GCP Associate Cloud Engineer Certification Experience

I’m on parental leave, which makes it difficult to find consistent study time between housework and childcare. However, I felt I needed to keep studying something to make it psychologically easier to return from parental leave. So I found time in gaps and studied for GCP. My motivation was as a preparation step toward obtaining the GCP Professional Data Engineer certification.

Exam Overview

Associate Cloud Engineer Certification | Google Cloud https://cloud.google.com/certification/cloud-engineer

Exam Guide

Associate Cloud Engineer Certification Exam Guide | Google Cloud https://cloud.google.com/certification/guides/cloud-engineer

Exam Taker’s Cloud/GCP Knowledge

• AWS 12 certifications
• AZ-900: Microsoft Azure Fundamentals
• Had some GCP experience: was drawn to GCE’s Always Free tier, deployed WordPress and left it running
• Had studied BigQuery and Cloud Spanner through seminar materials

Study Duration

About 2 weeks

Study Steps

I went through Coursera and Qwiklabs fairly quickly.

1. Read the book “GCP Textbook”
2. Read the book “Google Cloud Platform Enterprise Design Guide”
3. Try the Associate Cloud Engineer Practice Exam
4. Qwiklabs Quests
   1. Google Cloud Essentials
   2. Cloud Engineering
   3. Baseline: Infrastructure
   4. Cloud Architecture
5. Coursera
   1. Architecting with Google Compute Engine Japanese Specialization
      1. Google Cloud Platform Fundamentals: Core Infrastructure (Japanese)
      2. Essential Cloud Infrastructure: Foundation (Japanese)
      3. Essential Cloud Infrastructure: Core Services (Japanese)
      4. Elastic Cloud Infrastructure: Scaling and Automation (Japanese)
   2. Preparing for the Google Cloud Associate Cloud Engineer Exam
6. Try Udemy practice exams
7. Check related official documentation from GCP Associate Cloud Engineer Cheat Sheet
8. [Master] GCP Getting Started JP
   1. GCPUG public materials
9. GCP Tutorials
10. Read main service session materials from Cloud OnAir

Impressions

• I hadn’t studied much about moving resources between projects, data migration methods, and the associated permissions, so I panicked. I felt the question trends were different from the practice exam.
• It wasn’t just a pure knowledge test; I felt the exam also covered things you’d actually be asked in real work.
• I found it interesting to study the differences in design philosophy and service lineup between AWS and GCP.
• Next, I’m planning to pursue the GCP Professional Data Engineer certification.