Basically there are three (3) Google Cloud certification levels:

1. Foundational - Cloud Digital Leader

2. Associate - Cloud Engineer

3. Professional

   • Cloud Architect       // This is what I took and explain below

   • Cloud Database Engineer

   • Cloud Developer

   • Data Engineer

   • Cloud DevOps Engineer

   • Cloud Security Engineer

   • Cloud Network Engineer

   • Google Workspace Administrator

   • Machine Learning Engineer

My Hints when taking the PCA Exam

1. You have two hours to answer 50 questions, that's a little over two minutes per question.

2. All questions are multiple choice (4 choices) for all questions.

3. When answering questions I started at #1 and went straight through to #50, in order. I answered each questions like this:

   • If EASY – I answered it and clicked NEXT (and didn’t look back)

   • If MODERATE – I gave it my best shot AND marked it as a question to review again (there is a "Review" check box for each question)

   • If HARD – I left it blank AND marked it as a question to review again (I tried to not do this too often)

4. For MODERATE questions, I think your first hunch are usually correct. Don’t psych yourself out.

5. When confronted with a moderate or difficult question, try to eliminate the obvious wrong answers. Usually there are 2 answers that are obviously not full or completely correct for the use case given.

6. Look for patterns.  Many questions give the same choices but combined in different pairs.  Here's an example...
   
   The lead Chef is asked to make a real chocolate cake with minimal cooking time and no desire for taste as the cake will only be shown in advertisements.  Which answer best matches the requirements?
   
   [A]  Combine wet ingredients with dry ingredients and cook in a dutch oven over a campfire
   [B]  Combine wet ingredients with dry ingredients and cook in a conventional oven
   [C]  Only use the dry ingredients and cook in a dutch oven over a campfire
   [D]  Only use the dry ingredients and cook in a conventional oven
   
   If you know that a dutch oven over a campfire will take too long (microwave is much faster), then option A and C are incorrect because it doesn't meet the question's "minimal cooking time" requirement. The only reasonable choices are B and D.  Then you can decide that B is best answer because you can't bake a cake without some wet ingredients, even if it's just water.
   
   

7. I like scheduling my exam start time to be around 9 or 10 AM so I'm done at lunch (I'm always hungry after an exam).  I also don't have anxiety through the morning waiting until the afternoon to take the exam.

Key Resources I Used

• Review of the Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect BETA Exam - although this is older, it still seem relevant to the current exam (as of November 2023)

• Official Google cases studies and information (EHR Healthcare, Helicopter Racing League, Mountkirk Games, and TerramEarth)

• Guy who passed in April 2023 - Pass the Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect Exam (2023)

• Resource Lists on GitHub awesome-gcp-certifications (this is great)

• Coursera course “Preparing for the Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect Exam” (I used this is 2019 for my initial learning)

• Official Google Professional Cloud Architect Exam Guide

My Notes and Guides

The percent is the rough estimate of time I spent the FIRST TIME (in 2019) using the resource, and what I feel contributed to my success.

I studied for my initial certification by spending the approximately energy in these areas:

• 40% on COURSES: Online & in-person courses, labs, YouTube tutorials, Google Cloud Skills Boost (formerly called Qwiklabs), and  just playing around in GCP.

• 30% on PRACTICE EXAMS: These are a great asset.  I've used practice exams from Linux Academy, Coursera and Pluralsight.  A full list with links is below.

• 20% on NOTES: Notes from other folks like Udesh (2023),  Sathish VJ (2019), Github List of Courses from Sathish VJ, Coursera, and other Google searches.

• 10% on EXPERIENCE: What I learned working with customers at Google

For re-certification I spent most of time taking and studying PRACTICE EXAMS.

List of Practice Exams

This ended up being a big part when I'm re-certifying, just to reinforce all those things I normally "Google" and it's not in my long term memory (like max speeds and bandwidth, or speed of Pub/Sub, and so on).

1. 1. Official Professional Cloud Architect Exam Readiness Test - Way too easy, but a good start.

   2. Pluralsight - Setup a Pluralsight Account for study and testing.  To find PCA, just search for “Google Cloud Certified Professional Cloud Architect“ or click on the 'Certification' icon, then look for “Google Cloud Certification Prep”.  First week is free... so see how much you can get done in seven days.

