The course was a great foundation and provided a direction which was the key. It introduced the set up and how GCP has been setup. It gave a good idea of how to navigate around GCP console and CLI. However, two key topics were not covered in sufficient breadth – GAE & GKE. While the generic Kubernetes course is great to understand concepts, GKE flavor is missing. Let me repeat yeah, the Kubernetes course is awesome. I hope these two topics get added to the course as many exam questions were on them.
As Mattias himself says the course itself is not sufficient. Hands on is definitely needed. Along with hands on there are several nuances that need additional reading. What helped me was the book on Google ACE exam. It was the perfect addendum to this course. The book summarizes the concepts and focuses on exam topics more. If you dont have the book, you will need to go thru most of the google documentation or the Youtube videos by Google on each of the domains of GCP. I did go thru some of the documentation and youtube videos as well.
Finally the mock exam is not comparable to the actual exam. The mock exam is focused on the content of the course.
Signing off with a big thanks for Mattias!
3 Answers
I took the course twice and felt like it was severely insufficient. No where near the quality of preparation that I was accustom to from my AWS SAA days.
really ? I’ve started this hopping that it was enough material to pass the certification
That’s true. The course alone is never gonna be enough. You need practices, a lot of practices. Especially for those who are working with cloud platform and cloud concepts for the first time, it could be difficult for them to comprehend all the terminologies and ideas. It could be a little bit easier for those who have already known and comprehended another cloud platform (like AWS, Azure) to follow and get the cert.
With the constraint of trial period of GCP reduced from one year to three months, you will need to work really hard with your study and make use the most of your trial account for practicing.
Also, don’t forget to follow the official YouTube Channel of GCP. They make really good contents out there for you to understand their platform.
I was under this impression when I started with the course! Trust me, as the technology keeps on evolving at a very rapid pace, it is difficult of anyone curate the connect and update the course to latest and greatest. These courses take 5-6 months of instructor time to create, and in 6 months I have seen GCP grow leaps and bounds. Whilst, all said than done, I was able to clear my certification exam using this course and additional study to cover the ground. Instructor has did a great job in putting together all the links to GCP docs, which is worth reading. Also when you do hands-on you will get the current options (additional to that you see in the content) available for you to explore and learn.
Here is the link that I posted on ACG community with links that I used and passed the exam in 2 weeks!
Thank you for this information Guruprasad. Which book are you referring to? Is it the "Official Google Cloud Certified Associate Cloud Engineer Study Guide" by Dan Sullivan?