Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect

New exam
Prep Notes by

0
BY AMMETT
 Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect Prep Sheet
by Ammett
v.2
This is my prep sheet based on my study for the new version of this exam launched in 2021.

General Knowledge
Organisations What it is Key points
Resources are organized • Flow (Organisation, Folders,
hierarchically. This allows you to projects, resources)
map your enterprise's • Where to manage permissions for
operational structure to GCP, groups, department, entire
and to manage access control organisation, etc
and permissions for groups of
related resources My experience
Folders What it is Key points What you should know Review documents Video This knowledge is key and
Folders are an additional grouping • Folders can be used to identify your General knowledge Resource Hierarchy Resource Hierarchy
fundamental. Combination
mechanism on top of projects. departments or various
environments of your cloud space.
question may appear with any
These are optional combination of Org, Folder,
project, region, AZ, On prem
(hybrid)
Projects What it is Key points
The project resource is the base- • A project is required to use
level organizing entity. services, resources and billing.
Organizations and folders may
contain multiple projects.

Region What it is Key points What you should know Review documents Video
Regions are independent • Isolated from other regions • Multi regional design can be used for
geographic areas that consist • Transfer fee for data between fault tolerance
of zones regions
Region and Zones Region and Zones

Region, Zone and Multi

Availability Zone What it is Key points What you should know
A zone is a deployment area for • Isolated from other zones • Zonal resources operate within a single
Google Cloud resources within a • Low latency connection between zone. If a zone becomes unavailable, all
region. AZ within the region of the zonal resources in that zone are
unavailable until service is restored

On Prem What it is Key points What you should know Key points
Your organisation private data • Why chose cloud • Why move, what are the requirements. Staple based on the cases. Please
centre • Type of application • Suitable cloud services (on cloud review so you can appreciate the
• Type of infrastructure replacements / equivalents) architecture and how it can
• How to connect to cloud migrate or connect to the cloud.

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 Compute
Compute What it is What you should know Review documents Video Qwiklabs My experience
Engine Compute Engine lets you create • Improve performance Compute engine Best Practices for GCE This will be mentioned is several
and run virtual machines on • Troubleshooting issues Disable external IP’s Enterprise Deployments Compute engine scenarios. Once you understand why,
Google infrastructure • How to scale when and what. You can decide if it is
Managing Highly Available and
• Disable external IP’s necessary an in what configuration.
Scalable Workloads on VMs
App Engine What it is What you should know Review documents Video Qwiklabs My experience
App Engine is a fully managed, • Know difference between App engine App Engine A question may pop up
serverless platform for flexible and standard Standard environment API explore: App engine
developing and hosting web • Language supported (go, Flexible environment
applications at scale. etc)
• It’s PaaS
Cloud Run What it is What you should know Review documents Video Qwiklabs My experience
Develop and deploy highly • Uses Cloud run Cloud run Good to know
scalable containerized Serverless Cloud Run Development
applications on a fully
managed serverless platform.
Cloud What it is What you should know Review documents Video Qwiklabs My experience
Functions Event-driven serverless • This scales from nothing. What is Cloud Functions A pop up question of two may appear
compute platform • No limit must be Google cloud functions Cloud function quick start
maintained for it’s use

Unmanaged What it is What you should know Review documents My experience

groups Unmanaged instance groups • Use instances that are not Unmanaged instance groups Know the different between a managed
are collections of instances that identical instance group and an unmanaged
exist in a single zone and do not • Do not allow automatic instance group
share a common instance creation, deletion or
template. scaling.
Managed What it is What you should know Review documents Video Qwiklabs My experience
groups This offers autoscaling • Use identical instances Managed instance groups Managed group
capabilities, which let you templates Managed group template Know when and why you should use a
automatically add or based on • Allow automatic creation, Autoscaling an Instance Group with managed instance group with
increases or decreases in load. deletion and scaling. Stackdriver Custom Metrics autoscaling
Join
Auto Scaling What it is What you should know Review documents Video
The ability to scale • Importance of autoscaling Managing autoscalers Scaling Web apps
automatically based on metric • Various ways to configure
defined by user.
BYOL What it is What you should know Review documents Video My experience
Windows Google Cloud provides you with • How this works BYOL Running your windows workload Knowing the steps and how to set up is
flexibility for bringing your • Know the steps to achieve on GCP a good idea.
existing licenses and running this
them on Compute Engine. Managing Highly Available and
Scalable Workloads on VMs

