Google Cloud Associate Cloud Engineer - Beta Exam

I took the recently published Google Associate Cloud Engineer Beta Exam and I wanted to put some of my thoughts down for others who might be interested in taking the exam.

I should first make sure everyone is aware that this is a beta exam, so the final exam will probably looking a bit different, although my guess is the higlights will still be pretty much the same. Also, you do not get your score when you finish, so I can't tell you how I did at the moment. Google explained that scores will arrive in June/July. I've outlined a lot of what I think is important for passing the exam in the meat of my article and then at the bottom given a few of my thoughts.

First off, the test is long- 100+ questions. I'm sure the non-beta version of the exam will be paired down a bit when they have a better idea of what they want but right now it's long. I have taken the GCP Solutions Architect test and I can say that there are a few (maybe 5-10) questions that are taken directly from that exam. I have not taken the Data Engineer exam but my guess is probably the same as far as a few questions from there also. No case studies, all questions. I'm guessing that much like AWS, Google will release a security exam in the not too distant future as this one did not hit on a ton of security related stuff, mostly just stuff like "best practice" and not so much security related.

Billing.

Understand billing really well. Everything from what incurs cost, how it incurs cost, if you are setting up something in a particular way how that affects billing. How do you make calculations on billing and even as minute as understanding how to tie in projects to billing accounts and that king of thing. This topic was really heavy in the test. On-demand vs. flat-rate billing. I know that in the outline that Google gives for this exam there are a few line items about billing. I'm telling you that it's a big focus.

Command Line.

Doing a lot of things in the command line interface both in the shell and through the SDK is really important. They will ask for specific commands and that type of thing so you have to really have that down. Also stuff like "fewest number of steps to do..." that type of question. So it's not just a matter of knowing how you would do it, it's a matter of knowing the way that you are supposed to be finding it quickly and efficiently. I didn't think these questions were particularly challenging, except that they require memorization of the commands.

VPCs.

Probably the least surprising but lots of VPC questions. If you don't have a good understanding of VPCs and how you share resources between VPCs or how different VPCs interact with one another then you won't have a great time on this exam. Not really surprising as networking is really important and an important part of being a Cloud Engineer regardless of which platform you are using.

Thoughts:

Lastly, my thoughts which may or may not be useful. As Google themselves iterates, I think the best way to prepare is actually using the platform a lot. Granted this is a new exam, so I'm sure training courses will crop up but it was pretty wide ranging and had questions from many different areas. People who have conquered both the Solutions Architect exam and Data Engineer exam will probably have a good chunk of the test as freebies since there are some carry over questions. My personal thoughts is that in the final exam they will back off on as much of the billing stuff as there is. While it's an important aspect of building on any of the cloud platforms, it seems like that kind of thing is more for a Solutions Architect exam and less for being engineer. That's just my opinion. Also, a lot of the questions are things that if you are using the platform you could just look up in documentation and not really need to be able to recall on the fly. I think having an understanding of the CLI and VPCs is much more along the lines of what an engineer should be tested on versus the 'where to gos' of tying billing accounts to projects and that type of thing. That's just my two cents. I wish everyone studying for and taking the exam good luck!

Please feel free to comment or message me with any questions. I won't speak to specific questions of course but I can certainly give my thoughts as best I can.