Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect

Google Cloud Platform is whole of the fastest-growing cloud service programs offered in today’s time that lets a candidate run their applications and data workflows at ‘Google-sized’ scale. The Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect GCP certification is one of the numerous highly desired IT certifications nowadays. It is entirely one of the most challenging examinations offered by any cloud vendor today. This certification opens new avenues in your professional career and increases your earning potential. The Google Certified Professional – Cloud Architect Salary is $164,000 annually on an average.

Who is a Professional Cloud Architect?

A Professional Cloud Architect allows corporations to leverage Google Cloud technologies. Amidst a thorough knowledge of cloud architecture and Google Cloud Platform, the Professional Cloud Architect can design, produce, and manage robust, defend, scalable, highly available, and effective solutions to stimulate business objectives. Google Cloud certifications validate the candidate’s expertise and show their ability to convert businesses with Google Cloud technology.

Who should take the Exam?

The target audience for the Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect exam includes:

Anyone who wants to enhance skills with Cloud Architecture Certifications.
A candidate who wants to get an understanding of Google Cloud Platform – GCP.
Anyone who is preparing for the Cloud Architect Exam from Google.
Anyone who wants to understand Public Cloud, Private Cloud, Hybrid Cloud Deployment.
Anyone wants to understand the Services offering from Google Cloud Platform.
Customer of Google Cloud Platform and want to understand services offered.
Current Customers of Amazon, Azure or any other public cloud wants to understand GCP Services.
AWS Solution Architect or Microsoft Azure Architects wants to understand Google Cloud Platform.
Developers, Lead Developers who are using Google Cloud Platform Services, or any other public cloud services.

Learning Objectives

The objectives are the topics and regions which are very important for the Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect exam as these objectives are the basis of the exam. The Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect exam covers various areas, these are the abilities and knowledge which the exam wants to test. So, the objectives for the Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect are mentioned below:

Design and plan a cloud solution architecture
Manage and provision the cloud solution infrastructure
Design for security and compliance
Analyze and optimize technical and business processes
Manage implementations of cloud architecture
Ensure solution and operations reliability

Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect Path

Through the Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect certification, the candidate gets the opportunity to expand solution elements, comprising the infrastructure elements such as networks, systems and applications services, and they will gain real-world experience. Successfully passing the exam will lead the candidate to become the Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect. Google offers 3 certifications to prove the skills of the cloud professionals working on Google Cloud platform, these are –

Google Cloud Certified Associate Cloud Engineer
Google Cloud Certified Professional Data Engineer
Google Cloud Certified Professional Cloud Architect

Exam Format

Another important thing that the candidate needs to know is the basic exam details. The details such as exam duration, fee, number of questions, etc. So, here we are discussing such information. The Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect exam is present in the form of multiple-choice questions, the candidate will be given 2 hours to complete the exam. The Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect Cost is $200 (plus tax where applicable). The exam is available in the English and Japanese language.

Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect Requirements

There are no such prerequisites for the Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect exam. However, there are recommended experience such as :

Good understanding of Google technology and cloud architecture.
Candidates should be proficient in all aspects of enterprise cloud strategy, solution design, and architectural best practices.
Candidates should also be experienced in software development methodologies and approaches including multi-tiered distributed applications which span multi-cloud or hybrid environments.

Looking for resources to prepare for the GCP Architect Interview? Check out the GCP Architect Interview Questions.

How to Schedule the Exam?

The candidate can visit the official website of the Google certification, there they find all the relevant information regarding scheduling. However, here are the necessary steps to apply for the Google Cloud Architect certification exam:

Go to the Google Cloud website and create an account.
Check the catalogue and register for the exam you want to apply for.
Choose the exam center.
Schedule exam date and exam time.

Exam Detailed Course Outline

Google has distributed the exam syllabus into several sections and then subject sections. Let’s know the topics that are incorporated in the exam with the Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect Certification Course Outline

Domain 1: Designing and planning a cloud solution architecture

1.1 Designing a solution infrastructure that meets business requirements. Considerations include:

Business use cases and product strategy (Google Documentation: Best practices for enterprise organizations, Implementing policies for customer use cases)
Cost optimization (Google Documentation: Performance and cost optimization)
Supporting the application design (Google Documentation: Google Cloud system design considerations)
Integration with external systems (Google Documentation: Using APIs from an External Network, Security, privacy, and compliance)
Movement of data (Google Documentation: Data lifecycle)
Design decision trade-offs (Google Documentation: Google Cloud system design considerations)
Build, buy, or modify
Success measurements (e.g., key performance indicators [KPI], return on investment [ROI], metrics) (Google Documentation: KPIs for APIs: How Metrics Change Over Time)
Compliance and observability (Google Documentation: Security, privacy, and compliance)

1.2 Designing a solution infrastructure that meets technical requirements. Considerations include:

High availability and failover design (Google Documentation: Overview of the high availability configuration)
The elasticity of cloud resources (Google Documentation: Google Cloud overview)
Scalability to meet growth requirements (Google Documentation: Reliability, Security, privacy, and compliance)
Performance and latency (Google Documentation: Performance and cost optimization)

