How I Passed My Google Professional Cloud Architect Certification Exam in First Attempt!

The Professional Cloud Architect exam covers a variety of topics, including design and planning, analysis and optimization, security and compliance, as well as cloud architecture and infrastructure. Many people choose this certification as their top choice for the Google Cloud platform because it is the highest paying certification. We speak with Dr. Nabil Hadj-Ahmed, Director of Training (Google Cloud), who holds nine GCP certifications, to get the inside scoop on how to ace the exam like a pro.

It’s a Great Place to Start with GCP

The first Google exam I took was for Google Cloud Architect. I recall spending a lot of time in the evenings and on weekends practicing and studying for the exam, which consists of 50 multiple-choice and multiple-select questions covering a variety of GCP topics.

As recertification, it had been two years since I had last read the course material or put my practical knowledge to the exam. I recently retook Cloud Architect in November 2021.

As a certified trainer for Google Cloud, I am well-versed in the Google Cloud platform's methodology, continuously updated practices, and technologies, but you have to set the bar high. Keeping current is essential.

The recertification exam required less preparation than the initial exam, but there were still new topics to concentrate on and prepare for. Despite having nine GCP certificates, I tell delegates to get this one the most. It changes the game.

My Best Tip? Sign Up for the Google Cloud Free $300 Trial & Use Qwiklabs

Make sure to establish your own trial on Google Cloud and play since the Qwiklabs environment enables you to undertake more varied practical work outside of learning (cough, Kubernetes... cough cough). This is a crucial preparation tool for the Google Cloud Architect exam and a wonderful method to become familiar with the full GCP idea.

I advise signing up for a full subscription after your trial is over so you can learn everything there is to know about cloud computing and the GCP platform. You will be given a task with a justification for why you are carrying out the steps and what the intended conclusion is when you use Qwiklabs and Google Cloud as opposed to just a trial subscription, which is the main advantage.

When it comes to exam time, having a thorough understanding of the architecture framework will be beneficial. The hands-on exercises suggested by Qwiklabs can help you get in the correct frame of mind and increase your acquaintance with the technological and procedural standards applied within the Cloud.

Need to get certified quickly? Try Study4Exam Practice Tests

It can be challenging to find time to prepare and study, particularly when working a full-time job. The Study4Exam Google Professional Cloud Architect questions can expedite the process while still providing you with all the information you need to regularly use the Google Cloud Platform.

Their Professional Cloud Architect questions are very practical and offer plenty of assistance to students at all skill levels. It will only take you 6-7 days, spread over three months, to become familiar with the variety of subjects that could be covered by the 50 questions and multiple-choice responses. Additionally, you'll gain a lot of knowledge about other GCP departments.

You will still need to dedicate time to studying, therefore I suggest setting the exam date well in advance to put some pressure on yourself. Nothing is more inspiring than that fixed day on the calendar!

Already Certified? There’s Still New Ground to Cover

In recent years, the exam has undergone significant alteration. If you're approaching two years of certification, don't put it back too much because I'd estimate that 30% of it was entirely new.

If you are already familiar with Google Cloud, getting preparing for your recertification will go more quickly. It should be sufficient to just cover the updates (new content-specific) to get you through.

Cloud Architect Exam Details

Taken from the Google certification page:  

Length: 3 hours

Registration fee: $200 (plus tax where applicable)

Language: English

Exam format: Multiple choice and multiple select, taken remotely or in person at a test center. 

Exam Delivery Method:

Take the online-proctored exam from a remote location, and review the online testing requirements.

Take the onsite-proctored exam at a testing center, and locate a test center near you.

Prerequisites: None

Recommended experience: 3+ years of industry experience including 1+ years designing and managing solutions using Google Cloud.

What's Included in the Cloud Architect Exam?

