Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer --- Sufficient Learning Materials for Certification?

[kcexton]

I am looking to certify as a Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer and would like to know whether the material covered in the Cloud DevOps Engineer learning path are sufficient for covering all of the material in the exam or if material in the Cloud Engineer learning path is also covered?

I have a background in Linux system administration and network operations, some home-lab experience with Google Cloud and self-managed Kubernetes, but no specific experience with Google's services or tools like GKE or BigQuery.

Will there be any content in the Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer certification exam that will not be covered by the Cloud DevOps Engineer learning path and are likely to be gaps for someone without professional Google Cloud operations experience?

[kc3]

I would consider the CE more general and less in depth than the SRE/DevOps path. The materials on logging and monitoring are shared between both paths, and the two paths have also some skill badges in common. But the DevOps path contains a more specialized curriculum on further topics such as Anthos. Bigquery is not part of either learning path, I think. 

I took the CE associate exam before any of the professional exams and thought that it was useful to get an overview of gcp and become comfortable with the style of gcp examinations. Questions for the professional exams seem more elaborate and are generally scenario-based. 

In any case, have a look at the official exam guides that are provided online for both paths and compare side by side. Perhaps that could give you an idea about where you stand and whether the CE path would be worth doing.

[bagwetanmay]

Hi kcexton,

I’m glad to hear you're working on the DevOps Certification—best of luck!

I took the exam three weeks ago and passed, so here’s what I used to prepare:

1) Is Google Cloud's DevOps Learning Path sufficient?
From my personal experience, it’s a great starting point to get introduced to Google Cloud and its DevOps-related services. It's especially helpful for learning the basics. However, the exam questions are quite nuanced and require a solid understanding and hands-on experience with DevOps practices and Google Cloud services. So, relying solely on the learning path may not be enough.

2) What else can you use to prepare for the exam?
As mentioned above, long-term experience with Google Cloud and DevOps concepts is ideal. Since you might not have worked with GCP at an enterprise level, gaining that experience directly could be a challenge. But you can still prepare effectively using these resources:

Understand SRE (Site Reliability Engineering): This will deepen your understanding of DevOps. I recommend reading the following free official books by Google:

• Site Reliability Engineering
• The Site Reliability Workbook
  You don’t need to study them cover-to-cover—just go through them to get a solid overview.

3)Practice Questions:
Try Google’s official practice questions for the DevOps exam. In addition, check out practice tests from platforms like Udemy. While the questions on Udemy don’t exactly match the real exam, they come with detailed explanations that help build your understanding of DevOps philosophies.

Summary: What you need to prepare

1. Google Cloud DevOps Engineer Learning Path
2. Basic understanding of SRE/DevOps (use the Google books)
3. Practice questions from Google