Passing on Google Cloud Architect Exam

I know there are a lot of blogs around with information about the Google Cloud Architect certification but is always good to have an up to date details, as I just passed on this exam 07/2019, yay. Also, I would like to share with you how was my study process to pass, and how to split the content.

It was a long journey but was really good to see the expected PASS word after weeks of strong dedication.

I mostly studied reading the documentation, using Qwiklabs and Whizlabs. IMO Whizlabs is a good start as will show you what is the content you should study. Besides that, passing in the Whizlabs test is not a guarantee you will pass in the real test, as there are lots of interpretation questions.

I also believe you need some experience in GCP in order to pass, but long hours of Qwiklabs could do the job ;)

The test

I think almost 50% of the test was focused on the 3 study cases, where you need to find the best solution for their problem. There are a few trick questions, but if you pass a few hours studying and understanding the requirements of those I’m sure you can ace it.

Almost the rest of the test was focused on understanding the requirements of a company X, and find the best solution. Honestly, I was expecting questions more in-depth in general, that was the case to only a few questions. I believe the Developer exam will cover this in-depth question.

Network

VPC, Firewall, VPC Peering, VPC Service Controls, Firewall, VPN x Cloud Interconnect x Direct Peering, Routing

Storage

BigTable: Partitions, Indexes

Big Query: indexes, expiration time, partitions, when using BQ instead of BigTable/Cloud SQL

GCS: Multi Region, Regional, Nearline, Coldline. Standard (Multiregional or regional). Credentials on .boto file. Transfer Service x Transfer Appliance x Gsutil

Datastore: indexes

Compute

GKE: gcloud x kubectl commands, logs

AppEngine: languages, use cases

GCE: disks, snapshots, images, sustained use, managed/unmanaged instances

LoadBalance: HTTP(s), SSL Proxy, TCP Proxy, Network LB, Internal LB

IAM

Service Accounts: Credentials type

Roles: Primitives, predefined, Custom

Cloud Armor

DDOS attack, Global LB

StackDriver

Agent, uptime check, export logs from…

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Remember, pass in the exam is not the most important thing, but get the knowledge and experience.

“The journey is more important than the destination”

I hope you enjoy!