OCI FortiGate HA Cluster – Reference Architecture: Code Review and Fixes
Introduction OCI Quick Start repositories on GitHub are collections of Terraform scripts and configurations provided by Oracle. These repositories ... Read More
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Learn more!I have been asked lately to share some prep tips after I passed the Google Cloud Partner (GCP) Associate Cloud Engineer Certification.
Although there are tons of articles online describing the exam content and many resource materials to help prepare for the exam, I decided to share my thoughts around the preparation journey along with my feedback on the courses I followed. It’s worth noting that I was initially looking for an entry-level exam like those I’ve taken for other Cloud platforms (AWS CCP, Azure fundamentals, OCI foundations) but at that time it didn’t exist yet. Luckily, Google finally made Cloud Digital Leader exam available (May 2021) for those who seek a foundational/lighter version.
All you need to know about the exam layout can be found on the Official Page, Including the exam guide. The important points to remember however are the below:
Length: 2 Hours.
Number of Questions: 50
Exam Format: Multiple choice and multiple select
Recommended Experience: Officially, 6 months+ hands-on experience, but this can be offset by the labs you’re willing to do.
Pass/Actual Score: Never disclosed, which is crazy, but it’s fair to assume it’s around 80%.
Score per Topic: Not available.
Exam center: Kryterion Webassesor
Retake Policy: 14 days after the 1st fail, 60 days after the 2nd, and finally 1 year after the 3rd failure (but don’t worry)
Pass Confirmation: It took 10 days for me to get it.
Preparation Time: Some say 1-2 months, I had only used my weekends, so it took me around 50 days + labs spread across 6 months.
I can say now that I had no idea what I was embarking on back in January. What was supposed to be a mere fling became an everlasting learning journey. By the way, If you’re too broke for ACloudGuru, jump right to the 100% FREE section
Depth and Breadth of Google Cloud Platform Services
This is exactly what made the preparation tedious for me as you not only have to know the specific details about one product in particular but you also have to cover all the breadth of Google platform services which fed me up at some point, as there is no way to keep all that two-dimensional knowledge across GCP in your head on exam day. I say this because even if there are myriads of online training, no course can fully prepare you for the exam. However, there is at least a strategy that students can follow in order to ace this exam. Keep in mind that GCP is a developer-focused cloud so it’s a more code-oriented platform than a typical IT ops one like Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Again the content is available on the Official Google Certification page and you will see a lot of versions online:
I know these titles aren’t helpful at first sight, but the keywords are:
Setup your account–> Plan –> Deploy –> Monitor –> Organize and secure on all the below resources
GCP Product Cheatsheet: This can also help you quickly describe GCP services grouped by domain.
Like many test-takers, the first thing I did was to shop online for the best training material and possibly free. But unlike AWS and Microsoft Azure, there was no decent (comprehensive) free course for the exam so I decided to enrol in the below two courses
This required paying a yearly subscription for which I thank my company for sponsoring this learning path.
I was totally ignorant to Kubernetes before this course, which was a redirection from the main course, but I have to say this was the most refreshing part of all the GCP engineer course. Nigel(@nigelpoulton) did a great job in demystifying the architecture and sharing simple use cases. He based all his labs on yamlconfig files, but you’ll still need to know the kubctl commands to scale up (as via GCloud container clusters) and other tasks by the way.
This is provided by the author of the Official Google Cloud Professional Cloud Engineer/Data Engineer Study Guide.
I really enjoyed rediscovering the architecture behind some services that I couldn’t grasp in the ACG course like; Cloud runs; Cloud Pub/sub or stack driver. He really pinpointed the theoretical concepts that brought the pieces together in my head.
It’s more a mess than fancy documentation, but it’s still a nice mix of all the above and more. Chapters contain deeper descriptions of each product’s features, and I still use them today to refresh my memory on what I learned across my GCP journey.
Link: http://bit.ly/3BBe368
Another way to learn about GCP networking service and what makes it special is to read my last blog post.
Anyone who tells you that he passed the exam without taking any exam practice is either a genius or a liar.
The online courses won’t help you get the real vibe of the exam questions, so you better train as much as possible.
Here are some links I used but you’ll probably need to look for other sources.
In retrospect, I can say that I am glad I held on for months until I was ready to take and pass the exam, but I am a bit disappointed in the associate/architect learning path that cloud providers are publishing so far because, at the end of the day, it’s 40% of the track that you won’t use and only promotes services the Cloud shops want to grow. These aren’t necessarily use cases that your current customers will get to benefit from. Hence, I would suggest learning something you like in the cloud ecosystem and get better at it through labs and blogs, don’t focus exclusively on which certification you should take. As a friend once said, even Cloud provider’s employees might not be able to list 10 of their own Cloud services :).
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