I passed the GCP Cloud Architect exam, so I'll summarize what I learned before I forget.

Hello.
I'm Mandai, the Wild Team member of the development team.
I'm also the second GCP cloud architect at Beyond.

Recently, I finally passed the GCP Cloud Architect exam on my second attempt.
The first time was in January 2018, so it was about four months before I took the exam again. However, it had been a while since I last took the exam, so I completely forgot what I had studied, so I studied again and would like to summarize what I learned.

2018/06/08: In the original post, I wrote "Solution Architect" instead of "Cloud Architect" as the term I was talking about here, so I have corrected it to the correct name (I'm waiting for someone to point out that I actually passed the exam).
Thank you, CA, for taking the time to let me know!

What kind of problems will arise?

These are all problems that require optimal solutions within GCP services

• For example, I want to save some data to Cloud Storage, but which class should I use?
• For example, what kind of VPC is best for communication between different projects within an organization?
• For example, I want to use a GCP database for a global financial system that requires transactions, but which one should I use?

Although it is a multiple choice exam, there are many questions that make you think hard, and it seems like there isn't much time to think about it, including the time to review, so you won't be able to answer in a timely manner unless you can answer the basic content of the service (within the scope of the documentation) at an immediate level.
There are questions that will meet the requirements either way, but I think the key is whether you can derive a configuration that is neither too much nor too little in terms of functionality.

During the last exam, the questions were ones that met the requirements, so I thought, "It doesn't matter which one I answer!", but it seems that from Google's perspective, it doesn't matter which one I answer

 

You can read the best textbooks for exam preparation for free

The best reference book for the Cloud Architect exam is the official Google Cloud Platform documentation .
There were almost no questions about detailed operation methods using gcloud commands or the console screen, so it's better to focus on reading the documentation and accurately understanding the characteristics of the service rather than trying to memorize it by using it.

If you are a developer or infrastructure engineer like me, it would be great if you could use those skills to design and build systems in the future, but the Cloud Architect qualification doesn't seem to require that much. In
my case, I started developing systems on GCP around the New Year, and I was able to design systems that were immersed in GCP services, so I had a lot of opportunities to come into contact with GCP services around that time.

the Google Cloud Platform implementation case studies contain quite a bit of important information .

Most of the articles are about introducing G Suite, GAE and BigQuery, and praising machine learning, so you can skip them (not all of them, just one or two will do), but I think it's worth reading: Google Cloud Platform Japan Official Blog: Mercari, Inc. Case Study: Dramatically improving development efficiency for global services by using Kubernetes to create microservices .

Just because Kubernetes is in the title makes you think that this is just a trend, but you'd be wrong. The use of GCP services as a means of converting existing monolithic systems into microservices, as well as the structure for analyzing the collected data (making good use of big data products such as BigQuery, Pub/Sub, Dataflow, and Dataproc to stream data) are questions that are sure to appear on exams, and will also serve as useful reference for the future

Also, the Cloud Architect Certification Exam Guide , so it's a good idea to read through them thoroughly so you're prepared for any of them, and to do some preparation on how to handle big data, how to utilize machine learning, and how to configure a network when migrating from an on-premise environment to a cloud environment.

Once you've completed these steps, try taking
a mock exam Since it's a mock exam, the same questions won't appear, but once you get a feel for the questions and the atmosphere, you'll probably look at the document again in a slightly different light.

By the way, when I was talking to a colleague who took the test at the same time, I discovered that the questions are completely different depending on the test taker, so it seems that rote memorization is completely pointless

 

summary

I've summarized the preparation I did for the GCP Cloud Architect exam

It may be more efficient to do the mock exam → documentation → case studies → mock exam in this order to identify your weaknesses first.
AWS also has a similar certification called Solutions Architect, which is said to be easier to obtain and has many reference books available at bookstores. Some people say it would be advantageous to take this certification first to gain knowledge of the public cloud, and then take the GCP Cloud Architect exam. It's true that
if you replace the exam with the corresponding service, you can reuse the knowledge you learned on the AWS side, so while it may seem like a detour, it could actually be a shortcut.

GCP has attracted many participants at events such as the GCP Users Group (GCPUG) in the Kansai region, and it's clear that it is attracting a lot of attention.
I hope this article will help you pass the GCP Cloud Architect exam, which is a qualification that is currently attracting a lot of attention.

actively recruiting , and is even supporting me by covering the costs of taking these exams, even though I'm not an infrastructure engineer .

That's it.