Pass Google Professional Cloud Developer Exam in First Attempt Easily

Introduction to Course

1. What is a GCP Professional Cloud Developer?

What is a Google Cloud Platform? Cloud developer? Well, that's a really good question, so let's talk about it. Basically, Google wants you to be able to build scalable and highly available applications with the course. Google recommended "Best Practices and Tools. Now, Google has a good amount of managed services, so we need to know what they are. We're going to be talking quite a bit about cloud functions and app engines. We'll be talking about some partially managed services, such as Cuban and DEN. And then we'll talk about other services such as Bitable and Big Query Cloud Endpoints as well as another area of focus that we want to know about. We'll then, of course, need to know that we have experience with databases, runtime environments, and developer t Basically, we need to know the APIs. We need to know the basic sequel. We also need to understand different runtime environments, such as Java and a python. As far as proficiency with one general-purpose programming language, it seemed that Java was mainly the focus. However, some of the objectives and other materials that look like Python could be part of that as well. But with that said, Java and Python are really where you want to focus. Stack driver is highly tested, and I'm going to be talking about Stack driver for a good amount of the course because they really want you to know the features that are part of Stack driver such as trace and debug, as well as logging and monitoring. We really need to know how to deploy a cloud-native app and also understand how this cloud-native app is performing, as well as how to determine issues such as latency, response time issues, and user experience issues. We also need to understand why the application may not be logging the way it needs to be. Or perhaps we need to deal with auditors. There's a lot that we need to know around Stack driver. The exam itself will assess your ability to design highly scalable, available, and reliable cloud-native applications. We also need to know how to build and test applications, deploy these applications, and then integrate them into GCP services. Lastly, we need to know how to manage them and also understand performance and monitoring as well. That's basically the main areas surrounding what you'll see on the exam. Let's dive into deeper detail about the objectives coming up, so let's go ahead to the next module. We have a lot more to cover.

2. Cloud Developer Exam Objectives

Let's go ahead and talk about the exam objectives for the Google Cloud Developer Exam. Now, this exam has been very well written, and in my opinion, the objectives are very clear. Now what I'd like to do is, of course, point you to the link here. This will bring you over to the outline, as Google would call it. Now essentially, as far as the objectives are broken down into essentially these five main parts, the first is going to be focused on designing highly scalable, available, and reliable cloud-native applications. Now, as far as the sub-objectives are concerned, this is again going to be the area that we're going to focus on and go through step by step throughout the course. Now, for the purposes of this specific video and your time, as well as my time, I don't see the need to go through every objective. And again, I'm just pointing out what we're going to be covering in general. Basically, the goal of this specific module will be to focus on how we design our applications, basically integrate with Google Cloud, and how we can essentially migrate, lift, and shift as well as bring in our data. The next module's main focus will be the exam objectives for the number two section, building and testing applications. Essentially. Again, here are the objectives: setting up your development environment, building a CI pipeline, testing, and writing code. Now each of these of course have sub objectives as well. And again, this is a very lengthy course. There's a lot to talk about and a lot to cover. But basically, this objective area is really just focused on you getting ready to do work in Google Cloud and how you actually bring in your application and ensure that it all works. When it comes to deploying applications, this is a little bit lengthy of a section, probably the longest from what I've seen. Now as far as this section, number three, is concerned, this is really focused on you using the appropriate Google services to essentially deploy or implement your applications. And again, there are nine main areas. just in this objective area. We want to really understand how we could provision these services, automate everything, and really just make everything work according to Google's recommended best practices. Number four is really focused on Google Cloud Platform Services. This area here again is really focused on integrating—basically bringing everything together and ensuring it works. Really, it's focused on data services, compute services, and also APIs, for example, like Cloud ML, which you'll see on the exam for that matter. And then we'll talk about the speech API, we'll talk about that. And number five, this is really about bringing everything together after we're ready to have it integrated, after it's working and functioning, and then just making sure that we can manage it day to day. Now in this area here, I've added a bonus section on Stack driver. Now I did that because generally what I have found is that developers do not generally want to monitor applications, and this is a newer area that I think they've added as far as objectives for a developer generally than I've seen on other exams for that matter. Basically, they want to make sure that you, as a Google Cloud Developer, know how to install agents. And again, it's fairly straightforward with Google Cloud to manage your VMs, view your performance, and use the tools that are part of Google Stack driver. For example, debug and trace are powerful tools that are part of the Stack driver portfolio. And then lastly, there's also basically not a section, but I created an additional section for the case study. So what we're going to do is really focus on what the case study is all about and how you, as a cloud developer taking this exam, should approach the case study. We'll go ahead and talk more about the case study at the end of the objectives in the course and, of course, go through some examples of how we want to approach the question and answer it on the exam. So let's go ahead and get started. We have a lot to cover.