1.3 Designing network, storage, and compute resources. Considerations include:

Integration with on-premises/multi-cloud environments (Google Documentation: Hybrid and multi-cloud architecture patterns)
Cloud-native networking (VPC, peering, firewalls, container networking) (Google Documentation: VPC network overview)
Choosing data processing technologies (Google Documentation: Data processing, Dataflow, Dataproc)
Choosing appropriate storage types (e.g., object, file, RDBMS, NoSQL, NewSQL) (Google Documentation: Google Cloud Databases)
Choosing to compute resources (e.g., preemptible, custom machine type, specialized workload) (Google Documentation: Compute, Creating a VM Instance with a custom machine type)
Mapping compute needs to platform products (Google Documentation: Google Cloud products)

1.4 Creating a migration plan (i.e., documents and architectural diagrams). Considerations include:

Integrating solution with existing systems (Google Documentation: Migration to Google Cloud: Getting started)
Migrating systems and data to support the solution
Licensing mapping (Google Documentation: Bringing your own licenses)
Network planning (Google Documentation: Best practices and reference architectures for VPC design, VPC network overview))
Testing and proof of concept (Google Documentation: Running a hybrid render farm proof of concept)
Dependency management planning (Google Documentation: Specifying Dependencies)

1.5 Envisioning future solution improvements. Considerations include:

Cloud and technology improvements (Google Documentation: Google Cloud Improvements)
Business needs evolution (Google Documentation: Best practices for enterprise organizations, Google Cloud Improvements)
Evangelism and advocacy (Google Documentation: API Team Best Practices: Developers, Evangelists, and Champions)

Domain 2: Managing and provisioning a solution Infrastructure

2.1 Configuring network topologies. Considerations include:

Extending to on-premises (hybrid networking) (Google Documentation: Extending On-Premises Network-Attached Storage to Cloud Storage with Komprise, Google Cloud Hybrid Connectivity)
Extending to a multicloud environment that may include Google Cloud to Google Cloud communication (Google Documentation: Hybrid and multi-cloud architecture patterns)
Security protection (e.g. intrusion protection, access control, firewalls)

2.2 Configuring individual storage systems. Considerations include:

Data storage allocation (Google Documentation: Best practices for Cloud Storage)
Data processing/compute provisioning (Google Documentation: Provisioning VMs on sole-tenant nodes, Data processing, Dataflow, Dataproc)
Security and access management (Google Documentation: Identity and Access Management)
Network configuration for data transfer and latency (Google Documentation: GCP network performance, Performance, and cost optimization)
Data retention and data life cycle management (Google Documentation: Data lifecycle, Retention policies and retention policy locks)
Data growth management (Google Documentation: Data lifecycle, Cloud storage growth)

2.3 Configuring compute systems. Considerations include:

Compute system provisioning (Google Documentation: Provisioning VMs on sole-tenant nodes, Compute Engine)
Compute volatility configuration (preemptible vs. standard) (Google Documentation: Preemptible VM instances, Creating and starting a preemptible VM instance)
Network configuration for compute resources (Google Compute Engine, Google Kubernetes Engine, serverless networking)
Infrastructure orchestration, resource configuration, and patch management
Container orchestration

Domain 3: Designing for security and compliance

3.1 Designing for security. Considerations include:

Identity and access management (IAM) (Google Documentation: Identity and Access Management)
Resource hierarchy (organizations, folders, projects) (Google Documentation: Resource hierarchy, Using resource hierarchy for access control)
Data security (key management, encryption) (Google Documentation: Encryption at rest in Google Cloud)
Separation of duties (SoD) (Google Documentation: Separation of duties)
Security controls (e.g., auditing, VPC Service Controls, organization policy) (Google Documentation: Overview of VPC Service Controls)
Managing customer-managed encryption keys with Cloud KMS (Google Documentation: Customer-managed encryption keys (CMEK))
Remote access

3.2 Designing for compliance. Considerations include:

Legislation (e.g., health record privacy, children’s privacy, data privacy, and ownership) (Google Documentation: Compliance resource center)
Commercial (e.g., sensitive data such as credit card information handling, personally identifiable information [PII]) (Google Documentation: Scan for sensitive data in just a few clicks, Take charge of your sensitive data with the Cloud Data Loss Prevention (DLP) API)
Industry certifications (e.g., SOC 2) (Google Documentation: SOC 2)
Audits (including logs) (Google Documentation: Cloud Audit Logs)

Domain 4: Analyzing and optimizing technology and business processes

4.1 Analyzing and defining technical processes. Considerations include:

Software development life cycle plan (SDLC)
Continuous integration / continuous deployment (Google Documentation: Setting up a CI/CD pipeline)
Troubleshooting / root cause analysis best practices
Testing and validation of software and infrastructure (Google Documentation: Validate Your Data, Testing Overview)
Service catalogue and provisioning (Google Documentation: Provisioning Overview)
Business continuity and disaster recovery (Google Documentation: Disaster recovery planning guide, Solving for business continuity)

