Google Professional Cloud Architect (GCP) Practice Exam

The Google Professional Cloud Architect (GCP) certification validates your ability to design, develop, and manage robust, secure, scalable, and dynamic solutions on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). It assesses your proficiency across various aspects of cloud architecture, making you a valuable asset in designing and implementing solutions that meet diverse organizational needs.

Who should pursue the Google Professional Cloud Architect Certification?

This certification is ideal for individuals seeking to:

• Advance their careers in cloud architecture, solution design, and cloud engineering.
• Demonstrate their expertise in designing and managing secure, scalable, and cost-effective solutions on GCP.
• Gain a comprehensive understanding of GCP services, best practices, and architectural principles.
• Contribute effectively to cloud migration, modernization, and application development projects on GCP.

Key Skills and Knowledge Assessed:

The Google Professional Cloud Architect exam focuses on various areas related to cloud architecture and GCP, including:

• Designing and planning cloud solutions: Understanding business requirements, translating them into technical solutions, and selecting appropriate GCP services.
• Managing and provisioning cloud solutions: Configuring, deploying, and managing GCP resources to meet specific needs.
• Designing for security and compliance: Implementing security best practices, understanding compliance requirements, and securing GCP solutions.
• Analyzing and optimizing technical and business processes: Analyzing existing systems and processes, identifying areas for improvement, and optimizing them for the cloud.
• Managing solution implementation: Overseeing the implementation of cloud solutions, ensuring they meet design goals, and managing project lifecycles.

Exam Details:

• Exam Provider: Google Cloud
• Format: Multiple-choice questions and case studies
• Number of Questions: Varies (typically around 50-70)
• Duration: 120 minutes (2 hours)
• Passing Score: Minimum score not publicly disclosed by Google (generally around 70%)
• Delivery: Testing center or online proctored
  

Exam Structure

The Google Professional Cloud Architect (GCP) Exam covers the following topics - 

Domain 1: Understand to design and plan a cloud solution architecture

1.1 Explain to design a solution infrastructure that meets business requirements

• Learning Business use cases and product strategy
• Learning Cost optimization
• Learning Supporting the application design
• Learning Integration with external systems
• Learning Movement of data
• Learning Design decision trade-offs
• Learning Build, buy, modify, or deprecate
• Learning Success measurements (e.g., key performance indicators [KPI], return on investment [ROI], metrics)
• Learning Compliance and observability

1.2 Explain to design a solution infrastructure that meets technical requirements 

• Learning High availability and failover design
• Learning Elasticity of cloud resources with respect to quotas and limits
• Learning Scalability to meet growth requirements
• Learning Performance and latency

1.3 Explain to designing network, storage, and compute resources

• Learning integration with on-premises/multicloud environments
• Learning Cloud-native networking (VPC, peering, firewalls, container networking)
• Learning to choose data processing technologies
• Learning to choose appropriate storage types (e.g., object, file, databases)
• Learning to choose compute resources (e.g., preemptible, custom machine type, specialized workload)
• Learning to map compute needs to platform products

1.4 Explain to create a migration plan 

• Learning to integrate solutions with existing systems
• Learning to migrate systems and data to support the solution
• Learning software license mapping
• Learning network planning
• Learning testing and proofs of concept
• Learning dependency management planning

1.5 Explain envisioning future solution improvements

• Learning Cloud and technology improvements
• Learning Evolution of business needs
• Learning Evangelism and advocacy

Domain 2: Understand to manage and provision a solution infrastructure

2.1 Explain configuring network topologies. Considerations include:

• Learning extend to on-premises environments (hybrid networking)
• Learning extend to a multicloud environment that may include Google Cloud to Google Cloud communication
• Learning security protection (e.g. intrusion protection, access control, firewalls)

2.2 Explain to configure individual storage systems. Considerations include:

• Learning Data storage allocation
• Learning Data processing/compute provisioning
• Learning Security and access management
• Learning Network configuration for data transfer and latency
• Learning Data retention and data life cycle management
• Learning Data growth planning

2.3 Explain to configure compute systems. Considerations include:

• Learning compute resource provisioning
• Learning compute volatility configuration (preemptible vs. standard)
• Learning network configuration for compute resources 
• Learning infrastructure orchestration, resource configuration, and patch management
• Learning container orchestration

Domain 3: Understand to design for security and compliance

3.1 Explain design for security. Considerations include:

• Learning identity and access management (IAM)
• Learning resource hierarchy (organizations, folders, projects)
• Learning Data security (key management, encryption, secret management)
• Learning Separation of duties (SoD)
• Learning Security controls 
• Learning to manage customer-managed encryption keys with Cloud Key Management Service
• Learning Remote access

3.2 Explain Designing for compliance. Considerations include:

• Learning Legislation (e.g., health record privacy, children’s privacy, data privacy, and ownership)
• Learning Commercial (e.g., sensitive data such as credit card information handling, personally identifiable information [PII])
• Learning Industry certifications (e.g., SOC 2)
• Learning Audits (including logs)

Domain 4: Understand to analyze and optimize technical and business processes

4.1 Explain analyzing and defining technical processes. Considerations include:

• Learning Software development life cycle (SDLC)
• Learning Continuous integration / continuous deployment
• Learning Troubleshooting / root cause analysis best practices
• Learning Testing and validation of software and infrastructure
• Learning Service catalog and provisioning
• Business continuity and disaster recovery

4.2 Explain analyzing and defining business processes

• Learning Stakeholder management (e.g. influencing and facilitation)
• Learning Change management
• Learning Team assessment / skills readiness
• Learning Decision-making processes
• Learning Customer success management
• Learning Cost optimization / resource optimization (capex / opex)

4.3 Developing procedures to ensure reliability of solutions in production

• Chaos engineering
• Penetration testing

Domain 5: Understand to manage implementation

5.1 Explain advising development/operation teams to ensure successful deployment of the solution

• Learning application development
• Learning API best practices
• Learning Testing frameworks (load/unit/integration)
• Learning Data and system migration and management tooling

5.2 Explain interacting with Google Cloud programmatically

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

Domain 6: Ensuring solution and operations reliability

• Learning to monitor/log/profile/alert solution
• Learning deployment and release management
• Learning to assist with the support of deployed solutions
• Learning to evaluate quality control measures