How to ace the Associate Cloud Engineer Certification in one go?

Overview

The Google Cloud Associate Engineer (ACE) test has no prerequisites. However, it is not simple enough to pass without serious preparation. You should have at least six months of practical experience using Google Cloud products and solutions before taking the exam. Google provides several low-cost or free materials to help you study for the test, all of which may be found on its website.  

Know the test pattern. Identify your strong suits

Knowing which topics will be assessed; which among them are your strong suits and which require more practice; can help you map your learning route.

Google provides specifics on the areas you should concentrate on: 

• IAM roles, gcloud commands, compute engine, Kubernetes, app engine, virtual private clouds (VPCs), Google Cloud’s operations suite, networking & deployment manager are the primary topics you should focus on.  
• You need to understand how to manage VMs, VPC networks, subnets, load balancers, compute, and storage in addition to performing access management and setting up permissions. You should be familiar with the functions and capabilities offered by each Google service.  
• You also need to focus on learning how to develop projects. Recognize that you have projects, folders, and organizations. Recognize the hierarchy, how to move resources from one project to another, and from one organization to another, as well as the necessary permissions.   

Prepare for the test. Get familiar with the topics

Numerous online learning resources can help you get comfortable with the Google Cloud Platform; if you are brand-new to the cloud (GCP). Focusing on the abilities listed in Google’s Exam Study Guide and reading the pertinent Google documentation, however, is a preferred strategy for getting ready. However, it is advised that you begin your training by registering a free trial account in GCP. There you can obtain free hands-on experience with Google products before working on the exam topics. You may access and control Google Cloud services through the GCP console which is an in-browser user interface.   

For Google Cloud, start with Core Infrastructure and read Getting Started with Google Kubernetes Engine and Architecting with Google Compute Engine. You should also check Google Cloud documentation through guides, tutorials, and other resources on Google Cloud products (if you have previous experience with GCP). There you can find a summary of everything you need to know to pass the test; along with links to the GCP documentation.  

Here are a few tips for help:

• Be familiar with distinctions between various Google Cloud Storage options like standard, coldline and nearline.  
• Learn about various computing and database options, such as ACID vs. BASE models or SQL vs. NoSQL.  
• Get to know the different scalability choices and the structure of an App engine application.  

• Recognize the four storage types used by Google: Object, File, Block, and Archival.  
• Learn everything about cloud storage and the Cloud Content Delivery Network for hosting static websites (CDN).  
• Be familiar with the various GCP services, such as Compute Engine, Kubernetes Engine (GKE), and Cloud Functions.  
• Learn how GKE differs from Cloud Run on containers.  
• Familiarize yourself with cost-cutting preemptible VM techniques.  

• Know when to use various database and data warehouse choices, including Bigtable, Big Query, Cloud SQL, and Cloud spanner.  
• Recognize the variations between App Engine Flexible and App Engine Standard

Practice labs. Get practical experience

Your chances of clearing the Google Cloud Associate Engineer (ACE) exam get significantly higher with practical experience. So, attempt as many direct labs as you can to get familiar with various deployment, monitoring, and security scenarios for cloud apps. You can do it via Qwiklabs. 

Qwiklabs is an approach to gaining practical experience using GCP. It provides temporary credentials for a certain period to enable individuals about the cloud using GCP without any simulations. Qwiklabs offers a variety of options for you, including: 

• 30-minute standalone labs  
• Multi-day courses, from beginner to expert level,  
• Instructor-led or self-paced training (covering topics like machine learning, security, infrastructure, and app development), and more.  

These practical Google Cloud labs use the GCP interface and gcloud command. In the first lab, you will learn about the specifics of the Qwiklabs environment and discover major Google Cloud capabilities. Further sessions will give you the opportunity to: 

• Practice using gcloud commands,  
• Connect to google cloud computing services, 
• Deploy a web server,  
• Use the cloud console to construct a virtual machine, and  
• Use gcloud command line to create a virtual machine. 

Attempt practice exams. Master the questions

Exam practice is a vital part of your preparation. Take as many practice exams as you can, and carefully note your correct and incorrect responses. Make a note of the subjects whose questions you find difficult to answer and review the information in that context.  

Before taking the practice test, you should also take the Preparing for the Associate Cloud Engineer Examination course to become familiar with the exam materials and perform a final readiness check. Spend some time answering the sample questions for the Cloud Engineer to become accustomed to the format of the questions and exam modules.  

Some exam-taking advice before you go

After you have mastered the sample test questions, you need some expert advice to ace the real examination. Previous test takers found the following test-taking tips quite useful:  

• Exam questions are scenario-based. So, you will need to have knowledge of multiple areas to address a particular issue.  
• The questions are ‘multiple-choice’. However, you will find some ‘multiple select’ questions requiring you to choose more than one response to be correct.  
• You will be able to flag questions for further review if you are unsure about the answer.  
• Many of the questions require you to know Google Cloud’s Best Practices for Enterprise Organizations, Google Cloud’s Best Practice for Operating containers, Best practices and reference architectures for Virtual private cloud (VPC) networking design, and Best practices for securing service accounts.  

• When it comes to questions on billing, you need to choose the least expensive and easiest solution to implement.   

Google Cloud Associate Engineer Certifications at CloudThat

Associate Cloud Engineers oversee enterprise solutions, implement applications, and keep an eye on operations. They maintain one or more deployed solutions that make use of Google-managed or self-managed services on Google Cloud by using the Google Cloud Console and the command-line interface.  

Google Cloud Associate Engineer Certification training from CloudThat will help to gain the practical knowledge necessary to create and implement highly scalable applications on the Google Cloud Platform (GCP).   

Visit CloudThat to know more!