How to become Google Certified Cloud Digital Leader ?
Are you just venturing onto Google Cloud , just as a novice ? Are you a leading a technical team? Then this is the foundational level certification for you!
I gave my exam mid-September 2021 and also renewed it in Aug 2024 and was awarded with certificate within 3–5 working days [ This is their normal SLA for most of Google certifications, post necessary validations]
It proves to be the learning pathway- designed to increase team’s cloud confidence to collaborate with coworkers in technical cloud roles and contribute towards informed cloud related business decisions.
Also proves to be a very good start for Cloud novice, especially those from legacy background having prejudice to get started on cloud successfully.
As it doesn’t test much on hands on knowledge, all cloud enthusiasts can get started! Here are my interpretation of suitable roles.
If you are from Azure/AWS background, this is not at all an equivalent to AZ900/ AWS Cloud Practitioner. I feel it needs a bit more deeper level understanding of GCP Ecosystem all together including their support plans, billing aspects, migration, Google APIs etc. It requires at least 2X times the learning efforts and depth of understanding.
If you are posing off saying ’n’ X GCP certified, and you can easily clear GCP CDL certification, without any preparation you may be wrong! You may still need to refer some key areas like CapEx, OpEx , TCO, Billing aspects, Shared responsibility model, GCP support plans ( Distinguish between billing support, technical support, role-based support, and enterprise support) , Compliance requirements etc..
IMO, this certification is a kind off cut through all their existing certifications basics!
Exam pattern:
Questions: 50–60(It differs)
Exam duration:
a. 90 minutes [Actual Exam time ] [ I could complete all 40 questions in 30 mins and kind of revisited some “marked for review” again for some more mins and submitted ]
b. Procedural time [ 15–30 mins — Depending on proctor availability and pre checks it may vary, Account for it and keep your family informed :)]
Registration fee: $99 [ Some companies provision vouchers- check for its availability]
Language: English
Exam format: Multiple choice and multiple select [ No negative marking, don’t leave anything unanswered]
Though it doesn’t test you on hands on experience, General scope is :
I General cloud knowledge (approximately 15–25% of the exam)
1.1Define basic cloud technologies. Considerations include:
- Cloud Computing basic
- On Prem v/s Public Cloud V/s Private cloud
- Shared Responsibility Model
- Know the difference between Privacy, Security, Compliance and Availability
1.2 Differentiate cloud service models. Considerations include:
- Service models — IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, FaaS, CaaS etc. its ease of use
- Cost v/s responsibility tradeoffs
1.3 Identify common cloud procurement financial concepts. Considerations include:
- OpEx, CapEx, TCO
II General Google Cloud knowledge (approximately 25–35% of the exam)
2.1 Recognize how Google Cloud meets common compliance requirements. Considerations include:
- Google Cloud compliance requirements & Compliance Reports Manager
2.2 Recognize the main elements of Google Cloud resource hierarchy. Considerations include:
- Describe the relationship between organization, folders, projects, and resources —
- Understand that folders are to be created for separate departments and projects can be for different environments. A must check on this hierarchy!
- Projects — (ID, Name, Number) details about this.
2.3 Describe controlling and optimizing Google Cloud costs. Considerations include:
- Google Cloud billing models and applicability to different service classes — Cloud billing reports, Pricing report, Cost Breakdown reports , cost trends — when to use what!
- Define a consumption-based use model — general ondemand instance pricing
- Application of discounts —
- a. flat-rate — For Bigquery
- b. committed-use discounts — CUD
- c. sustained-use discounts SUD
2.4 Describe Google Cloud’s geographical segmentation strategy. Considerations include:
- Regions / Zones
- Regional /Zonal resources/Multiregional/Global resources — Understand their differences
2.5 Define Google Cloud support options. Considerations include:
- Distinguish between billing support, technical support, role-based support, and enterprise support — Know when to reach out to which support .
- Recognize a variety of Service Level Agreement (SLA) applications
- Understand SLO, SLI, SLA . SLI would serve as their satisfaction/happiness indicator.