3. Cloud Developer Deep Dive Notes

Well, welcome aboard, everyone. Again, one thing I'd highly recommend you take a look at is going over to one of my many blog posts on the Cloud Developer exam. The one with the most detail that will really get you started is called the GCP Professional Cloud Developer Deep Dive Notes. Preparing for the exam now, you'll want to go through this. I've got lots of pictures, commands, and examples we're going to look at throughout the course. I would recommend you take probably 30 minutes to go through the content here and just try to get yourself, I guess, familiar with what we're going to be talking about. This is an exam worthy of a lot of effort, but you'll be very happy once you're done passing the exam. So with that said, there's a lot of great, detailed content that you'll find pretty useful as well. So with that said, take a quick look, maybe in 2030 minutes, and see how you do as far as your understanding of what you'll be tested on. This is, again, the Deep Dive Notes. The link is in the description. Let's go ahead and move on. And for those without the links in your course format that you may be using, it is on my blockchain, experperts.org. Again, myblockchainxperts.org is right there. Go in it and type in "Cloud Developer." I've got more than a couple of posts on the Developer Exam. Let's go ahead and move on. We have much to cover in the next two days of training.

4. Course Setup

Welcome back, everyone. I just want to clarify the two parts of the course because I think it's important that you are clear on where you should start. So if you are new to Google Cloud and you haven't touched Google Cloud, then you need to start in Part 1. If you've been using Google Cloud for more than a few months, you can probably skip over Part 1 and go directly to Part 2. Now, just to be aware, in this course we're not going to be talking about putting together software programmes or anything like that, like Java Fundamentals or Python Basics. Again, this is mainly to study for the developer exam, and you'll be surprised how little development there is on the exam. It's mainly focused on how to deploy your applications to Google Cloud. But with that said, in Part 2, we're going to focus on the exam objectives line by line, and you'll notice that in the course that just goes directly line by line with the objectives, the content is focused per each objective. The demos, whiteboards, and test tips are provided after each objective to help you prepare to study for the exam. But also when you go take the exam, you'll have a really good idea of what you're going to get tested on or likely see on the exam. Now there's also a review question. I go through the review questions quickly, more as a study aid. There are also, as you're aware, the study questions for you to review as well. So with that said, part one, part two—if you feel like part one will be helpful, start with that. If you feel part two is where you want to start, start with that. I just want to clarify that just because again, there are 40 modules in part one, and then from 40 on, there are two. There's a substantial amount of time. This is over two days' material. So I just want to make sure you spend your time wisely. Let's go ahead and get started.

Hide

Course Readiness

1. Course Material Download

Well, thank you again for joining the course. I did want to ensure that you're aware that the course content, which is well over 690 pages, is available for you to download in PDF. Definitely provide feedback. Now, this is, again, the beta version of the course. This has been running live. However, because this is the first time running this in a recorded approach, there is always room for improvement. So please let me know anything that's missing or needs to be changed. I'm providing access to the content for the time being, and I'll continue to update it based on feedback and any changes that I see that need to be done. so feel free to download. Now, before you download, a quick note. Please realise that the course is broken into two parts. One is the intro to the GCP part, which is about 200 pages. And then the second part, starting at around, I think, page 207 or so, is the objective coverage. So there are 500 pages just covering the objectives, not to mention all the demos and whiteboards that I do throughout the course as well. So there's a lot of content. This is approximately going to be about 16 hours of content for this course—somewhere between 14 and 16 hours of content for this course. I would really appreciate feedback. I want everybody to be successful, and I would hope you'd want the same for me as well. So please let me know what I can do better. This is, again, usually how I run this course—live, not so much in a recorded format. So there are probably always a few things that I will need to update. With that said, please download. I love to get feedback and wish you much success on the exam. Let me know how you do as well.

