Google Professional Cloud Developer Exam Guide: Ace the Google Professional Cloud Developer Exam with this comprehensive guide (English Edition)

By Fiifi Baidoo

The Google Professional Cloud Developer Exam Guide is a comprehensive study guide for the Google Professional Cloud Developer exam. It covers all the topics you need to master to design, develop, deploy, and manage cloud-native applications on Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

The book starts with an introduction to the certification and the skills and knowledge you need to pass the exam. Then, it covers the different development environments for GCP development, the most important GCP products and services, and the principles of designing high-performance and secure applications. The book also covers designing and building cloud-native applications, different application deployment strategies, and how to deploy apps and services on GCP. It also shows how to integrate applications with GCP services and how to monitor and manage app workloads. To help you prepare for the exam, the book ends with a chapter of quiz solutions.

Overall, this book is a great resource for anyone preparing for the Google Professional Cloud Developer exam.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BPB Online LLP
• Release date: Oct 27, 2023
• ISBN: 9789355515964

Book preview

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1

The Professional Cloud Developer

Introduction

Modern businesses adopt the cloud and move some of their infrastructures to providers such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. According to the Flexera 2021 State of the Cloud Report, AWS is currently the leader in providing cloud computing services, followed by Azure, with Google Cloud gaining numbers close to both. GCP is an attractive alternative to AWS and Microsoft Azure with an intuitive interface, lower costs, preemptible instances, and flexible add options. Please refer to the following figure:

Figure 1.1: Enterprise public cloud adoption (Source: Flexera 2021 State of the Cloud Report)

As many enterprises continue to embrace the cloud, the demand for professionals who can build applications ready for the cloud increases. The Professional Cloud Developer helps develop highly scalable applications using best practices to the cloud. Please refer to the following figure:

Figure 1.2: Enterprise public spend (Source: Flexera 2021 State of the Cloud Report)

Becoming a Google Certified Professional Cloud Developer validates your skills for building, deploying and managing highly available cloud-native applications. A professional cloud developer:

Builds cloud-native applications using microservices

Understands how to use Google Cloud managed services

Knows how to secure applications built for the cloud

Knows how to test and scale applications in the cloud

Has proficiency in at least one general programming language

Deploys applications that integrate with Google Cloud services

Can manage application performance

Understands and knows when to implement encryption at rest, in transit and use

Structure

In this chapter, we will discuss the following topics:

Google Cloud Professional Cloud Developer certification exam

Designing a study plan

Resources to help prepare for the exam

Registering and scheduling the exam

Objectives

In this chapter, we shall look at the Professional Cloud Developer, what they do and their expected experience. We shall quickly overview the entire exam, expectations, and requirements. We will have a high-level understanding of the technical requirements to take the exam.

Google Cloud Professional Cloud Developer certification exam

Even though there are no prerequisites for the exam, Google recommends you have more than three years of industry experience, including designing and managing solutions using GCP.

For those without the recommended years of experience building on GCP, the book has been designed to help you gain some hands-on experience, demos and exercises to help you grasp foundational to advanced concepts.

The best way to learn and have experience is to build actual projects running on the Google Cloud. We will sign up for trial credits on GCP and build demo projects that we can refer back to occasionally through guided demos. Our demo GCP project will have applications deployed to Compute Engine and various Serverless offerings.

It is important to note that even with hands-on experience, preparation for the exam is essential. Google Cloud is constantly innovating and adding more products. We shall cover foundational concepts for designing, building and deploying secure and highly scalable cloud-native solutions in our practice.

In the exam, you have 2 hours to answer about 60 questions. Read the exam overview information, including the exam guide and case study.

The exam is currently offered in English and Japanese and can be taken remotely or at a testing centre. Once you finish the exam, you only receive a Pass or Fail with no score and details.

Designing a study plan

Depending on the years of experience, it can take between 3 to 9 weeks to prepare for the exam. This book has practice exams that can help you familiarize yourself with the exam format and type of questions to expect. As you prepare for the exam, avoid and stay away from exam dumps as much as possible.

You can create a study plan based on the following steps:

Review the Professional Cloud Developer Exam Guide by Google. The guide can be found at this web page https://cloud.google.com/certification/guides/cloud-developer.

Review the Professional Cloud Developer sample questions to get a feel of the format, the exam questions and example content that may be covered. Getting all correct here does not guarantee you are ready for the exam. Make a note of the areas you need to improve and add to your study plan.

