Articles on changes to the new exam:

https://medium.com/@sathishvj/notes-from-my-google-cloud-professional-cloud-architect-exam-
bbc4299ac30
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-pass-google-professional-cloud-architect-david-das-neves

Post 11-9-18 feedback:

First up not too many case study questions, only three or four on each and all fairly
straightforward. Also not as much on Cloud Storage, Compute Engine or App Engine as
I was expecting.

I had a lot of questions (maybe 7 or 8) on GKE, and at a pretty deep level. Looks like
Google is really wanting certified candidates to really understand this product. Some of
the topics covered included:

- Autoscaling with HorizontalPodAustoscaler

- Upgrading a cluster

- Updating deployments with minimum downtime

- StatefulSet

- Where GKE stores logs with standard output

Had a few questions on Storage Transfer Appliance including:

- Minimum recommended size (20TB)

- Rehydrating data

Had a few really tough questions on BigQuery including:

- Difference between dataviewer and jobuser roles

- Looking up who ran jobs (audit logs)

- When to partition (migration scenario)

Hope this helps if you are prepping for this incredibly difficult exam.

Thanks,
Dean.

Before starting, if you still did not know it, from November 9, 2018 an update was made in the
Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect exam.

Because of this, many people are currently wondering what really changed, so I decided to
review the official documentation and analyze both agendas to see what should be taken into
consideration for the preparation of the new exam.

Reference information used:

-------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------- -----------

Exam guide and case studies (If taking the exam before Nov. 9, 2018)

Exam guide and case studies (If taking the exam on or after Nov. 9, 2018)
-------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------- -----------

It is added or modified in relation to the previous agenda:

Section 1: Designing and planning a cloud solution architecture

1.1 Designing a solution infrastructure that meets business requirements.

Considerations include:
- You add or modify:

Compliance and observability

1.3 Designing network, storage, and compute resources. Considerations

include:
- You add or modify:

Cloud native networking (VPC, peering, firewalls, container networking)

identification of data processing pipeline

matching data characteristics to storage systems

-------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------- -----------

Section 2: Managing and provisioning solution Infrastructure

2.1 Configuring network topologies. Considerations include:

- You add or modify:

extending to a multi-cloud environment which may include GCP to GCP communication

2.3 Configuring compute systems. Considerations include:

- You add or modify:

infrastructure provisioning technology configuration (eg Chef / Puppet / Ansible / Terraform)

container orchestration (eg Kubernetes)

-------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------- -----------

Section 3: Designing for security and compliance

3.1 Designing for security. Considerations include:

- You add or modify:

Resource hierarchy (organizations, folders, projects)

data security (key management, encryption)

Managing customer-supplied encryption keys with Cloud KMS

-------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------- -----------

Section 4: Analyzing and optimizing technical and business processes

4.2 Analyzing and defining business processes. Considerations include:

- You add or modify:
team assessment / skills readiness

cost optimization / resource optimization (Capex / Opex)

- You add or modify:

4.3 Developing procedures to test resilience of solution in production (eg,

DiRT and Simian Army)
-------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------- -----------

Section 5: Managing implementation

- You add or modify:

5.2 Interacting with Google Cloud using GCP SDK (gcloud, gsutil and
bq). Considerations include:
local installation

Google Cloud Shell

-------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------- -----------

Sample Case Studies

- You add or modify:

Case study of Jencomart is eliminated

-------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------- -----------

If we perform a general analysis we can obtain some interesting data:

1) The study in networking (networking), multi-cloud connection and on-premise is reinforced.

2) The study in container orchestration in Kubernetes is reinforced.

3) The study is reinforced in security issues related to encryption elements and key management
delivered by the client.
4) The specific need to know Java or Python is eliminated.

5) The study in GCP SDK is reinforced as gcloud, gsutil, bq in Cloud Shell.

