How I passed Google Cloud Associate Cloud Engineer Certification Exam

A few days back I passed the Google Cloud Cloud Digital Leader certification exam and shared the experience. There was a GCP certification drive going on in my organization and I was preparing for GCP ACE certification for the last couple of months. I received 2 certification vouchers so I utilized one in the GCP CDL (which was not planned, I just did it with the preparation from ACE) and used another in GCP ACE (which was actually planned).

Exam experience

If you read my last blog about the CDL exam experience, there was a hiccup. The exam was paused in the middle and rescheduled. This time there is no problem. I scheduled the exam for Friday at 9:45 AM slot. I was looking for the Monday slot but was not able to found so this was the best alternative for me. The exam link was activated 10 min before the scheduled time. One support person was assigned to me. Done all the processes like clicking the photo, showing the walls and exam area, show the government ID card. The break was not allowed. This time the support person gave a very nice tip. You can close your eyes while thinking this will help with eye strain. Last time I had a lot of eye strain but this tip really helped a lot.

Preparation and Resources

• The ACE exam is a bit technical, so there was a lot of question with the commands. I practiced a lot of qwiklabs (now named Google Cloud Skills Boost) lab which helps in this case. If you got the access to it, this is very nice and very important study material.
• GCP ACE Certification Exam Guide. The syllabus of the exam. There are a lot of google services. This is very important to have an idea of what to read.
• GCP ACE Udemy course by Ranga Karanam. I have an Udemy license from my organization. This is a very detailed good course. In the course, it is written 17 hrs course but it will definitely take more time if you understand the concept.
• Google cloud official documentation. This is huge. It is not possible to read every page of it but you can refer whenever you want to read some concepts about different google resources. Just search anything about Google Cloud, and you will land on some of the GCP documentation pages. It is well written and very useful.
• Google Cloud Cheatsheet – Nice presentation of Google Cloud Services in short. The interactive view is nice but a better readable view is in List View. I used it in CDL as well.
• Coursera Course – In the banner it is showing “Learn Google Cloud at no cost. Free promo offer applied at checkout”. I haven’t tried the option but you can try.
• Google ACE Sample question – Get an idea of the question pattern used in the exam.
• Last but definitely not least, Examtopics practice questions. There are a very big set of questions (193+ still growing). Most of the answers are wrong on the website but you get very strong community support. Check the discussion around every question. You will get the correct answer, the explanation and thought process behind the answer, and the related Google Cloud reference documentation. That will help to understand the concept behind the questions. I suggest not using this resource at the beginning of the preparation. Use this before the exam. Keep at least 5 days to prepare. 193+ questions are not a matter of joke. It will take a lot of time to get and understand the answer. All the questions are not open in the traditional way but you can access all the questions by simple googling the keyword (e.g. examtopics associate cloud engineer question 190)

In the end, I would like to say. GCP ACE is a bit harder than other cloud certifications. So prepare well. Enjoy the journey of preparation. Memorizing the dumps will not help you anyway. After all, technical certification is just a piece of paper or just a digital object (yes nowadays google certification Credential is Blockchain Secured) unless it is used in professional life. Enjoy 🙂

You can have a look at my GCP CDL Certification Exam experience.