What is the GCP Professional Cloud Architect qualification?
Professional Cloud Architects enable organizations to leverage Google Cloud technologies. With a thorough understanding of cloud architecture and Google Cloud, they design, develop, and manage robust, secure, scalable, highly available, and dynamic solutions to drive business objectives.
The Professional Cloud Architect certification exam assesses your ability to:
Why get Google Cloud Certified?
Google Cloud Platform is one of the leading cloud providers. This exam can be taken as a first step in learning about cloud services and how those concepts are exemplified by Google.
Whether your business is early in its journey or well on its way to digital transformation, Google Cloud’s solutions and technologies help chart a path to success.
If you are familiar with Azure or AWS it's time to take your cloud journey to the next level by getting used to a multi-cloud environment. If you are not familiar with those, it is best to start with Google Cloud.
According to Google’s Website, these are some of the advantages of a certified professional
Any Prerequisites?
Google recommends 3+ years of industry experience including 1+ years designing and managing solutions using Google Cloud.
From my experience, you need at least 6 to 8 months of experience with Google Cloud. If you have previous experience with other cloud providers that also helps as this exam tests you in general about the cloud architect role.
This exam is more logical in the way that it tests you more on the role rather than the platform, unlike the ACE exam which requires a razor-sharp focus on Google Cloud.
Everything you need to know about the GCP Cloud Architect exam
What does the exam cover?
There are two types of questions in the exam: Multiple-choice which has one correct answer and three incorrect answers & Multiple- answers which has multiple correct answers.
There are 50 questions in the exam and there is some unscored content on the exam as well which will be used for statistical purposes. You have 120 minutes to complete and the exam costs you $200
Case studies: Each exam includes 2 case studies that describe fictitious business and solution concepts. Case study questions make up 20-30% of the exam and assess your ability to apply your knowledge to a realistic business situation.
There are 4 case studies available out of these any 2 can appear on the exam. All of these are available before the exam, so one can go through them & understand them thoroughly.
How can you register for this exam?
In order to book an appointment for the Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect exam, you have to follow the steps bellow:
- Go to https://www.webassessor.com/googlecloud/
- Use your existing Webassessor account to log in or create a new account and log in.
- Select ‘Register For An Exam.'
- Click on ‘Google Cloud Certified — Professional Cloud Architect (English)’.
- Select how you want to take the exam and follow the prompts.
Scheduling your exam earlier in the month provides the best chance at your first-choice time slot.
How can you prepare for the GCP Cloud Architect Exam?
1. Courses
There are many courses available online that can help you get started with the GCP Professional Cloud Architect certification exam. Here are some of the best courses according to our professionals at IT Certificate:
Udemy Course: GCP Professional Cloud Architect — Google Cloud Certification By Ranga Karanam
All the services are well-covered and pretty descriptive. Language, voice tone, and content are well-managed and easy to understand.
This course has all the things you need to clear the certification exam. You can practice hands-on after the theory sessions to get the most out of this course.
To know more about this course, click on this link!
Acloudguru Course on GCP PCA by Joseph Lowery
This is a new course by Acloudguru, which is up-to-date with the exam syllabus. This course covers in detail all the important GCP topics as well as the new four case studies.
To know more about this course, click on this link!
2. Case Studies
There are four case studies that Google provides and the case study section of the exam is strictly restricted to (links attached).
These cases depict real-world problems that organizations might face and the details provided to a cloud architect/consultant making crucial component decisions on GCP.
These are Mountkirk Games, EHR Healthcare, Helicopter Racing League, and TerramEarth know these case studies thoroughly. The case studies are there during the exam and you can go through them.
But you’d be better off studying it prior and making notes during your practice/learning. But don’t by-heart the solutions.
Both the above courses cover these case studies thoroughly, they present to you possible questions that cloud arrive from these case studies & also discuss the possible GCP services that could be a solution for these case studies.
There were about 10 questions in the exam focusing on the case studies. The questions are ordered, so you don’t have to switch between case studies frequently.
3. Byte Videos & Sketch Notes
4. Practice Exams
After you feel confident about the content covered in the course, it is the right time to test your preparedness for the actual exam.
Google provides a set of 20-25 sample questions for the exam, you can treat this set of questions as a real exam with half the questions & time. You can also buy a set of practice exams from Whizlabs, they provide 4-5 sets each with 50 questions.
These questions are very similar to the actual exam. Once you start a practice exam, make sure you treat it like a real exam, choosing your preferred time that you would choose for the exam & finishing the exam in 120 minutes.
Once you consistently score above 80%, you can consider yourself ready for the exam.