1. Designing and planning a cloud solution architecture

1.1 Designing a solution infrastructure that meets business requirements. Considerations include:

• Business use cases and product strategy
• Cost optimization
• Supporting the application design
• Integration with external systems
• Movement of data
• Design decision trade-offs
• Build, buy, modify, or deprecate
• Success measurements (e.g., key performance indicators [KPI], return on investment [ROI], metrics)
• Compliance and observability

1.2 Designing a solution infrastructure that meets technical requirements. Considerations include:

• High availability and failover design
• The elasticity of cloud resources with respect to quotas and limits
• Scalability to meet growth requirements
• Performance and latency

1.3 Designing network, storage, and compute resources. Considerations include:

• Integration with on-premises/multi-cloud environments
• Cloud-native networking (VPC, peering, firewalls, container networking)
• Choosing data processing technologies
• Choosing appropriate storage types (e.g., object, file, databases)
• Choosing to compute resources (e.g., preemptible, custom machine type, specialized workload)
• Mapping compute needs to platform products

1.4 Creating a migration plan (i.e., documents and architectural diagrams). Considerations include:

• Integrating solutions with existing systems
• Migrating systems and data to support the solution
• Software license mapping
• Network planning
• Testing and proofs of concept
• Dependency management planning

1.5 Envisioning future solution improvements. Considerations include:

• Cloud and technology improvements
• Evolution of business needs
• Evangelism and Advocacy

2. Managing and provisioning a solution infrastructure

2.1 Configuring network topologies. Considerations include:

• Extending to on-premises environments (hybrid networking)
• Extending to a multi-cloud environment that may include Google Cloud to Google Cloud communication
• Security protection (e.g. intrusion protection, access control, firewalls)

2.2 Configuring individual storage systems. Considerations include:

• Data storage allocation
• Data processing/compute provisioning
• Security and access management
• Network configuration for data transfer and latency
• Data retention and data life cycle management
• Data growth planning

2.3 Configuring compute systems. Considerations include:

• Compute resource provisioning
• Compute volatility configuration (preemptible vs. standard)
• Network configuration for computing resources (Google Compute Engine, Google Kubernetes Engine, serverless networking)
• Infrastructure orchestration, resource configuration, and patch management
• Container orchestration

3. Designing for security and compliance

3.1 Designing for security. Considerations include:

• Identity and access management (IAM)
• Resource hierarchy (organizations, folders, projects)
• Data security (key management, encryption, secret management)
• Separation of duties (SoD)
• Security controls (e.g., auditing, VPC Service Controls, context-aware access, organization policy)
• Managing customer-managed encryption keys with Cloud Key Management Service
• Remote access

3.2 Designing for compliance. Considerations include:

• Legislation (e.g., health record privacy, children’s privacy, data privacy, and ownership)
• Commercial (e.g., sensitive data such as credit card information handling, personally identifiable information [PII])
• Industry certifications (e.g., SOC 2)
• Audits (including logs)

4. Analyzing and optimizing technology and business processes

4.1 Analyzing and defining technical processes. Considerations include:

• Software development life cycle (SDLC)
• Continuous integration / continuous deployment
• Troubleshooting/root cause analysis best practices
• Testing and validation of software and infrastructure
• Service catalog and provisioning
• Business continuity and disaster recovery

4.2 Analyzing and defining business processes. Considerations include:

• Stakeholder management (e.g. influencing and facilitation)
• Change management
• Team assessment/skills readiness
• Decision-making processes
• Customer success management
• Cost optimization / resource optimization (capex / opex)
• 4.3 Developing procedures to ensure the reliability of solutions in production (e.g., chaos engineering, penetration testing)

5. Managing implementation

5.1 Advising development/operation team(s) to ensure successful deployment of the solution. Considerations include:

• Application development
• API best practices
• Testing frameworks (load/unit/integration)
• Data and system migration and management tooling

5.2 Interacting with Google Cloud programmatically. Considerations include:

• Google Cloud Shell
• Google Cloud SDK (gcloud, gsutil and bq)
• Cloud Emulators (e.g. Cloud Bigtable, Datastore, Spanner, Pub/Sub, Firestore)

6. Ensuring solution and operations reliability

6.1 Monitoring/logging/profiling/alerting solution

6.2 Deployment and release management

6.3 Assisting with the support of deployed solutions

6.4 Evaluating quality control measures

Conclusion

In the end best of luck with your cloud architect exam. Becoming GCP certified will surely bring new job opportunities for you. But on the other hand, earning the certification is not an easy task. You need to be firm and steady to pass the exam on the first attempt. I hope my experience will help you. Thanks!