My 8 weeks journey for Google Associate Cloud Engineer Certification Exam
Tags: Gcp Certification, Google Cloud Certified, Google Cloud Platform

Yes, I passed this exam!!!

I’m sharing my experience on 8 weeks journey of Google Associate Cloud Engineer exam prep, hoping it will be useful for the future test takers.

Exam was not tough as initially I thought. When I was answering the questions I knew I would pass it. I finished the exam in an hour and spent 15 minutes for the final review.

I would advice you to spend time to understand the question specially key qualifier “usually”, “never”, “most”, “not” etc. because they change the whole dynamics of the question.

I spent roughly 30 -35 hours per week for the preparation with my full time job. My experience in cloud engineering was 2 at scale of 10 where 10 was the highest.

Week 0: This is the week when I decided to take GCP ACE exam. I prepared 8 weeks plan and initially my goal was to spend 20 hours per week because I had a full time job but after 2nd week I realized that I needed to spend more time to cover all topics so I revised it with 35 hours in 3rd week.

I used multiple resources for my preparation; such as…

Official Study Guide for Google Cloud Certified Associate Cloud Engineer book on learning.oreilly.com Qwiklabs to understand the multiple topics — I must say you all should do the labs, this is best way to learn the concepts. Coursera courses: Google Cloud Fundamentals: Core Infrastructure Essential Google Cloud Infrastructure: Foundation Essential Google Cloud Infrastructure: Core Services Essential Google Cloud Infrastructure: Scaling and Automation Getting Started With Application Development Preparing for the Google Cloud Associate Cloud Engineer Exam I took Live Certification Training sessions from learning.oreilly.com. Documents Reference: Google Cloud Documents was my source to understand the concept in details. For example auto/basic/manual scaling in App Engine (standard and flexible) I learned the concept from GCP documents. This is a great reference and I would recommend you to use it whenever you want to get an insight in the topic. Another source for kubernetes was https://kubernetes.io/docs/home/ I will recommend to refer it for basic commands. And finally practice test from Google certification site and from Udemy

Week 1: My approach was; first finish the study guide to understand the complete picture of all the topics. In the first week I finished half of the book. In this week I started to take qwiklabs to cover cloud engineering concept.

Week 2: In 2nd week, I continued the study guide and more qwiklabs based on the topics that I realized were weak during my first week book reading. My week-2 goal was to finish the book and qwiklabs quest cloud essential and Baseline: Infrastructure. Well, 2nd week was great in terms to learning the basic concepts of all the topics.

Week 3: By 2nd week I already knew the concepts. In 3rd week I registered for live sessions of GCP ACE certification on learning.oreilly.com. I also saw videos on kubernetes and cert perp to get in depth knowledge. This week focus was finish online training sessions and qwiklabs Cloud Engineering quest. By this time I knew which topics needed more or less time; I had to spent a lot of time on networking, load balancing, kubernetes and cloud IAM. And storage was my strong area hence needed less time compare to others.

Week 4: This week I registered for the exam. I started to take coursera courses and finished 2 courses — Google Cloud Fundamentals: Core Infrastructure and Essential Google Cloud Infrastructure: Foundation

These courses had qwiklabs so it was a great experience to first learn the concept and apply it using hands-in labs.

Week 5: This week my focus was to finish all coursera courses and yes I finished all of them. It was tough to complete all in one week but it was needed to meet the goal.

Week 6: By this week I completed the books, coursera courses and live/recorded training sessions. Now I decided to purchase udemy practice test. Well, I failed my first practice test. I must say that it was the best thing happened with me during the preparation as it opened my eyes about the complexity of the exam. I spent time to understand where were the gaps in my understanding. Udemy explained the answers with the GCP document links. I retook the first practice test after reviewing the core concepts and passed this time around.

Week 7: I focused on practice tests, reviewing the book + coursera courses videos along with GCP document reference links.

Week 8: This was the final week. I decided to focus on key topics which needed extra preparation and for me it was IAM, GKE and Network (VPC peering, interconnect, VPN etc) I spent my time in practice test to verify my understanding. Yes, practice test was a big help as it provided the GCP document links to get the in depth knowledge about the core concepts.

And finally exam day came, my exam was early morning. The reason I took early morning time because my brain is active in morning. I decided to take it from home due to COVID-19 situation and had a great experience. I finished my exam in a hour and got the official email from google with-in 3 days.

The most important part is enjoy every moment of your exam prep journey. And remind yourself everyday that why you started it?

I hope this article will be helpful in your exam journey. Good Luck for your exam!!!