Piyush BaganiHey everyone, I am back with another blog post. Here I will be sharing my experience & thoughts on how I was able to clear the Google Cloud Certified : Associate Cloud Engineer.
Learning Cloud Computing in 2022 can turn as one of the best decisions of your Life. Cloud computing skills are among the most in-demand skills in technology today and employers’ demand for cloud-skilled workers continues to outpace the supply. According to a 2021 jobs report by The Linux Foundation, cloud and containers technology skills top the list of those most in demand by hiring managers and developers around the world.
Topics that I will cover in this Blog.
Any Prerequisites
About the exam
How did I prepare?
Tips while taking exam.
Useful Tips and Tricks
My advice
So without any further delay, Let's get started.
Any Prerequisites
According to Google, Before attempting the ACE exam, it’s recommended that you have 6+ months hands-on experience with Google Cloud products and solutions. But if you have some good knowledge in Cloud Computing you can crack this Exam. If you are familiar with Azure or AWS its time to take your cloud journey to the next level by getting used to a multi-cloud environment.
About the exam
This certification is focused on the fundamental skills of deploying, monitoring, and maintaining projects on Google Cloud and is a good starting point for those who have just started working on the cloud. You can further refer the exam guide.
How did I prepare?
This is the crucial part as the amount of time you spend with GCP the more you become good at it. The Resources I used while preparing I am linking them below one by one.
Initially, I enrolled in a course on Udemy called “GCP Associate Cloud Engineer” by Ranga Karanam(in28minutes) which is a very good course and covers all the most important aspects of the GCP and its fundamentals so this is a very good start. Here is the link.
Then I shifted my focus to YouTube to have some more understanding regarding ACE exam. I came across a channel by Satish VJ called Awesome GCP, you can find some awesome content on GCP. I am giving the link to his channel please do refer. Also I highly recommend you to go through his medium account, you will find Awesome GCP stuff.
Another channel called Cloud Advocate also covers important topics and shows practical implementations which is also a very good watch.
Learning only theory won't help , you must have some hands-on GCP. I would recommend you to create an account on GCP or you can practice the labs on Qwiklabs.
I also recommend you to checkout her sketch notes. as a quick revision before the exam. They are Awesome.
Lastly I would recommend you to give official practice test by Google Cloud itself. It is good to have some understanding of which type of questions you are going to face.
Tips while taking exam.
- Now after preparing for exam , you have to create account on webaccessor.com and schedule your exam. You can cancel or reschedule your exam until before you hit the launch button without any additional fee. The exam costs $125.
- This exam is available through online proctoring so that you don’t have to travel to the nearby testing center to take this exam.
- You need to install the lockdown browser and complete the biometric profile before the exam. You just need to download this tool and launch it so that it would take your face as login so that when you launch the exam it will automatically redirect to the next steps.
- You will have 120 minutes to complete this exam. It’s a lot of time so you don’t have to rush and take some time to verify your answers. If you are not familiar with the question or not sure about the answer just mark for review and come back later. You can also see all the questions and navigate to whatever the question you want before you submit your exam. Important Blog.
- The passing percentage is not revealed but should be around 80% from what I have heard so far.
Useful Tips and Tricks
- Let's say you don't know the answer , what you can do is eliminate the wrong answers first. If you have some good knowledge and common sense, you can easily eliminate 2 options and after that try to answer from remaining 2 options. This strategy helped me a lot.
- Practice questions from examtopics.com. This website contains some previous questions of ACE Exam. This will surely help you. Remember all the answers here on this site are not accurate. Go to discussions to see which option is correct.
- Some topics not to be missed.
- IAM (identity, roles, policy, Principle of Least Privilege)
- Google Kubernetes Engine
- Compute Instances
- Networking
My advice
- Don't procrastinate in scheduling the Exam, else you won't be confident enough.
- If you taking the exam in remote mode. This blog can help you a lot.
That's all from my side I wish you all the very best for your journey on learning Google cloud and clearing the exam!
Also if you have any queries or doubts regarding the exam feel free to reach me out on Linkedin.
Thank You for Reading!
Keep Learning , Keep Sharing🎯🎯