Also, considering the news received in the Google Cloud Next of the year
2018, I would recommend taking into consideration the following points:
1) It was previously recommended to use Jenkins for CI / CD since google did not have its own
solution until now (Cloud Build):​ ​https://cloud.google.com/cloud-build/docs/

2) Consider the BigQuery ML functionality:

https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/docs/bigqueryml-intro

3) Consider the existence of Kubernetes OnPremise:​ ​https://cloud.google.com/gke-on-prem/

If you have more information and want me to add it to this article or believe that there is
something that can be improved, do not hesitate to contact me.

Much success in the exam!

Doing some last minute prep on GDPR and PCI compliance, which you mention featured on
your exam

Matt Wilkins [38 minutes ago]

Any other last minute tips given I have < 24 hrs remaining :slightly_smiling_face: (edited)

jonny [35 minutes ago]

BigQuery partitioning

jonny [35 minutes ago]

I had a couple of questions on that, one of which was to do with setting an expiry time on a
partition

jonny [34 minutes ago]

this tied into a GPDR question that data from Europe had to be dropped after 45 days whereas
other regions could be retained
jonny [33 minutes ago]
the link I sent in an earlier reply to M referencing deploying MS SQL on GCP in an HA config
was also asked as a question

jonny [32 minutes ago]

other questions I remember ... how to use encryption key when uploading to GCS (use a .boto
file I think). how to decrypt data when a Transfer Appliance has been loaded up by Google
(rehydrator I think)

jonny [31 minutes ago]

how to upload datastore indexes from a YAML file ... via GCP Console or gcloud CLI? BigTable
monitoring: ensure bigtable doesn't run out of storage, CPU remains below 75%, and avoid
replication lag

jonny [29 minutes ago]

best of luck by the way ... even though I failed, I think it's a tough but fair exam. I normally rattle
through the multi-choice style exams, but this one I took longer on and reviewed my answers -
of course, maybe I should have left them all as my first answer ... :slightly_smiling_face:

jonny [27 minutes ago]

sorry for suddenly bombarding with info ... I also used the whizlabs example tests for cloud
architect. they're out of date as well (in case you had access to them too)

jonny [21 minutes ago]

another question that has come back to me related to data stored on premise that over time has
become 'stale' - should it be copied up to GCS? Should it be run through Datalab or Dataprep to
clean/examine the data? I think I guessed on leave on prem and connect dataprep to it (no idea
if that was right though)

Matt Wilkins [14 minutes ago]

Also been doing the whizlabs exams :angry: your advice is very helpful - thank you so much

mattu [13 minutes ago]

The official exam objectives were little changed from the original, however the case studies
were pretty much overhauled. We have the updated case study lessons up.
The challenging aspect with the refresh is that since it just came out, and the GCP exams tend
to be a broad ‘black box’ as to what is covered, we are still learning ourselves what is covered
on the exam (the published exam objectives don’t tell the full story). @jonny’s comments have
been very helpful. I’m also planning on re-taking the new architect exam in the very near future
to see what is new as well.

Matt Wilkins [13 minutes ago]

Sounds like it’s no longer just an inch deep like the course mentioned. I wonder with the recent
introduction of the associate course they’ve upped the depth of the professional exam

mattu [12 minutes ago]

Possibly. What’s really interesting is that the datastore/bigquery topics that jonny mentioned, I
recall as being on the data engineer exam but not the architect exam. It’s almost as if the
architect exam is picking up some of the data engineer topics as well.

mattu [11 minutes ago]

I want you all to know that we are collecting as much data as we can and making it a priority
that our course is up to date. (edited)

jonny [10 minutes ago]

I think they probably have. I've got the associate cert, and I think part 1 of Matt's course covers
most of that (and some from part 2). There are definitely areas that go beyond an inch of depth
of knowledge - it's not enough to just know MySQL = Cloud SQL, and 'audit' = BigQuery etc.
etc. some areas are now tested in more detail (would be my guess)