Google Professional Cloud Architect: Everything You Need To Know

Who Is A Cloud Architect?

You might be having a question that what exactly a cloud architect is and what are the responsibilities of a cloud architect?

A cloud Architect is responsible for converting the technical requirements of a project into the architecture and design that will guide the final product and also bridge the gap between complex business problems and solutions in the cloud.

A cloud architect’s skills are organization-specific in general but some common skill-set includes:

• Good understanding of networking
• Knowledge of Operating Systems
• Knowledge of Data Storage options (Hardware and infrastructure, storage buckets)
• Soft Skills

Note : You Can Read our Blog on Google Cloud Functions.

Exam Details

• Certification Name: Google Cloud Certified Professional Cloud Architect
• Exam Duration: 2 hrs/ 120 minutes
• Exam Cost: The exam fee is $200 USD/16489.10 rupees
• Exam Format: Multiple Choice Questions and multiple select
• Exam Language: English, Japanese
• Number of Questions:  The exam is a multiple-choice exam with 50-60 questions. There are also two case studies that makeup 20-30% of the exam.
• Passing Score: Pass/Fail (only feedback at the end of the exam)
• Prerequisites: None

You can schedule your Google Professional Cloud Architect Exam by going to the official site.

Exam Topics

The Google Professional Cloud Architect exam focuses on the following 6 domains:

1) Designing and planning cloud solution architecture

• Designing a solution infrastructure that meets business requirements
• Designing a solution infrastructure that meets technical requirements
• Designing network, storage, and compute resources
• Creating a migration plan
• Envisioning future solution improvements

2) Managing and provisioning a cloud solution infrastructure

• Configuring network topologies
• Configuring individual storage systems
• Configuring compute systems

3) Designing for security and compliance

• Designing for security
• Designing for compliance

4) Analyzing and optimizing technology and business processes

• Analyzing and defining technical processes
• Analyzing and defining business processes
• Developing procedures to ensure the reliability of solutions in production

5) Manage implementation

• Advising development/operation team(s) to ensure successful deployment of the solution
• Interacting with Google Cloud programmatically

6) Ensuring solution and operations reliability

• Monitoring/logging/profiling/alerting solution
• Deployment and release management
• Assisting with the support of deployed solutions
• Evaluating quality control measures

 Note: Read our Blog on Google Cloud Services.

Hands-On Guides

To understand the concepts and get familiar with the Google Cloud Platform we have a complete set of Hands-On Labs  (guides) to help you in your learning.  The list of activity guides is as follows:

1. Cloud Console & Cloud Shell Overview and Navigation
2. Setting up Projects, billing budgets & Alerts in GCP
3. Create & Connect Linux VM instances in GCP
4. Create and Manage VM Using CLI & Cloud Shell
5. Create Auto mode & Custom VPC using Cloud Console
6. Create a Custom Mode VPC Network on GCP Using CLI
7. Add IAM user & Assigning various roles
8. Create service accounts and assign roles to services
9. Create Cloud Storage bucket, Upload objects & Grant Public Access (Console & CLI)
10. Create & Delete Lifecycle Policy for a cloud storage bucket
11. Introduction to Google Cloud SQL
12. Perform Simple Operations in Cloud Spanner
13. Create & Manage Cloud Bigtable instances
14. Deploy a simple web application using App Engine
15. Create & Deploy a Cloud Function using Google Cloud Console/CLI
16. Deploy Pre-built Sample Container to Cloud Run
17. Examining Billing Data with BigQuery
18. Monitoring Compute Engine Resource with Resource Monitoring & Logging
19. Virtual Private Network
20. Create HTTP Load Balancer
21. Autoscaling in GCP
22. Create Google Compute Engine VM using Deployment Manager
23. Create & Manage Google Kubernetes Clusters
24. Deploy a Simple Application to a GKE Cluster
25. Orchestrating the Cloud with Kubernetes

Who This Certification Is For?

After all this, you must be eager to know whether you are the right candidate for the GCP Professional Cloud Architect certification or not? Well, here is your answer to that,

• Candidates who are interested in Cloud Architecture solutions.
• IT professionals who have some experience working with GCP tools and are interested in designing solution architectures.
• 3+ years of industry experience including 1+ years designing and managing solutions using GCP.

Exam Retake Policy 

• If a candidate fails to clear the certification in the first attempt, then they will have to wait for 14 days before they appear for their second attempt.
• If the candidate does not clear in the second attempt also, he/she should re-access their training and retake the exam after a period of 60 days.
• Last, if a candidate fails to clear in the third attempt also then they will be allowed to schedule the exam after 1 year.

Note: Check our Blog on Google App Engine.

Frequently Asked Questions

I hope this blog helps you in clearing your doubts regarding the GCP Professional Cloud Architect Certification Exam, what are the topics covered in the exam, certification benefits, and more.

Related References

• Google Cloud Free Account: Steps to Register for Free Trial Account
• Google Cloud Services & Tools
• Beginners Guide to Google Compute Services
• Google Storage & Database services
• Google Cloud Console Walkthrough

Next Task For You

If you are also interested and want to know more about the Google Cloud Associate Cloud Engineer certification then register for our Free Class.