Sign up for Qwiklabs by Google to claim 30 days free access to complete skills challenge and lab quests. Qwiklabs can help you acquire experience on the live Google Cloud Platform with guided instructions.

Get started for free on Google Cloud by visiting https://cloud.google.com. You will use this to implement some of the demos in the book. Signing up for the first time gives you $300 of free Cloud Billing credits to explore and learn. You can also use this for actual live projects if you choose to. You can use the credit for multiple projects if linked to the same billing account. Create a demo project for a demo infrastructure which we will set up in this book.

Complete chapters 2-12 of this book. At the end of each chapter, implement the demos and practice exercises. They are designed to test your understanding of the chapter. You will have to implement the demos on your GCP project so you can keep going back to it for reference.

Practice the complimentary mock exams in chapters 13 and 14. Each mock exam covers the techniques used to answer the questions. Note down the areas you need to improve as you practice the exams.

At this point, you should have a dedicated note of the areas you need improvement on. Focus on these areas in the chapters and then try your hands on the mock exams once more. Repeat steps 6 and 7 till you feel very comfortable and ready. You can tell you are ready when you are averaging 80%. Google only notifies you if you have passed or failed with no pass mark, so you must aim for a high score.

Schedule the exam. Now, this can be done earlier so you do not procrastinate, otherwise, at this point, you should feel confident enough to write the exam once you are done with your study plan.

Resources to help you prepare for the exam

Complement your study plan with the following resources:

Google Cloud Platform: https://cloud.google.com.

Google Cloud Documentation: https://cloud.google.com/docs/.

Qwiklabs: https://www.qwiklabs.com/.

Google Cloud Tech on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/googlecloudplatform.

Registering and scheduling the exam

Google allows candidates to take the exam online or in person at a test center. When writing this book, the exam cost was $300, including applicable tax. You can register for the exam using the following steps:

Visit the certification page at https://cloud.google.com/certification/cloud-developer. Click on the Register button to proceed:

Figure 1.3: Certification exam page

You need a Webassessor account to log in and book your exam and register for the exam. If you do not have an account to register for the exam, you can create one by clicking on the Click here link that takes you to the Google Cloud Webassessor account creation page. Otherwise, log in with your existing account to proceed. Please refer to the following figure:

Figure 1.4: Webassessor login

Once logged in, you can proceed by clicking on the REGISTER FOR AN EXAM button as shown below:

Figure 1.5: Register for an exam

You will be presented with the list of Google Cloud Certification Exams to choose from. Regardless of which option you choose for your exam, that is at a testing center or online, you are required to present an official identification with you so remember to have it ready:

Figure 1.6: Select how you want to take your exam

Select your preferred date and time for the exam as shown below. This applies for both online and onsite proctored exams. Please refer to the following figure:

Figure 1.7: Webassessor login

Make sure you have read the exam policy and understand the retake policy as well as the other information provided before proceeding to acknowledge.

You have the opportunity to change the exam date in case something comes up, and you are not available to take it. However, you have 72 hours to make those changes for free so pay close attention to your exam date and email reminders from Webassessor. If you reschedule 24 hours for your exam it will attract a fee.

Demos and practice exercises

At the end of each chapter, we shall look at a Demo and a practice exercise. Each demo will identify an activity and provide solutions based on the concepts learned in the chapter.

The exercises will allow you to apply your learned skills and get hands-on practice. In the practice exercises, we will highlight an area that you have to solve on your own. It will be an opportunity for you to solve a problem independently after implementing the demo.

Conclusion

This chapter reviewed an overview of the professional cloud developer's skill set and what is expected of them. We also covered how to register for the exam and design a study plan to gain the expected experience for the certification exam. Our goal is to help you pass the exam while gaining the knowledge and skills to build scalable cloud-native applications that are secure and make use of managed services.

In the next chapter, we will look at the development environment options and considerations when developing and testing applications on Google Cloud.

Further reading

Read the following for more information about the topic in this chapter:

Google Cloud Certification: https://cloud.google.com/certification

Professional Cloud Developer: https://cloud.google.com/certification/cloud-developer

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Development Environments

Introduction

This chapter looks at the development environment options to consider when developing and testing applications that use Google Cloud services. We will create a Google Cloud account to set up a demo project.

Structure

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

Creating and managing Google Cloud projects

Overview of the Google Cloud Console

Understanding Cloud SDK

Cloud Code

Objectives

After studying this unit, you should be able to create and manage Google Cloud projects, use Google Cloud Code and Cloud Shell

The objective of this chapter is to provide an overview of the different development environments that are available when developing and testing applications that use Google Cloud services.