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 Compute
Sole tenant What it is What you should know Review documents My experience
Sole-tenancy lets you have • You will need this for BYOL A question may pop up or be linked to
exclusive access to a sole- migration Sole tenancy nodes another.
tenant node, which is a physical • How it works
Compute Engine server that is Provision VM on sole-tenant
dedicated to hosting only your nodes
project's VMs
Bare metal What it is What you should know Review documents Video My experience
Providing hardware to run • Used to run - Third-party Bare metal solutions Run specialized workloads with Look out for this. Know the use cases
specialized workloads with virtualization software Bare Metal Solution
low latency on Google Cloud • Apps that require direct,
low-level access to server Bare metal solutions

DevOps
Cloud Build What it is What you should know Review documents Video My experience
Cloud Build can import source code from Cloud Build Shift left: Cloud build Be aware of this, not heavily featured
a variety of repositories or cloud storage, • Importance in the CI/CD
flow
execute and produce artifacts such as
Docker containers or Java archives.

Container What it is What you should know Review documents Video My experience
Container registry
Registry This is a private container image registry • What’s used for Container registry Be aware of this.
that runs on Google Cloud Platform. It
supports Docker Image Manifest V2 and
OCI image formats.

Jenkins What it is What you should know Review documents My experience

An open-source automation server which Jenkins on GCP This may make a pop-up appearance so
enables developers around the world to • What Jenkins does know about its purpose can help you analyse
reliably build, test, and deploy their • How to setup if it’s relevant or not
software
Cloud What it is What you should know Review documents Video My experience
Scheduler Cloud Scheduler is a fully managed • How it works and what it Cloud schedule quick start Moving Cron Job to the cloud Just be aware of this
enterprise-grade cron job scheduler. does.
API What it is What you should know Review
APIs are a set of functions and • API best practices Release cycle
procedures that allow for the creation of • API lifecycle Deprecation
applications that access data and
features of other applications, services, or
operating systems

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 DevOps
Terraform What it is What you should know Review documents Video My experience
Terraform is an open-source tool that lets Using terraform with Terraform serverless cloud run Be aware of this not heavily featured
you provision cloud resources with • IaC Google Cloud
declarative configuration files. • Deploy using terraform

Deployment What it is What you should know Review documents Video My experience
Create and manage cloud resources with • What’s it used for Deployment manager docs IaC with deployment manager Be aware of this
manager
simple templates
Data Analytics / Big Data
BigQuery What it is What you should know Review documents Video Qwiklabs My experience
Enterprise data warehouse that enables • Managed by Google BigQuery Dataware housing with BQ Know what it’s used for, API, no
super-fast SQL queries using the • Analyse Data with SQL BigQuery API Building an IoT Analytics management required, streaming data into it,
processing power of Google's • Use API Streaming into Best practices to speed up BQ Pipeline on Google Cloud views and permissions and creating
infrastructure. Partitions Platform
• Streaming Data to BQ partitions. Can pick you up a few points
Materialized views
• Support OLAP
Dataflow What it is What you should know Review documents Video My experience
This is a fully-managed service for • Used to batch and real time DataFlow Real Time Streaming Analytics What this does is good to know so you can
transforming and enriching data • Reliable, exactly once, low identify when to use in with other tools in
in stream (real time) and batch (historical) latency. ParDo GCP. This may pop up on the exam.
modes with equal reliability and • ParDo
expressiveness Deploy a pipeline
Dataprep What it is What you should know Review documents Video My experience
Use Cloud Dataprep to explore and • Detect problem and clean Dataprep Creating ETL with DataPrep Clean Data who does not want that right.
transform raw data from disparate and/or dirty data Advanced Data Cleanup
large datasets into clean and structured
data for further analysis and processing.
Dataproc What it is What you should know Review documents Video Qwiklabs My experience
This is you managed Spark and Hadoop • Hadoop/ spark Cloud Dataproc Cloud Dataproc newest Dataproc quick start Know design options
cloud offering • How to configure your features
clusters

