[0:00]Hello, everybody. My name is Matt, and welcome to this video. Today, we're going to be talking about the Google Professional Cloud Architect certification. And specifically, in this video, I'm going to give you my thoughts about how you should approach studying for the certification, what to expect on the exam. And then I'm also going to give you some general recommendations for different resources, things that I found helpful. And hopefully, this information will help you on your journey to becoming certified. Just to give you a quick background on myself, I've been working in cloud for about five years now. I started in AWS, worked in Azure for a bit, and I've been in Google Cloud for about the last three years. And I've held multiple associate and professional level certifications across all three of those cloud providers. But for this video, we're going to focus on Google Cloud. I took the Professional Cloud Architect exam in January of 2023. And I passed, which was awesome. It was a really rewarding experience. And the reason I got this certification was because I was an architect at my current role and my company at the time. They really wanted their architects to be certified. And this was the certification that I decided to go for. So let's go ahead and dive into the content. So first, I want to briefly talk about why you should get certified. And in my opinion, I think there's two main reasons. And the first reason is to validate your skills. For me, I had been working in Google Cloud for a bit. I had been working with customers, designing solutions. And I really wanted to take the certification to prove to myself and to prove to others that I really knew what I was talking about. And it was really rewarding once I actually passed and got the certification. The second reason is to open new opportunities. Whether that's for a new job, a new position at your company. Maybe you're like me, and your company just wants you to get certified. This certification, in my opinion, is probably one of the most recognized certifications in the cloud industry, especially in the Google Cloud space. And it really goes a long way to show that you are competent and that you can be trusted with building cloud solutions. So now let's talk about some general exam information. First, there are 50 to 60 multiple choice and multiple select questions. You get two hours to complete the exam. So that gives you about two minutes per question. And if you break that down, that means for the professional cloud architect exam, you have roughly an hour and 45 minutes of actual time you should be spending on questions. The price for the exam is $200, or $125 if you're upgrading from an associate certification. And you can either take this exam remotely or in person at a testing center. I personally took my exam remotely. And the main reason I did this was because I was able to just do it from the comfort of my home. I didn't have to drive anywhere. But a big downside to taking the exam remotely is you are limited to a certain amount of applications that can be running on your computer. So for me, I have a Mac. And I was unable to use a second monitor. So I had to take the exam from my 13-inch MacBook Air, which for me, I usually have a larger monitor. So that was a bit of a challenge to get used to. But if you're okay with doing that, and you don't mind having your computer locked down for the duration of the exam, then taking it remotely is totally fine. The last point I want to make here is about exam retakes. If you fail the exam, you have to wait 14 days before you can retake it. If you fail a second time, you have to wait 60 days. And if you fail a third time, you have to wait a whole year. And then you're limited to taking the exam a maximum of four times per year. So just keep that in mind as you're preparing for the exam. And make sure that when you're going to take it, that you feel prepared and you're ready to pass. Now let's talk about the different domains that are covered on the exam. So there's six different domains, and each one makes up a certain percentage of the exam. I'm not going to read through each of these domains word for word. But I think the important thing to call out here is that this exam is not just about knowing the different Google Cloud products and services. It's really about being able to integrate those services into a comprehensive solution. So for this exam, you really need to be thinking like an architect. You need to be able to understand the customer's business requirements and be able to translate those into technical requirements. And then, of course, design a solution that satisfies all of those requirements. So this is less about knowing all the different knobs and buttons that you can click in the console and more about understanding the different design patterns. And the questions that you're going to see on the exam are going to be case studies. So they're going to give you a scenario. And they're going to give you a problem statement. And then they're going to give you four different solutions. And you have to pick the best one. And in some of these cases, there might be multiple correct answers. But you have to pick the one that is the most correct. And that's why this exam is especially challenging. And it makes you think like an architect. You also need to be thinking about cost, security, reliability, scalability, and all those other factors that you would consider as an architect. So this is really an exam that encompasses a lot of the different aspects of being an architect. Now let's talk about some general recommendations that I have for studying for this exam. The first is to get hands-on experience. If you're able to use Google Cloud in your day job, or you have a side project that you're working on, that's really going to go a long way to cementing a lot of this knowledge. I really recommend that you play around in the console, that you deploy resources and just get familiar with how everything works. And if you're deploying using things like Terraform or Pulumi, that's going to go even farther to really understanding how all these services work and how they connect to each other. The second recommendation I have is to choose a course or study guide. For me, I really like to use Udemy courses. And I'm going to talk about a specific Udemy course in a few minutes here that I used. But there's other options as well. You can use Coursera, A Cloud Guru, Pluralsight. There's so many different options out there. Just pick one that works for you and really stick with it. The third recommendation I have is to take practice exams. For me, I'm a big proponent of practice exams. And I really think that if you take practice exams, and you do well on them, then you're going to do well on the actual exam. And again, I'll talk about some specific practice exams that I found helpful. But just like the study guides, there's a lot of different options out there. Just pick one, and really work through the practice questions. The fourth recommendation I have is to read the official Google Cloud documentation. This is going to be your absolute best source of truth for the exam. I really recommend that you spend some time reading through the different solution guides, the different design patterns. And that's going to go a long way to making sure that you're well prepared. The last thing I want to talk about here is the importance of reviewing new product and service announcements. Google Cloud is constantly releasing new products and services, updating existing ones. And the exam is going to reflect those changes. So if you're taking the exam a few months after Google Next, chances are those announcements are going to be on the exam. So just keep that in mind as you're preparing for the exam. Now let's talk about some specific resources that I recommend that I found helpful. First, for a study guide, I used the Udemy course by Dilip Kumar. And I believe he's at Google, which is pretty cool. And this course covers all the different domains and subtopics that are on the exam. And it also has a lot of hands-on labs and demos that you can follow along with. So I really like this course. And I really recommend that you check it out. And like I said, I'm a big fan of practice exams. And for this exam, I used the Udemy practice exams by Dan Sullivan. He has six different practice exams. Each one has 50 questions. So that's 300 questions total. And he does a really good job of explaining the answers. So even if you get a question wrong, you'll still understand why you got it wrong and what the correct answer should be. So I really recommend those practice exams. And then finally, I really recommend that you check out the Google Cloud official documentation. This is going to be your best source of truth for the exam. And there's a few different resources that I recommend you check out. The first is the Google Cloud architecture framework. This is a really great resource that covers all the different aspects of designing solutions in Google Cloud. And it covers things like security, reliability, cost optimization, and all those other factors that you would consider as an architect. The second resource I recommend is the Google Cloud solution guides. These are really great because they provide end-to-end solutions for common use cases. And they're going to show you how to use different Google Cloud products and services to solve a particular problem. And then finally, I recommend that you check out the Google Cloud case studies. These are really great because they show you how real-world customers are using Google Cloud to solve their business problems. And they're going to help you understand the different design patterns and how to apply them to different scenarios. So that's all I have for this video. I hope this information was helpful. And if you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments below. And I'll do my best to answer them. And if you like this video, please consider subscribing to my channel and giving it a thumbs up. I really appreciate it. And I'll see you in the next one.