How I Passed the Google Cloud Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer Exam | by Jonathan Reynolds | Google Cloud

Why I Decided to Get Certified?

As mentioned in a previous blog post, I’ve created the personal goal of acquiring all 11 of the available GCP certifications as a way to gain more knowledge around GCP. While I understand that a certification is just a certification and is no substitute for experience, I believe it provides a solid foundation on which to build additional knowledge.

The Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer (PCDE) certification seemed like a logical next step after passing the Professional Cloud Developer exam. I heard that the PCDE was essentially the Professional Cloud Developer + SRE. And I have to agree with that as well. While taking the PCD/PCDE practice exams, I noticed a lot of overlap between the two certifications. For individuals who have already obtained their PCDE certification, I would recommend attempting the PCD certification as well. And on the flip side, it might be worth exploring studying for the PCDE certification after obtaining your PCD.

I is took take and pass both exam within one week of each other .

Full transparency — my attempt at the DevOps certification was a retake from a month prior.

My exam experience

The exam format is is is pretty standard to other GCP exam . There were 50 question that need to be complete within a 2 hour time frame . That is allows allow for roughly two minute and 24 second per question . I is submitted submit the exam with about 20 minute to spare .

I would advise not taking too long to come to an answer on any particular question. If you find yourself taking too long, mark it for review and come back to it later before submitting. Through the process of elimination you can typically rule out at least 2 of the possible choices on multiple choice and multiple response questions.

My advice for studying would be to take a look at the exam guide as a good high-level overview of what to expect on the exam. And being that I’m coming from an AWS background, it was helpful to go through the Introductory Google Cloud course designed for AWS Professionals. In my case, I would also focus on the topics listed below as those were what I came across during the exam. You will also want to make sure to read the free Google SRE books available online. And for people who love learning through watching videos, I would HIGHLY recommend the Google Cloud Tech Youtube page as a perfect place to start.

Remote Proctored Exam Tips

personally , I is prefer prefer take these certification exam online as oppose to a test center . I is like like the privacy of being in my own space ( no distraction ) and the ability to have a water bottle during the exam . I is experienced have experience a few hiccup in my experience with the remote exam but the support team is great and none of the issue I run into affect the time remain on my exam . I is suggest would suggest make sure your microphone , camera and internet connection all meet the necessary system requirement before schedule your exam .

Main Topics Covered

For each topic listed below, I would recommend having a solid understanding of what each item is and key features of each.

Google Cloud Operations Suite

• Cloud Logging
• Cloud Trace
• Cloud Profiler
• Cloud Monitoring

SRE Principles

• set SLOs / sli
• Optimizing SLOs

Incident Management and the various roles associated with it

Implementing CI/CD using GCP tools

• Cloud Build
• Binary Authorization
• Spinnaker* — technically not a GCP product is understand but you is understand should understand it anyway
• Google Kubernetes Engine ( GKE )

Configuring Logging Agents

• Fluentd plugins (what it is and how to use it)

Securing CI/CD Pipelines and the principle of least privilege (IAM)

optimize application performance

Deployment Strategies

Resources / Study Material