Cloud What it is What you should know Review documents Video My experience
Pub/Sub is a fully-managed real-time messaging • Ingest millions of streaming Pub Sub What is Cloud Pub/Sub? One of those versatile services you should
service that allows you to send and events Efficient deduplication know. Pay attention to the detail here.
receive messages between independent • Efficient deduplication Schemas
applications Schemas

Data Studio What it is What you should know Review documents Video Qwiklabs
Is a visualization and reporting tool, and • Use identical instances Data Studio Data Studio
an integral part of Google Marketing templates Data Studio Qwiklab
Platform. .

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Firestore What it is Review document Video
Use our flexible, scalable NoSQL cloud Cloud Firestore Firebase Playlist Understand the purpose and use cases of
database to store and sync data for client- Firestore this service
and server-side development.
Cloud Pub/Sub flow Pipelines

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 AI / ML
Google AI What it is What you should know Review documents Video Qwiklabs My experience
platform Fully managed, end-to-end • What it is Google AI Creating value with depth of AI AI Platform: Qwik Start This is a new area so you need to spend
platform for data science and • When you would use it platform some time to get familiar with the
machine learning • Components of this service Google AI ecosystem. It will be
mentioned.
Explainable What it is What you should know Review documents Video My experience
AI Tools to understand and help • What it is Intro to AI Explanations Intro to Explanation for AI platform Don’t be surprised if you see something
interpret your ML models • XRAI about this. Who know?
• Differentiable and non- AI Explanation
differentiable Whitepaper

TensorFlow What it is What you should know Review documents Video Qwiklabs My experience
TensorFlow Enterprise provides • What TensorFlow is used for TensorFlow overview TensorFlow Enterprise Have an awareness of this service.
users with a Google Cloud • Benefits feature of this Code lab options
optimized distribution of • Integrations All features
TensorFlow with long-term
version support. Getting started
Vision API What it is What you should know Review documents Video Qwiklabs My experience
Vision API uses OCR to detect • Uses (images,etc) Vision AI What is cloud vision Detect label, faces & landmarks in Images Have an awareness of this service.
text within images in more than
50 languages and various file Image recognition and
types. classification with Cloud Vision

ML workflow

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 Kubernetes
GKE What it is What you should know Review documents Video Qwiklabs My experience
(GKE) provides a managed • What it is Overview GKE GKE in a minute Migrating a Monolithic Website to I think you should learn Kubernetes
environment for deploying, • Doing rolling deployment Microservices on Google Kubernetes from the basics, also learn the kubectl
managing, and scaling your • Be familiar with kubectl Private clusters Designing GKE for massive scale Engine syntax, and how to deploy, scale,
containerized applications syntax expose services and other stand
using Google infrastructure. Best practices
• Private clusters operations. It’s well featured.
Cluster What it is What you should know Review documents Video Qwiklabs My experience
Autoscaler Cluster • What it is Cluster Autoscaler Autoscaling with GKE Understanding and Combining GKE Get familiar with this ability. Scaling is
autoscaler automatically • How to turn it on and Autoscaling Strategies important for your clusters.
resizes the number of nodes in configure Autoscaling a cluster
a given node pool, based on the
demands of your workloads.
GKE What it is What you should know Review documents My experience
Dashboard Useful dashboards for your • What it does GKE dashboards Have an awareness of this.
project's GKE clusters and their • General familiarity with this
resources

