Hi Mattias et All,
Today I passed GCP Associate Cloud Engineer.
The accumulated 15Y experience mainly with linux and other technologies including networking really helped.
I did took ACloudGuru course first, then LinuxAcademy and Coursera courses as a complement, this one is the more complete to a large extent to the time dedicated to Kubernetes Deep Dive
About the exam.
This exam is similar to AWS but I found that in many cases 2 or 3 answers were valid, so you may pick the "best".
Took me 1:05 hours to complete all the 50 questions, then another 10-12 minutes to review 13 questions marked, and another 20 minutes to review all 50 once again. Clicked Submit with still 25 minutes on the clock.
No questions regarding
gsutilsorbqNo questions regarding Logging or Stackdriver
7/8 of questions on Kubernetes and AppEngine
6/7 questions regarding IAM
6/7 questions on projects/configurations or Google best practices
This may be 1/3 of the exam.
Multiple tricky networking questions, CIDR, netmask, VPC, VPC sharing , VPN and accesing resources from ProjectA to ProjectB
I miserably failed multiple times the final exam at ACloudGuru and it still feels different from the real exam. Mainly questions on logging the applications (java on container vs java on GCE), the operations order while launching and instance on GCE. Failing this make me reschedule one time and make me felt insecure. The LinuxAcademy final exam gave me a closer look/feel. What I’m trying to say is even if you score 66% on this course exam simulator you may pass your certification. This is the downside.
Thx again Mattias for a great course and advises.
Owen
2 Answers
Congratulations, Owen! That’s awesome! 🎉🙌
Thank you so much for posting your experience and giving your feedback! It’s really helpful for both me and other students. I’ve now linked to this post from my Exam Report Mega-Thread, so that more people can find it. 👍
I’m sorry that our ACE Exam Simulator scared you off from the real exam, for a bit. I tried to make our practice exam questions representative, but I may have made some of them a bit too hard. This is useful info for both me and others to consider. Did you still feel, though, that the questions helped show you some things you should brush up on?
Also, what would you say is the main topic I should add to or expand upon in this course, to improve its coverage of material you saw on your exam?
Thanks!
Mattias
Thanks Mattias,
<<"Did you still feel, though, that the questions helped show you some things you should brush up on?">>
Absolutely, I watched all videos at 1.5x and spent more time on Labs. So after the Exam Simulator I had to go back and re-watch some at normal speed (Finally listened your real voice).
<<"the main topic I should add to or expand">>
In one word Networking, so more time on CIDR/netmask in both formats, subnets, VPC, Cloud VPN.
At least 2 questions described the scenario as HTTPS traffic, then the answer based on port 443, or LDAP and 389, is may be useful to have a cheat-sheet of common services-ports attached in one of the sections (maybe its already there and I skip it).
warm regards
Owen
That’s great feedback! Thank you! 😀👍 And don’t feel bad for speeding things up, if it works for you! I sometimes crank some people up to 4x speed! 😂
Great overview, Owen. Thanks for sharing your experience and congrats on getting the ACE Cert!