Writing the Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect Exam
If you are like me and interested in the Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect exam, you should have a study plan (if you are already certified this might not be of interest to you). I made one for myself and will share the details with you here.
Even though there are no prerequisites for the exam, Google recommends you have 3+ years of industry experience including 1+ years designing and managing solutions using GCP. I have been using GCP for more than the recommended number industry experience so I had enough hands on experience before attempting the exam.
Even with my experience preparation was very necessary, GCP is always innovating and adding more products. When I decided to write the exam in 2020, I took courses on Coursera to help me understand and cover almost all areas of GCP (that're important and required for the exam) and how to build well architected and scalable cloud platforms. I highly recommend qwiklabs challenges and quests as well. I used A Cloud Guru's Exam prep course to familiarise myself with the exam format.
In total it took about a month to fully prepare. A Cloud Guru comes with practice exam which is really good. Helps you understand the exam format. You might see similarities in how questions are framed but these are not exam dumps. I do not recommend exam dumps in any way!
In addition I created a YouTube playlist based on tutorials and explanations from Sathish VJ and Mahesh. Subscribe to their channels and connect with them on LinkedIn as well.
The general strategy I used was to create a study plan based on the following steps:
Coursera: Google Cloud Fundamentals: Core Infrastructure→ Architecting with Google Compute Engine → Reliable Google Cloud Infrastructure: Design and Process → Getting Started with Google Kubernetes Engine→ Preparing for the Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect Exam
Qwiklabs: Create and Manage Cloud Resources → Perform Foundational Infrastructure Tasks in Google Cloud → Set Up and Configure a Cloud Environment in Google Cloud → Deploy and Manage Cloud Environments
A Cloud Guru: Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect 2020 → Google Cloud Certified Professional Cloud Architect - Practice Exam
Schedule the exam (this was important so I don't procrastinate again, especially because I planned to write this since 2018). Complete the study plan. Stick to it and tweak when needed, dedicate between 9 to 12 hours a week to work on the path you design.
Practice exams. I went over this over and over again till I was averaging around 80%. As I mentioned earlier I used a cloud guru in addition to my own custom practice exams. My personal practice exams was a simple and basic google forms quiz which I kept updated through the beginning of my studies from the coursera courses, Qwiklabs sessions, Google's sample exam and Cloud Guru.
After each practice exam, I would look at which topics I failed and study them briefly and attempt the practice exam again.
I repeated steps 4 and 5 till I felt ready for the exam. And this is when I was averaging 80%. Google only tells you if you passed or failed and you don't really know the pass mark for the exam so I had to aim for a high score.
Sathish VJ and Manesh Kumar's approach to answering the questions were extremely helpful. You should take a look at Cloud Study Jam if you need more hands on and dedicated coaches to help you gain experience and in-depth understanding of Cloud Architecture and Engineering. If you have good knowledge in GCP and use deduction and elimination strategy, you will arrive at the most appropriate and correct answers.