Prometheus What it is What you should know Review documents Video My experience
Prometheus is a monitoring tool • How it is configured Prometheus Custom metrics with Prometheus Monitoring is a big part of your
often used with Kubernetes • Troubleshooting application so be aware of various
Set up a Prometheus integrations with GKE.
instance
Istio What it is What you should know Review documents Video Qwiklabs My experience
Istio is an open service mesh • How to set up What is Istio Istio and ASM Installing the Istio on GKE Managing your service mesh is a big
that provides a uniform way to • What it does deal when dealing with micro services.
connect, manage, and secure • Why to use it Question on this may definitely throw
microservices you off.
Anthos
Anthos What it is What you should know Review documents Video Qwiklabs My experience
Anthos is a modern application • What it is Anthos technical Anthos deep dive part 1 Anthos Get familiar Anthos is featured
management platform that • How it’s set up overview
provides a consistent • Different way to run Anthos Anthos deep dive part 2 Cloud run for Anthos
development and operations Cloud run for Anthos
experience for cloud and on- Get started with Anthos
premises environments
Anthos SM What it is What you should know Review documents Video Qwiklabs My experience
The fully managed service • What it is Anthos Service Mesh Autoscaling with GKE Anthos service mesh quest Get familiar Anthos is featured
mesh for your complex • How to use it
microservices architectures.

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 Networking
VPC Sharing What it is Key points What you should know Review documents Video My experience
Used to connect to a common VPC network. • Centralised management 1- When to use (depend of services Hybrid Connectivity This may pop up. Who knows
Resources in those projects can communicate • Firewall control and controls necessary etc) CONNECTIVITY peering is sharing ☺. Core topic
with each other securely and efficiently across • Internal RFC1918 communication 2- Who gets billed Shared VPC
project boundaries using internal IPs.

VPC Peering What it is Key points What you should know Review documents Connecting to My experience
Access G Suite and Google Cloud features over • When to peer 1- How to peer to a shared VPC VPC Peering Datacentre It gets tricky so know when you
VPN or the internet, while cutting egress fees. • What services you have access to would use this over other options.
Connect directly with Direct Peering, or choose
a partner with Carrier Peering.
VPN What it is Key points What you should know Review documents My experience
Connect your on-premises or other public cloud • How to setup 1- Multiple tunnels Cloud VPN It gets tricky so know when you
networks to GCP Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) • IPSEC used 2- ECMP would use this over other options.
securely over the internet through IPSec VPN • Best practices

Dedicated What it is Key points What you should know Review documents My experience
Interconnect Use dedicated Interconnect to connect to • 1- Single mode fiber 10GBase-LR 1- Type (system and custom) Dedicated Interconnect It gets tricky so know when you
Google's network through a highly available, low • LACP for links & 802.1q Vlan 2- Default route & Subnet route would use this over other options.
latency connection. (10GB higher) • Support EBGP with multihop 3- Static and Dynamic routes Best practices for Cloud
4- Min 10GB Interconnect
• Ipv4 link local addresses
5- Layer2
• Meet at Co Location facilities
Partner Connect What it is Key points What you should know Review documents My experience
Use Google Cloud Interconnect - Partner • Best case use 1- How to setup (VLAN, Key, request It gets tricky so know when you
(Partner Interconnect) to connect to Google • Min size 50MB location and capacity) Partner Interconnect would use this over other options.
through a supported service provider. (from 50 • Not over the internet 2- Difference L2 and L3
MB up)
VLAN What it is Key points What you should know Review documents My experience
VLAN attachments (also known • Works with Cloud router 1- Create VLAN attachments over Basic stuff goof to know
as Interconnect Attachments) determine which • Maximum speed 10 Gbps Cloud Interconnect connections Creating VLAN attachment
Virtual Private Cloud networks can reach your • Multiple VLANs that have passed all tests and that
on-premises network through an interconnect are ready to use
Dynamic routing What it is Key points What you should know Review documents My experience
Dynamic routing is suitable for any size • Cloud router necessary 1- IP automatically updated and Setting the network Another basic concept.
network. It frees you from maintaining static • BGP session necessary propagated dynamic routing mode
routes. Also, if a link fails, dynamic routing can 2- Modes are Global or regional
automatically reroute traffic if possible.
VPC What it is Key points What you should know Review documents Video My experience
A VPC network is your virtual network in the • VPC are global SDN 1- Internal and external access VPC Overview Core area. Let me put it like this;
cloud just like an on-premise physical network • How to get traffic flowing 2- Controlling access and firewalls VPC Deep Dive you should know what this does
or data centre or office network. • Using RFC 1918 subnets 3- How to Connect VPC together Best practices and how this works.
(peering or sharing)
• Internal and external access

