Preparing for success with the Google Cloud Professional Cloud Network Engineer Exam

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Google Cloud - Community

4 min readJun 3, 2022

If you are interested in learning networking on Google Cloud, then the Google Professional Cloud Network Engineer certification is the right challenge for you. The exam covers a lot of the core areas of networking in GCP and is rigorous enough to keep you thinking.

I’ve taken a few Google Cloud professional certifications and the key to success is preparation. The exam was refreshed in January 2022, which covers

Designing, planning, and prototyping a Google Cloud network
Implementing Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) instances
Configuring network services
Implementing hybrid interconnectivity
Managing, monitoring, and optimizing network operations

To help you be successful at this exam, I’ve put together a few tips.

Step #1: Check out the Exam Guide

The exam guide lists all the objectives to be covered. It is very helpful and at a glance you have an idea of what areas you need to learn in order to prepare for the exam. You can check out the current exam guide here.

Step #2: Sign up for Google Cloud training

After you have reviewed the exam guide, if you think it worth your time check out some of the Google Cloud learning material. Google Cloud has Google Cloud Skills Boost. Log in and enroll in your learning path and begin learning. For this one, let’s pick the Network Engineering Learning Path.

Once you select the learning path, check out the details in the Preparing for Your Professional Cloud Network Engineer Journey. This free training that will show you what topics are important on the exam, and give you an idea of where your strengths and weaknesses are.

If you are looking for other options for Google Cloud training, there are courses available on Coursera and Pluralsight.

Coursera links:

Pluralsight links:

Step #3: Hands-on Experience with Labs

There are several labs contained in the learning paths and you should aim to complete them. By completing the labs and quest you get the opportunity to earn skill badges.

You can also visit https://codelabs.developers.google.com/ search for networking. You would see several codelabs you can do in your own environment to get more hands on practice. While learning you can explore the various options that exist in a services configuration.

Step #4: The juicy stuff — Network Topic Deep Dives

The Google Cloud documentation is technical documentation. Here are a few of my recommendations for topics you can read up on.

I’ve also put together a prep sheet for this exam available on https://www.startcloudnow.com/google%20cloud.html

Step #5: Sample questions

There are sample questions on the certification website that you can check out here.

Step #6 Sign up for the exam

Remember the most important aspect of the journey is learning. So keep building and experimenting on Google Cloud and don’t forget to celebrate your success.

Also feel free to check out my article s—

If you want to ask a question, find out more or share a thought? Please connect with me on Linkedin or twitter @ammettw and send me a message.

I’ll be in touch