III Google Cloud products and services (approximately 45–55% of the exam)
3.1 Describe the benefits of Google Cloud virtual machine (VM)-based compute options. Considerations include:
- Compute Engine, Google Cloud VMware Engine, and Bare Metal
- Custom versus standard sizing
- Free, premium, and custom service options — Know difference between Free trial, Free tier products, Pay as you go (PAYG)
- Attached storage/disk options
- Preemptible VMs — Know its use cases
3.2 Identify and evaluate container-based compute options. Considerations include:
- Define the function of a container registry — Difference between Container registry & Artifact registry(AR is preferred to store all artifacts)
- Distinguish between VMs, containers, and Google Kubernetes Engine — https://cloud.google.com/hosting-options
3.3 Identify and evaluate serverless compute options. Considerations include:
- Define the function and use of App Engine, Cloud Functions, and Cloud Run — https://cloud.google.com/serverless
- Define rationale for versioning with serverless compute options
- Cost and performance tradeoffs of scale to zero ( Remember App Engine Standard can scale to zero!) https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/the-appengine-environments
3.4 Identify and evaluate multiple data management offerings. Considerations include:
- Describe the differences and benefits of Google Cloud’s relational and non-relational database offerings (e.g., Cloud SQL, Cloud Spanner, Cloud Bigtable, BigQuery) — https://cloud.google.com/products/databases
- Describe Google Cloud’s database offerings and how they compare to commercial offerings
3.5 Distinguish between ML/AI offerings. Considerations include:
- Describe the differences and benefits of Google Cloud’s hardware accelerators (e.g., Vision API, AI Platform, TPUs) https://cloud.google.com/products/ai
- TPUs are 50 times faster and Quantum computing is 100 Million times faster!
- Identify when to train your own model, use a Google Cloud pre-trained model, or build on an existing model
3.6 Differentiate between data movement and data pipelines. Considerations include:
- Describe Google Cloud’s data pipeline offerings (e.g., Pub/Sub, Dataflow, Cloud Data Fusion, BigQuery, Looker) https://cloud.google.com/architecture/data-lifecycle-cloud-platform
- Define data ingestion options — https://cloud.google.com/products/storage
3.7 Apply use cases to a high-level Google Cloud architecture. Considerations include:
- Define Google Cloud’s offerings around the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) — Operations suite — Monitoring, logging,
- Describe Google Cloud’s platform visibility and alerting offerings
3.8 Describe solutions for migrating workloads to Google Cloud. Considerations include: https://cloud.google.com/products/cloud-migration
Heavily tested module . I kind of got around 8–9 questions around various types of migration.
- Identify data migration options
- Differentiate when to use Migrate for Compute Engine versus Migrate for Anthos
- Distinguish between lift and shift versus application modernization — Know when to lift and shift, improve and move, rip and replace.
3.9 Describe networking to on-premises locations. Considerations include:
- Define Software-Defined WAN (SD-WAN)
- Determine the best connectivity option based on networking and security requirements — Hybrid connectivity options — Interconnect, Peering, VPN
- Private Google Access v/s NAT
3.10 Define identity and access features. Considerations include:
- Cloud Identity, Google Cloud Directory Sync, and Identity Access Management (IAM) — GCDS, Managed MS AD etc..
Scale up resources:
Other resources which may help in your prep journey :
1. From Beta testers — Antoni Travelas , Hifzulla Celik
2. Free YouTube 6hrs course by Andrew Brown with few follow along demos (optional for this exam)
3. Repo of links from SathishVJ
4. CloudGirl- Priyanka’s SketchNotes
5. You can also refer few practice exam questions from providers like Udemy, Whizlabs ( 20 free questions available) etc..
Check out my End to end Google Cloud exam booking process.
Glad that, my blog kept you hooked till now!! Hope these tips will help you clear your exam in first go! Do leave a comment on how this blog helped you learn GCP and clear your certifications.
All the best for Google Cloud Digital Leader Certification exam. I wouldn’t mind if you want to connect with me at Ramesh Rajini and you can hit on clap button as many times as you want too!😄
See you in my next blog on How to become Google Certified Associate Cloud Engineer !!