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 Networking
CDN What it is Key points What you should know Review documents Video My experience
Cloud CDN uses Google's global edge network • What it does how to enable 1- How to trouble shoot CDN Overview CDN Good to know
to serve content closer to users, which • How to enable (HTTPS LB) 2- Invalidation CDN Invalidation Labs
accelerates your websites and applications. 3- Serve none cached content CDN troubleshooting Cloud CDN
4- Cache Control
5- How to enable
Cloud NAT What it is What you should know Key Points Review My experience

Allows virtual machine (VM) instances without • How it works 1- Hide internal IP from external NAT All these area combined made for
external IP addresses and private (GKE) host. some very challenging questions
clusters to connect to the Internet.

HTTP(S) Load balancer SSL Proxy TCP Proxy Network Load balancer Internal load balancer Kubernetes Load balancing Review documents
Choosing a load balanced
Troubleshooting health
HTTPS logging
Kubernetes HTTP(s) LB ingress

What it is What it is What it is What it is What it is What it is Setting up HTTP Ingress LB

Load balancer for HTTP(S) traffic, Load balancer for TCP with Load balancer for TCP without Load balancer for TCP/UDP no Load balancer for TCP This allows you balance between Video
global, external, 80 or 8080 on SSL offload, global, external. SSL, global, external. SSL offload, regional, external. /UDP you application running in Cloud Load balancers
443. (25, 43, 110, 143,195, 443, 465, 587, (25, 43, 110, 143,195, 443, 465, 587, (any port) regional, Internal traffic (any Kubernetes
700, 993, 995, 1883, and 5222) 700, 993, 995, 1883, and 5222) port)
My experience
Loads and loads of variation on this
What you should know What you should know What you should know What you should know What you should know What you should know area. (Global vs Regional, External vs
1- Scope global 1- Scope Global 1- Scope Global 1- Scope regional 1- Scope Regional 1- How it works Internal, Traffic type, VoIP, TFTP, IP,
2- HTTPS traffic 2- Non HTTPS traffic with 2- TCP/UDP traffic 2- TCP/UDP traffic 2- Internal TCP/UDP traffic 2- Connections points TCP, UDP). Understand health checks
3- Health checks SSL termination 3- Health checks 3- Health checks 3- Type of LB supported (HTTPS- checks. For Kubernetes understand
Ingress, Internal, External) connection points of load balancers.
Key Points Key Points Key Points Key Points Key Points Key Points
1- Services that need HTTPS Load 1- SSL termination 1- Scope global 1- Scope global 1- Scope global 1- What IP you connect to
balancing 2- HTTPS traffic 2- HTTPS traffic 2- HTTPS traffic

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 Security
Recommender What it is What you should know Review documents Video My experience
A recommender is a service on • What it is gcloud recommender Recommender Tricky one indeed.
Google Cloud that provides usage • gcloud recommender
recommendations for Google recommendations
Cloud resources

Firewall What it is What you should know Review documents Video My experience
VPC firewall rules let you allow or • How to turn configure VPC Firewall This should be basic knowledge for an
deny connections to or from your • Priority Protect your GCP instances architect.
virtual machine (VM) instances • gcloud compute firewall-rules gcloud compute firewall
based on a configuration that you update
specify
Binary What it is What you should know Review documents Video My experience
authorization Deploy only trusted containers • What it does Binary authorization How do you make sure your images are
on Google Kubernetes Engine. • General familiarity with this Binary authorization demo safe and approved?