The Google Cloud Platform is a set of cloud-based products and services offered by Google that allows users to create and manage applications and websites, store data, and analyze data. The Google Cloud Platform comprises several products and services, including Google Cloud Storage, Google App Engine, Google BigQuery, Google Compute Engine and many more.

Creating and managing Google Cloud projects

First, we will begin by signing up for the free 90-day, $300 trial credit on GCP. The trial credit is a great way to apply what you learn. The trial period begins the moment you complete the signup, so the estimated study plan timeline should be enough for you to use the trial credit.

Creating a Google account

Google Cloud requires an active Google account, Google Workspace, or Cloud Identity account. Skip this step if you already have a Google account. A simple Gmail account should be enough. Follow the instructions on this page https://accounts.google.com/signinto sign up for a google account.

Create Google Cloud project

After signing up for Google Cloud, you need to create a Google Cloud project. This is where your Google Cloud services will be stored and managed. Google Cloud projects are usually named based on the application or website they are intended for. Follow the steps below to create your Google Cloud project:

Visithttps://cloud.google.comto sign up with your Google account.

Click on any "Get started for free" buttons, as shown in Figure 2.1:

Figure 2.1: Get started page for Google Cloud

Log in with your Google account and follow the steps to create your free GCP account:

Figure 2.2: Get started page for Google Cloud

Now that you have your account set up, the next step is to create a project. Projects are the basis for using cloud services on Google Cloud.

Projects on Google Cloud have the following attributes:

Project name:Name of your project.

Project ID:Unique ID for your project. You can edit this ID only at the creation time; however, it must be globally unique across Google Cloud.

Project number:A unique number created for you by Google Cloud. You cannot change this number.

There are four ways to create a Google Cloud Project. You can create projects using the console, Gcloud, API and Python libraries. We will use the console as demonstrated in the steps.

Log in to your GCP console athttps://console.cloud.google.comand click the drop-down arrow next to Select a project on the menu bar:

Figure 2.3: Select a project

You will be presented with a similar screen below. Click on the "NEW PROJECT" button as shown in Figure 2.4:

Figure 2.4: NEW PROJECT button

You will have to fill in the project details on the next screen. Choose the associated billing account and click the "CREATE" button, as shown in Figure 2.5:

Figure 2.5: Create a project

Your new project will be created and managed from the console. Click the drop-down arrow next to "Select project" on the menu bar to switch between projects, as shown in Figure 2.6:

Figure 2.6: Project created successfully.

Overview of the Google Cloud Console

Now that you have your account and project set up, you can start using the GCP services right away. The console allows you access to GCP resources. These resources are building blocks for Google Cloud Platform services.

GCP resources include Management, Compute, Storage, Analytics, Networking, Distributed Cloud, Serverless, Databases, Operations, Security, CI/CD, Artificial Intelligence, Tools and other services.

Resources on GCP are grouped hierarchically, with projects and folders at the top level, followed by resources within those projects and folders.

The Google Cloud Console is a web-based interface for managing Google Cloud Platform resources. The console is organized around GCP products and services, with each product or service having its own page where you can manage that resource.

The cloud console provides a UI to interact with the Google Cloud Platform API. While the console can be easy to use, it can be very convenient to use the APIs and client libraries to automate things. There is flexibility to work with both the UI and APIs, and it comes down to preference at the end of the day:

Figure 2.7: Google Cloud Console

Understanding Cloud SDK

Cloud SDK is a command-line interface packed with developer and admin tools, including gsutil, Gcloud and bq. You can use these tools to access and manage many Google Cloud products, including Google Cloud Storage, Compute Engine, Google Kubernetes Engine, App Engine and BigQuery.

Cloud SDK can be installed on Linux (Debian/Ubuntu, Red Hat/Fedora/CentOS), macOS and Windows and requires Python 2.x or higher installed on the operating system to run. Learn more about the installation instructions, methods and supported programming languages by referring to https://cloud.google.com/sdk/docs/install

Gcloud

Gcloud is the most used part of the Cloud SDK; it allows you to use your Google account to access and manage your Google Cloud Platform projects and resources from your operating system or application. Follow these steps to initialize the Cloud SDK after installing:

Run the following at the command prompt:

gcloud init

You will have the option to log in using your Google account. The message will be like this:

To continue, you must log in. Would you like to log in (Y/n)?