   3. Whizlabs provides a set of practice exams for the GCP Certification

   4. Coursera course “Preparing for the Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect Exam”.  If you sign up there are 2 to 3 exams for each sub-section.  A few are oddly worded, but OK for free and it covers a lot of areas.

   5. ROI Training

      1. Quiz 1 – bit.ly/ROI-quiz1

      2. Quiz 2 – bit.ly/ROI-quiz2

      3. Quiz 3 – bit.ly/ROI-quiz3

      4. Quiz 4 – bit.ly/ROI-quiz4

      5. Quiz 5 – bit.ly/ROI-quiz5

Main Products Covered

This is my combined list from several other sites.  At this point I'm not sure who I took these from, but it's what I've collected over the past six years in my personal notes.

• AI/ML (also see Vertex)

• Anthos

• App Engine

• Backup

• Bigtable

• BigQuery

• CI/CD

• Compute Engine - the core.. VMs

• Cloud Build - Place to build you containers with deep security scanning

• Cloud Datastore

• Cloud Functions Scripting in GCP, serverles

• Cloud Interconnect - Connect with the fast connect, 10 or 100 Gbps (50 Mbps to 10 Gbps with Partner Interconnect)

• Cloud KMS - Key Management Service

• Cloud Logging

• Cloud Monitoring

• Cloud NAT

• Cloud Operations formerly Stackdriver, integrated monitoring, logging, and trace managed services for applications and systems in GCP

• Cloud Pub/Sub - subscription and push/pull for transfer of streaming data into or in GCP

• Cloud Run Programming in GCP, serverless, in containers

• Cloud Run on Anthos

• Cloud Scheduler Crontab

• Cloud Spanner

• Cloud SQL

• Cloud Storage - Buckets (Cloud Storage Best practices)

• Cloud VPN - VPN, speed is slower, uses IPSec., up to 3 Gbps

• Compute Engine

• Container Registry

• Dataflow

• Dataproc Basically Spark and Hadoop in GCP

• Deployment Manager

• DLP

• Firebase - JSON based mobile app code and serverless backend

• Firestore - Serverless, nySQL, db docs in sync on and offline for web/app/desktop/more. Pay per read/write

• Firewall and Firewall Rules

• GCP Pricing Calculator

• GKE - Google K8s management system, Hybrid

  • Troubleshooting GKE

  • GKE Best practices

• Google AI - All tools encapsulated

• IAM - Security and ID management in Google (and IAM Best practices) 

• IAP

• Istio

• KMS

• Load Balancing

• Managed Instance Group (MIG) Combined Computes for scale, various rollouts, and so on.

• Organization Policies (also review Organization Best practices)

• Persistent Disks

• Private Google Access

• PubSub

• Secrets Manager

• Serverless VPC Access Servless access to VPCs using connectors

• Storage Transfer Service

• Tensorflow/ Tensorflow Enterprise

• Transfer Appliance

• Vertex (more on Gemini and Bard may start appearing on tests)

• VPC - Virtual Private Cloud, networking around project(s) that share firewall and routing rules (review VPC Flow Logging too)

• VPC Shared VPC Various VPCs connections, with a host and service projects.

• VPC Peering VPC “reflected” or mirrored between two different VPCs

Third Party Tools

These third party tools are referenced and you should have at least a high level understanding of the product or service.

• Github

• Terraform

• Prometheus

• Vault

• Jenkins

• Nginx

Reflection after each Exam

These are items I noted each time I finished an exam before I drove home.  Things I was a little weak on and would want to know more about.

From 2019

1. 1. Load Balancing, especially what is Layer 4 (http) and Layer 7 (https) and the business drivers. https://cloud.google.com/load-balancing/

   2. Deployment and CI/DI

   3. If in doubt use Cloud Storage and BigQuery. Seemed like that was a common theme… but I could be wrong.

From 2023

1. Web Security Scanner

2. DLP

3. Oracle to Spanner and Oracle to BQ

4. Managed instance groups across multiple regions?

5. MongoDB to Firestore

6. Instance Template (managed and unmanaged and best options)

7. Cloud Composer

8. Identity-aware Proxy (IAP)