I understand that a certification is just a certification and is no substitute for experience, I believe it provides a solid foundation on which to build additional knowledge.
The Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer (PCDE) certification seemed like a logical next step after passing the Professional Cloud Developer exam. I heard that the PCDE was essentially the Professional Cloud Developer + SRE. And I have to agree with that as well. While taking the PCD/PCDE practice exams, I noticed a lot of overlap between the two certifications. For individuals who have already obtained their PCDE certification, I would recommend attempting the PCD certification as well. And on the flip side, it might be worth exploring studying for the PCDE certification after obtaining your PCD.
I took and passed both exams within one week of each other.
Full transparency — my attempt at the DevOps certification was a retake from a month prior.
My Exam Experience
The exam format is pretty standard to other GCP exams. There were 50 questions that needed to be completed within a 2 hour time frame. That allows for roughly two minutes and 24 seconds per question. I submitted the exam with about 20 minutes to spare.
I would advise not taking too long to come to an answer on any particular question. If you find yourself taking too long, mark it for review and come back to it later before submitting. Through the process of elimination you can typically rule out at least 2 of the possible choices on multiple choice and multiple response questions.
My advice for studying would be to take a look at the exam guide as a good high-level overview of what to expect on the exam. And being that I’m coming from an AWS background, it was helpful to go through the Introductory Google Cloud course designed for AWS Professionals. In my case, I would also focus on the topics listed below as those were what I came across during the exam. You will also want to make sure to read the free Google SRE books available online. And for people who love learning through watching videos, I would HIGHLY recommend the Google Cloud Tech Youtube page as a perfect place to start.
Remote Proctored Exam Tips
Personally, I prefer taking these certification exams online as opposed to a test center. I like the privacy of being in my own space (no distractions) and the ability to have a water bottle during the exam. I have experienced a few hiccups in my experience with the remote exams but the support team is great and none of the issues I ran into affected the time remaining on my exam. I would suggest making sure your microphone, camera and internet connection all meet the necessary system requirements before scheduling your exam.
Main Topics Covered
For each topic listed below, I would recommend having a solid understanding of what each item is and key features of each.
Google Cloud Operations Suite
- Cloud Logging
- Cloud Trace
- Cloud Profiler
- Cloud Monitoring
SRE Principles
- Setting SLOs / SLIs
- Optimizing SLOs
Incident Management and the various roles associated with it
Implementing CI/CD using GCP tools
- Cloud Build
- Binary Authorization
- Spinnaker* — technically not a GCP product but you should understand it anyway
- Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)
Configuring Logging Agents
- Fluentd plugins (what it is and how to use it)
Securing CI/CD Pipelines and the principle of least privilege (IAM)
Optimizing application performance
Deployment Strategies
Resources / Study Material
- Google Cloud Tech Youtube Playlist — SRE implements DevOps
- DevOps Exam Notes via medium.com
- Google SRE Bibles — https://sre.google/books/
- GCP Flowcharts — https://grumpygrace.dev/posts/gcp-flowcharts/
- Google Cloud DevOps Page — https://cloud.google.com/devops
- A Cloud Guru Practice Exams
- Whiz Labs Practice Exams
- Google Cloud Fundamentals for AWS Professionals
- Visualizing Google Cloud: 101 Illustrated References for Cloud Engineers and Architects
- Google Cloud Tech Youtube Page
- GCP Product Documentation
