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

Hello.
I'm Mandai, the Wild 담당 (wild person) of the development team.
And I'm also the second GCP Cloud Architect at Beyond.

I recently passed the GCP Cloud Architect exam on my second attempt.
My first attempt was in January 2018, so it had been about four months since my last attempt. I had to restudy a lot because I'd forgotten most of what I'd learned, so I thought I'd summarize my experience.

2018/06/08: In my initial post, I mistakenly referred to the Cloud Architect position as Solution Architect, so I've corrected it to the correct name (I'm waiting for someone to ask if 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's a multiple-choice test, there are many questions that require careful thought, and considering the time needed for review, there doesn't seem to be much time to think things through. Therefore, you need to be able to answer the basics of the service (within the scope of what's written in the documentation) immediately to be able to answer at a good pace.
There are some questions where either option will satisfy the requirements, but I think the key point is whether you can derive a configuration that is functionally complete and without excess or deficiency.

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 resource for the Cloud Architect exam is undoubtedly the officialGoogle Cloud Platform documentation.
Since there were hardly any questions about detailed operation methods using gcloud commands or console screens, it's better to focus on reading the documentation and accurately understanding the service's characteristics rather than trying to memorize them through trial and error.

For developers and infrastructure engineers like myself, it would be ideal to be able to design and build systems using those tools in the future, but the Cloud Architect certification doesn't seem to require that level of expertise. In
my case, I was developing a system on GCP from around the New Year, and I was able to design a system that was deeply immersed in GCP services, so I had plenty of opportunities to interact with GCP services around that time.

contain some quite important informationthe Google Cloud Platform case studies.

Most of the articles are about setting up G Suite, GAE and BigQuery, and praising machine learning, so you can skip those (not all of them, just one or two should be enough), but I think you should read this one:Google Cloud Platform Japan Official Blog: Mercari, Inc.'s Case Study: Dramatically Improving Global Service Development Efficiency with Microservices Using Kubernetes.

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 guideincludes a sample case study where questions are drawn from 2-3 of the four fictional companies and the problems and challenges they face. So, it's a good idea to thoroughly read and understand it so you're prepared for any of them. You should also study how to handle big data, how to utilize machine learning, and how to configure networks when migrating from an on-premises environment to a cloud environment.

Once you've finished these,a practice testtry taking
Since it's a practice test, the questions won't be exactly the same, but once you get a feel for the types and styles of questions, you might find that your perspective changes slightly when you look at the documents again.

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

Perhaps it would be more efficient to go through the process in the order of practice exam → documentation → case studies → practice exam, as this would help you identify your weak points earlier.
AWS also has a similar certification called Solutions Architect, and there are many reference books available in bookstores, so it is said to be relatively easy to obtain. Some people suggest that taking this first to gain knowledge of public clouds before taking the GCP Cloud Architect exam would be advantageous. Indeed,
if you replace it with the corresponding service, the knowledge you learned on the AWS side can be reused, so what seems like a roundabout way may actually be the shortest path.

GCP is attracting a lot of attention, as evidenced by the large number of participants at GCP User Group meetings in the Kansai region (GCPUG). I
hope this article will be helpful in passing the GCP Cloud Architect certification exam, which is currently gaining a lot of attention.

Beyond, which even covers the costs and supports me in taking these kinds of exams, even though I'm not an infrastructure engineer,actively recruiting.

That's all