Pass Google Cloud Associate Cloud Engineer (ACE) in a week (2023)

Hey everyone, I hope you all are doing well. Recently, I passed the very famous Google Cloud Associate Cloud Engineer certification exam and recertified myself. In this article, I’m going to share the strategy and resources that helped me achieve this.

Read about my previous experience here

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To pass the GCP ACE exam, you need to have a good technical understanding of the Google Cloud Platform and its services. The cost of the exam is $125.

Google now provides online-proctored exams that can be taken from home or office.

About the exam

The Associate Cloud Engineer exam assesses your ability to:

Set up a cloud solution environment

Plan and configure a cloud solution

Deploy and implement a cloud solution

Ensure the successful operation of a cloud solution

Configure access and security

Preparing for the exam is the key. To pass the exam, you need to have a good preparation strategy.

Preparation Materials

• Visit the Google Cloud Associate Cloud Engineer page on Google. This will give you an overview of the exam and what is required to complete the certification.
• Understand what the exam is all about. Visit the exam guide to see the contents in detail. You will get a solid understanding of the content you will need to prepare for the exam.
• I highly recommend the “Official Google Cloud Certified Associate Cloud Engineer Study Guide” by Dan Sullivan to get the best knowledge on GCP. It is available online to be purchased. The contents are divided into different chapters and each chapter contains review questions at the end. The questions there are pretty straightforward. But, don’t expect the same to happen in the exam. It’s a whole new ball game when you get into the exam questions.
• Visit the official Google Cloud Platform documentation to have a crystal clear understanding of each of the GCP services. These would make your GCP knowledge but you still have another important factor to cover: “Hands-on experience”.
• Check out Sathish VJ’s GitHub repository for more study materials and references.
• Check out practice questions on Udemy.

“No technical certification in the world will be useful for you if you don’t know how to implement it in the real world scenario.”

Google Cloud provides professional courses to prepare for the Google Cloud Platform on Coursera. The recommended way is to follow Cloud Engineering with Google Cloud specialization and Preparing for the Associate Cloud Engineer Exam course on Coursera.

Practice, practice, and practice

Qwiklabs provides hands-on labs to provide practical experience to people on GCP. I recommend having technical knowledge and understanding by going through the resources before getting into hands-on labs for the experience.

It’s all about learning that happens throughout the process.

Once you have done all these, practice to make the foundation strong. Register for the exam once you feel you’re ready for it.

Exam Strategy

Prepare yourself mentally before the exam.

Read the questions well.

Understand the scenario.

Come up with the appropriate solution.

Always remember to follow Google’s best practices.

Result

After the exam, you’ll only know PASS or FAIL as the result. If you pass, you should wait for 7–10 days to get the certificate. If you fail, you can retake the exam after 14 days.

From 1st October 2022, the validity of the certification has been extended to 3 years.

Here’s my certificate:

For other certification study guides: Click here!

I hope this helps you in your preparation and to pass your exam. Thank you for reading. Perform well and all the best!