2. What are Test Tips?

Let's talk about what a test tip is. I've inserted over 50 of these throughout the course, and the goal is to help you identify areas to study while also refreshing your memory and having you try to identify. Do you understand what is being asked? Do you understand what the main point is? Some of these are questions, while others are simply bullet points. The goal of the test is to refine your study and make it as finite and directed as I can without having you go too far away before taking this very challenging exam. For example, one of the things you are likely going to see on the exam is, of course, do you choose, for example, the Kube engine or, for example, cloud functions or the App Engine or Compute Engine for compute options? Again, this is going to be what you wanted. What matters now is what services manage, not what use cases exist. But also, what about if we want to deploy containers? Can we use App Engine? Can we use Kubernetes' engine? Again, what would be the right choice as well? But also, what about micro services? This is really the kicker here in Google Cloud: Some of the services overlap in what you can do. And you as a developer need to read the case study or the question in more detail to identify: do I use App Engine or do I use cloud functions for my micro services? This is what we really want to focus on. One of the things about the test tips is that, again, they're going to be after each module; there's going to be at least one page generally, if not two or three, especially after the objective section. Throughout the objectives, they're going to have test tips. And again, I want you to concentrate on these because what I've done is taken the content and the exam and I'm really just trying to get you to concentrate. nothing more than that. Identify your weak points before you take the exam. Alright, let's go ahead and move on.

3. Whiteboards and Demos

And now throughout the course, I have various whiteboards and demos as well. There are over 30 demos and over 15 whiteboards, so there should be plenty of learning opportunities. So let's move on and continue with the course.

4. Sign up for Free Tier or Credits if available

Now, Google does offer free tiers and free credits. Now, I do want to just point out that some of this may or may not be fully available in your country of origin or based on your history, history with Google for that matter. Now, as far as going out and using the free tier, the best way to get to it is to go to Google and type in Google Cloud Platform free tier. It’ll bring up basically a link for the credits. And the free tier, you simply would sign up. I won't walk you through that. It’s fairly straightforward, but generally there's a$300 credit that may be available. A lot of this can be based on your country as well. Now, there is a free tier in a free trial. Let me just clarify a few things. Basically, the free tier gives you the opportunity to learn about GCP and the services they offer. Basically, it's going to let you use certain amount of VMs, certain images, essentially have a certain amount of storage. And then other services like Cloud, SQL, Data Store, et cetera, Big Query, they're limited in what is available for you and the free tier. Now, the free credits are all different. Basically that could be used for any service. And then also to when you use the credits up, they're gone. And then you would be paying for using those services. But basically, again, that information is here as well.

5. GCP Pricing Calculator

Let's talk about a resource you'll want to take a few minutes to take a look at, and that is the Google Cloud Platform Pricing Calculator. Now, for the pricing calculator, the best way to get it is really just to Google for it. Google Cloud Pricing Calculator will find it pretty quickly, or go to the link that I have listed here as well. With that said, let's go ahead and talk about the pricing calculator briefly. Now, generally, on the architect exam, there may be a question or two around the pricing calculator, around subscriptions, around, for example, App Engine and Kubernetes Engine. So the first is the app engine. Now, App Engine is essentially a subscription-based approach in the sense that there are two models. There's a standard environment and a flexible environment. Generally, the thing you want to know is that App Engine Standard is priced per instance per hour, and the flexible environment is really based on the resources that you are using. Another thing to pay attention to is Kubernetes engine. And you can see that the pricing has a lot of variables. Everything is resource-priced, essentially. In other words, it's based on the number of resources that you're using and the types of those resources. Lastly, BigQuery: one of the things that caught me by surprise was the fact that BigQuery was apparently something that they wanted to ask you about. Now, BigQuery is overall a great tool. It's just that many people may be unaware of how much this data warehouse costs. Google now offers two subscription options: on-demand and flat rate. Now, On Demand is essentially what you're paying for—additional storage and queries. But a flat rate is based on the specific amount of usage you're going to get. And if you select here, it's telling you that "flat rate" is sold differently and "storage" is also added as an extra item as well. So that's the plan information for flat rate, and then on-demand is something you may want to take a look at as well. So for the pricing calculator, you can expect a question or two on that, and the areas of focus will be pretty much what I just talked about. But, if you're not sure how some of the other services are priced, take some time to figure out how their price is calculated, for example, just in case you see something different than I do. With that said, these are really the objectives that are covered. So I just wanted to make sure that you got the link and took a few minutes to look at it. Let's move on.

