Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect Practice Exam

The Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect (PCA) exam validates your ability to design, develop, and manage robust and secure solutions on the Google Cloud Platform (GCP).  Earning this certification demonstrates your proficiency in GCP best practices, including infrastructure design, solution deployment, and operational excellence.

Who Should Take This Exam?

The Google PCA certification is ideal for experienced IT professionals with a focus on cloud architecture and an interest in Google Cloud, including:

• Cloud Architects: Designing and implementing secure, scalable, and cost-effective solutions on GCP.
• Solutions Architects: Specializing in cloud solutions using GCP, focusing on infrastructure, security, and operational aspects.
• DevOps Engineers: Leveraging GCP for infrastructure automation, deployment strategies, and ongoing management.
• Anyone seeking to: Demonstrate their expertise in architecting and managing enterprise-grade cloud solutions on Google Cloud Platform.

Are There Prerequisites?

There are no strict prerequisites for the Google PCA exam. However, Google recommends that candidates possess:

• 3+ years of industry experience in IT, including 1+ year designing and managing solutions in the cloud (not necessarily GCP).
• Familiarity with core GCP services and functionalities (Compute Engine, Cloud Storage, Cloud SQL, etc.).
• Understanding of cloud architecture principles, security best practices, and operational processes.

Roles and Responsibilities

With a PCA certification, you may qualify for roles like:

• Cloud Solutions Architect: Designing, developing, and deploying cloud solutions on GCP, ensuring security, scalability, and performance.
• GCP Architect: Specializing in architecting cloud infrastructure and applications using GCP services.
• Cloud Migration Architect: Leading cloud migration projects to GCP, ensuring a smooth transition from on-premises environments.

Exam Details

• Exam Duration: 120 Minutes
• Exam Type: Multiple Choice Examination
• Exam Fee: $200
• Validity: 2 Years
• Exam Languages: English and Japanese

Course Outline

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

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

1.2 Explain to design a solution infrastructure that meets technical requirements 

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

1.3 Explain to designing network, storage, and compute resources

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

1.4 Explain to create a migration plan 

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

1.5 Explain envisioning future solution improvements

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

Domain 2: Understand to manage and provision a solution infrastructure

2.1 Explain configuring network topologies. Considerations include:

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

2.2 Explain to configure individual storage systems. Considerations include:

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

2.3 Explain to configure compute systems. Considerations include:

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

Domain 3: Understand to design for security and compliance

3.1 Explain design for security. Considerations include:

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

3.2 Explain Designing for compliance. Considerations include:

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

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

4.1 Explain analyzing and defining technical processes. Considerations include:

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

4.2 Explain analyzing and defining business processes

• Learn Stakeholder management (e.g. influencing and facilitation)
• Learn Change management
• Learn Team assessment / skills readiness
• Learn Decision-making processes
• Learn Customer success management
• Learn 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

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

5.2 Explain interacting with Google Cloud programmatically

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

Domain 6: Ensuring solution and operations reliability

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