4.2 Analyzing and defining business processes. Considerations include:

Stakeholder management (e.g. influencing and facilitation)
Change management (Google Documentation: Opening doors, embracing change with cloud data warehouses)
Team assessment/skills readiness (Google Documentation: Migration to Google Cloud: Assessing and discovering your workloads)
Decision-making process
Customer success management
Cost optimization / resource optimization (Capex / Opex) (Google Documentation: Cloud cost optimization, Cost Management)

4.3 Developing procedures to ensure reliability of solutions in production (e.g., chaos engineering, penetration testing) (Google Documentation: Patterns for scalable and resilient apps)

Domain 5: Managing implementation

5.1 Advising development/operation team(s) to ensure successful deployment of the solution. Considerations include:

Application development (Google Documentation: Application modernization, Application Development)
API best practices (Google Documentation: API Key Best Practices)
Testing frameworks (load/unit/integration) (Google Documentation: Testing Overview, test – Run gsutil unit/integration tests (for developers))
Data and system migration tooling (Google Documentation: Data center migration)

5.2 Interacting with Google Cloud programmatically. Considerations include:

Google Cloud Shell
Google Cloud SDK (gcloud, gsutil and bq)
Cloud Emulators (e.g. Cloud Bigtable, Datastore, Spanner, Pub/Sub, Firestore)

Domain 6: Ensuring solution and operations reliability

6.1 Monitoring/logging/profiling/alerting solution (Google Documentation: Introduction to alerting, Alerting behavior)

6.2 Deployment and release management (Google Documentation: Google Cloud Deployment Manager)

6.3 Assisting with the support of solutions in operation (Google Documentation: Cloud Monitoring, Operations)

6.4 Evaluating quality control measures (Google Documentation: Google security whitepaper)

Exam Policies

The exam policies for the Google certifications include the Exam term and conditions, renewal and recertifications, failing and retaking the exam, privacy and policy regarding the examinations. We suggest candidates to once visit the official site of google and read all the related information.

FOR MORE QUERIES: VISIT GOOGLE CERTIFIED PROFESSIONAL CLOUD ARCHITECT FAQs

Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect Preparing Guide

To successfully pass the exam, candidates nees to follow the Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect Study Guide. It includes necessary and beneficial steps in order to pass the exam.

STEP 1: Google Official Page

As suggested before, the candidate should visit the official page of the overview of the Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect examination and read all the related information there. On the official page of the exam, the candidate will find the overview of the exam, also they will find the exam study guide which is very important. The study guide will give a brief about the objectives and concerning study areas of the exam.

STEP 2: Google Cloud Documentations and Solutions

The next step should be the google cloud documentation and solutions. Google itself provides the study material, so the candidate has a very good option to prepare the Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect exam with the help of these documentations and solutions. There are also case studies available on the official page of the Google which candidate can refer and try to understand the concepts through the case studies. The Case studies that are available are Mountkirk Games, Dress4Win, and TerramEarth.

STEP 3: Google Training Program

The Google cloud platform offers its training programs. The candidates who are preparing for the exam can find the Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect Training programs for themselves. These training programs will offer complete guidance and learning to the candidate. Also, visit and the online course for Google Cloud Certified Professional Cloud Architect.

STEP 4: Books are Beneficial

The candidate can refer to the books that can help them to successfully pass the Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect exam. There are a number of excellent books present in the market which helps the candidate to gather reliable information. Below, we are suggesting some Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect Books which the candidate can refer to:

Official Google Cloud Certified Professional Cloud Architect Study Guide by Dan Sullivan.
Google Cloud Certified Professional Cloud Architect: Introducing Google Cloud (Third Edition) by Soumen Chatterjee.
Professional Cloud Architect – Google Cloud Certification Guide: A handy guide to designing, developing, and managing enterprise-grade GCP cloud solutions by Konrad Cłapa.

STEP 5: Practice Tests

Next most important step of the preparation guide is practice tests. Candidates can try their hands-on practice test which makes sure of their preparation. Also, the practice tests will help the candidate to acknowledge their weak areas so that the candidate can work on them.

Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect Practice Tests

Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect Online Tutorial

Testprep Training provides Online Tutorials to assist you during the Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect Preparation. These online tutorials are built to help you acquire the required knowledge of the domain areas and structure the learning path to support your preparation. The online tutorial covers the learning objectives including –

Design and plan a cloud solution architecture
Manage and provision the cloud solution infrastructure
Design for security and compliance
Analyze and optimize technical and business processes
Manage implementations of cloud architecture
Ensure solution and operations reliability

However, a Professional Cloud Architect allows corporations to leverage Google Cloud technologies. Amidst a thorough knowledge of cloud architecture and Google Cloud Platform, the Professional Cloud Architect can design, produce, and manage robust, defend, scalable, highly available, and effective solutions to stimulate business objectives. Google Cloud certifications validate the candidate’s expertise and show their ability to convert businesses with Google Cloud technology.