6. SDK Install

What we like to do is install the Software Development Kit. Now, there are a few different ways to get to it. We could go over here to our utilities and download. Or we could also scroll down to install the SDK as well. And also, you could do it via the app engine as well as a couple of other locations. But in general, you pretty much just go install the SDK. This will bring us over to the SDK Web page. I'm running Windows, so I'm going to go ahead and just leave it as an install for Windows. What I want to do now is, since I have a project created, if I go back, you could see that I have two projects. What I want to do is go download the installer, and your antivirus may pop up Saying, "Do you want to install it again?" Go ahead and select "Run." And I'm glad it's safe. So I want to go next. Read the license. I'm going to go ahead and install this just for myself. Locally. director will be next. Now, one of the things to point out is that when you install this, it's going to ask you to install other components. Now you could install the bundle of Python that's available with it. You do need to have Python installed locally in order to be able to run the SDK locally on your desktop or Linux box. There are PowerShell tools that are available if you want to use them. And then beta commands will basically be commands that are fairly new but haven't gone into production mode. So select "install." Now, I had this installed before, so I uninstalled it. Generally, there aren't any issues I've run into after uninstalling it, except for once when I did have one issue. So if you do get an issue, you may need to go in and validate it. Did uninstall. You may need to go into the Windows uninstall programme and double-check that it is gone. If not there's directories under programs, you may need to remove installing the components. You go into details. This will show you what it's doing. As you can see, it's installing components. and if I scroll over, it's got the app data. And then it's also showing youth tools that have been deployed. So you can see that it's also installed the Big Query command-line tools as well as the CLI dependencies, et cetera. And it also installs SSH. Okay, so it's still installing, and we will let it complete and come back and check on it. Okay, completed. Let's select next. We do want to just validate whether we want to install or use the Start Menu. Shortcuts our desktop, as well as the shell; when we started, do we want it to start immediately? And then we do need to run global, actually. Excuse me, Cloud. And it now cloud and knit. You don't have to do it right now. You could do it later when you bring it up. But basically, that command is going to go ahead and initialise the cloud shell, and this will help identify what project and regions and zones you want to connect to and then log into Google Cloud. So let's go finish. Now let me just adjust this so you can see what's going on as efficiently as I can. That appears to be about as good as I can get. Okay, now what I'd like to just point out is that you can see that it brings up some choices for the configuration to use because I've had other configurations; it pulls up those as well. But what I want to do now is not use the previous one. I just want to create a new one. So I'm going to select two. Now it says to basically enter a configuration name. What we want to do is enter a configuration that hasn't been utilised before. So I'm going to call this, let's say, GCP training. DevOps I'm going to go enter. So now it says it's been set to GCP Training DevOps. And basically now it's saying, "What is the account I would like to use?" Well, I'd like to use number two, and it says I am now logged in to that account, and now I have to select the project that I want to use. And I could either create a new project or select an existing project. So I'm going to go ahead and select GCP Training Number One. But before we do that, let's go over to the console and validate what we have. So let's go over to projects, and it says GCP Training. So let's validate what we have—and that is a good project. So let's go ahead and select one. And after we select this, what's going to happen is—let's say, for example—we're working in a specific zone all the time. Our programs and cloud services are in Iowa. We have the ability to select a defaultcompute region and zone if we want. In this case, I'm going to say no; I don't need to do that for demo purposes. But if you want to select Yes, you can see that it's pretty much done. Now that you've read all this, basically it says that if you need more help or just want to play around, type the G cloud help command. But let's do this. Let's go type Gcloud and then projects and lists. What this will do is list my current projects, and you can see that I have a project giving you the project number, project ID, and project name. And with that said, that's pretty much all you need to do to set up an SDK locally. So I'm logged in, and I'm already in the project that I want to be in. If I want to do anything else, for example, then what I want to do is make sure I know the commands to change, for example. But to do that, if we have help issues or don't know what we're doing, type G cloud help. Of course, this will give me the flags and the commands and syntaxes that I may want, so let me go ahead and get out of this. Now. Let's just say one more quick command before we continue on. Let's say, for example, that I move this up here into the middle of the screen and adjust this so you can see it in the middle of the screen as well. Okay, so let's go to G Cloud, and let's say I want to know, for example, my available compute regions, let's say. So what I would do is type G Cloud, compute space zones, and then list, and when I enter that, it'll bring up the available zones and regions. So I would recommend that you do set your zones and regions, especially if you're going to be tied to a specific zone and region. It will save you some time and hassle down the road if you're not paying attention. But once again, that's really all you need to do to get started with the SDK. It's very intuitive in the sense that the commands in G Cloud are straightforward. There is a page you want to go look at. For example, go to Quick Start for Windows, scroll down to the G Cloud reference, and then over here you can see that there are different commands. For example, these are going to be the commands you could type for pretty much any service or any requirement that you need, like the G Cloud version. If I want to know the version of G cloud that I'm using, it will go ahead and list the version that I am running with. That said, I go over to G cloud source, and the version is listed here. So if I go G Cloud version it'll go ahead and list that basically with what we have and there's some flags that could be used, but in general G Cloud version and then any flag that we want. Pretty straightforward. OK, let's move on.

Hide