Identity aware What it is What you should know Review documents Video Labs My experience
proxy Cloud Identity-Aware Proxy • How it works (HTTPS) Identity-Aware Proxy Identity Aware Proxy May pop up
(Cloud IAP) controls access to • JWT (signed headers) overview User authentication with Identity-
your cloud applications and • How to configure Securing your app with Beyond Corp Aware Proxy
signed headers
VMs running on (GCP)
IAP for on-premises apps
Organization What it is Review documents My experience
policy The Organization Policy Service Organization policy Centralized management
gives you centralized and
constraint OP constraints
programmatic control over your
organization's cloud resources
CMEK What it is What you should know Review documents Video Labs My experience
For greater control you can use Envelope encryption It’s sometimes about choices and who
customer-managed encryption • What products support this KEYS Encrypt and decrypt data with Cloud manages what.
service (BigQuery, Cloud Build, CMEK KMS
keys (CMEK). This way you Encrypt and decrypt Cloud KMS
Cloud Dataproc, Cloud Storage,
control and manage key Asymmetric
Compute Engine) Cloud KMS
encryption keys in Cloud KMS Sign and verify data with Cloud KMS

Secret What it is Review documents My experience

manager Applications often require How do you make sure your images are
access to small pieces of Secret manager safe and approved?
sensitive data at build or run
time. These pieces of data are
often referred to as secrets.

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Org policy constraint flow IAP

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 More stuff
Cloud What it is What you should know Review documents Video My experience
Storage Object storage for companies Cloud Storage Best This is standard so know the ins and
of all sizes. Store any amount • Lifecycles Google cloud storage
practices outs of this versatile product staple.
of data. Retrieve it as often as • CRC checks
• Configs CRC32C Checks
you’d like.
• Data retention Transfer data
• Transfer data
Database What it is What you should know Review documents Video Qwiklabs My experience
migrations Moving your on prem database Database migration Nothing much to say here. Migration
setup to the cloud • Various option to migrate a Database migrations Migrating Database
would be a common thing as an
database with minimal data Tool for migrating your database
Architect.
loss and down time
Autoscaling a cluster

Private What it is What you should know Review documents Qwiklabs My experience
access Allows VM instances with • How to enable Private Access Have an awareness of this.
Private access
internal (RFC 1918) IP • What it’s used for
addresses to reach certain APIs
and services without internet
access.

Price What it is Review documents My experience

calculator Check the approximate cost of Price calculator Good tool to know
you cloud services

Memorystore What it is What you should know Review documents Video My experience

Reduce latency with scalable, • How to set up Memorystore Memorystore May pop up, I can’t say.
secure, and highly available in- • What it does
memory service for Redis and • When to use it
Memcached

Cloud What it is What you should know Review documents Video My experience
Operations Stackdriver Logging allows you
• Various tools Stackdriver Spotlight Some tricky combination may pop up &
(logging and to store, search, analyze,
monitor, and alert on log data • Agents you should look at all the components
monitoring) • How to troubleshoot logs of this area.
and events from Google Cloud
Platform and Amazon Web
Services (AWS).

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 Thanks for reviewing

Please visit the official certification outline HERE

Sample questions HERE

ps. These are my notes and tips for the new version on this
classic exam launch in 2021. Google reserve the right to change
the requirements so please always check out the official exam
guide. This guy is prefect just before the exam or as a refresher
in general. All the topics listed have a possibility of appearing
along with other.

This prep sheet is free, it just cost me time and energy to make
this as concise as possible. Please feel free to share with
people who maybe interest. If it helps you, please give me a
shoutout on LinkedIn, it’s just a form of feedback and
encouragement to continue to develop these.

Get other GCP exam prep sheet HERE

Bonne Journée

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