I'm now a Google Cloud Certified - Associate Cloud Engineer

I received the formal notification about passing the Google Cloud Certified - Associate Cloud Engineer exam after the customary review, today. 

Although I received the provisional Pass result at the end of the exam, it seems odd that a company whose premier product is synonymous with speed takes up to a week to review & provide formal confirmation.

I like these certification exams as:

• they provide a structure for learning new topics
• highlight key areas in a subject 
• lets us validate our learning through simulated scenarios 
• the virtual badges are fun to collect 

For my preparation, I used Qwiklabs, Udemy and the official Google Cloud documentation. 

Some of the Google Cloud documentation gems I found during the journey are the Google concept mapping with Azure & AWS articles.

Besides the labs feature, Qwiklabs now includes video tutorials. The decks are a treat & useful for future reference 

• Google Cloud Fundamentals: Core Infrastructure
• Essential Google Cloud Infrastructure: Foundation
• Essential Google Cloud Infrastructure: Core Services
• Elastic Cloud Infrastructure: Scaling and Automation

On Udemy, I went through the following -

• Google Associate Cloud Engineer: Get Certified 2020 course by Dan Sullivan, the Guy Who Wrote the Official Certification Guide for Google
• Practice tests created by Sarat Gutha

Some points about Google Cloud from my notes that stood out  -

• Project Id and Project Name are globally unique and immutable. Project Id is chosen by you and Project Name is assigned by Google Cloud
• Configuring Access Approvers in your Organization involves granting the IAM role Access Approvals Approver on the project, folder, or organization to the principal (either a service account or a human) who will perform approvals.
• Cloud Run for Anthos is the only serverless Google Cloud offering that supports Web Sockets