Official Google Cloud Certified

Professional
Cloud Architect
Study Guide
Includes interactive online learning
environment and study tools:
• 2 custom practice exams
• More than 100 electronic flashcards
• Searchable key term glossary

DAN SULLIVAN
 Official
Google Professional
Cloud Architect
Study Guide
 Official
Google Professional
Cloud Architect
Study Guide

Dan Sullivan
Copyright © 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Published simultaneously in Canada
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to Katherine
About the Author
Dan Sullivan   is a principal engineer and software architect at New
Relic. He specializes in streaming analytics, machine learning, and
cloud computing. Dan is the author of the Official Google Cloud
Certified Associate Cloud Engineer Study Guide (Sybex, 2019),
NoSQL for Mere Mortals (Addison-Wesley Professional, 2015),
and several LinkedIn Learning courses on databases, data science,
and machine learning. Dan has certifications from Google and
AWS along with a PhD in genetics and computational biology from
Virginia Tech.
About the Technical Editor
Valerie Parham-Thompson   has experience with a variety of open source data storage
technologies, including MySQL, MongoDB, and Cassandra, as well as a foundation in web
development in software-as-a-service environments. Her work in both development and
operations in startups and traditional enterprises has led to solid expertise in web-scale
data storage and data delivery.
Valerie has spoken at technical conferences on topics such as database security, per-
formance tuning, and container management. She also often speaks at local meetups
and volunteer events.
Valerie holds a bachelor’s degree from the Kenan Flagler Business School at UNC-Chapel
Hill, has certifications in MySQL and MongoDB, and is a Google Certified Professional
Cloud Architect. She currently works in the Open Source Database Cluster at Pythian,
headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario.
Follow Valerie’s contributions to technical blogs on Twitter at @dataindataout.
Acknowledgments
I have been fortunate to work again with professionals from Waterside Productions, Wiley,
and Google to create this study guide.
Carole Jelen, vice president of Waterside Productions, and Jim Minatel, associate publisher
at John Wiley & Sons, led the effort to continue to create Google Cloud certification guides.
It was a pleasure to work with Gary Schwartz, project editor, who managed the process that
got us from an outline to a finished manuscript. Thanks to Katie Wisor, production manager,
for making the last stages of book development go as smoothly as they did.
I am especially grateful for Valerie Parham-Thompson’s expertise in Google Cloud. In
addition to catching my subtle and not-so-subtle errors, I learned some nuances of GCP
that I was not aware of.
I appreciate the close reading by the technical reviewer, Stacy Veronneau, who agreed to
continue working with our team after having been a reviewer of the Official Google Cloud
Certified Associate Cloud Engineer Study Guide.
Thank you to Google Cloud subject-matter experts Jasen Baker, Marco Ferarri, Rich
Rose, Grace Mollison, Samar Bhat, Josh Koh, Kuntal Mitra, Michael Arciola, Lisa Guinn,
Eoin Carrol, Tony DiLerto, Volker Eyrich, and Teresa Hardy, who reviewed and contrib-
uted to the material in this book.
My sons James and Nicholas, both technology writers themselves, were my first readers
and helped me get the manuscript across the finish line. Katherine, my wife and partner in
so many ventures, supported this work while fostering her increasingly impactful projects
in literary publishing.
—Dan Sullivan
Contents at a Glance
Introduction xxi

Assessment Test xxviii

Chapter 1 Introduction to the Google Professional Cloud

Architect Exam 1
Chapter 2 Designing for Business Requirements 23
Chapter 3 Designing for Technical Requirements 49
Chapter 4 Designing Compute Systems 69
Chapter 5 Designing Storage Systems 91
Chapter 6 Designing Networks 113
Chapter 7 Designing for Security and Legal Compliance 127
Chapter 8 Designing for Reliability 151
Chapter 9 Analyzing and Defining Technical Processes 173
Chapter 10 Analyzing and Defining Business Processes 193
Chapter 11 Development and Operations 207
Chapter 12 Migration Planning 227

Appendix Answers to Review Questions 241

Index 267
Contents
Introduction xxi

Assessment Test xxviii

Chapter 1 Introduction to the Google Professional Cloud

Architect Exam 1
Exam Objectives 2
Analyzing Business Requirements 3
Reducing Operational Expenses 3
Accelerating the Pace of Development 4
Reporting on Service-Level Objectives 4
Reducing Time to Recover from an Incident 5
Improving Compliance with Industry Regulations 6
Analyzing Technical Requirements 7
Functional Requirements 7
Exam Case Studies 10
Summary 18
Exam Essentials 18
Review Questions 20

Chapter 2 Designing for Business Requirements 23

Business Use Cases and Product Strategy 24
Dress4Win Strategy 25
Mountkirk Games Strategy 26
TerramEarth Strategy 27
Application Design and Cost Considerations 28
Managed Services 29
Preemptible Virtual Machines 31
Data Lifecycle Management 32
Systems Integration and Data Management 33
Systems Integration Business Requirements 33
Data Management Business Requirements 35
Compliance and Regulation 36
Privacy Regulations 37
Data Integrity Regulations 38
Security 38
Confidentiality 38
Integrity 39
Availability 39
Success Measures 40
Key Performance Indicators 40
Return on Investment 41
xvi Contents

Summary 41
Exam Essentials 42
Review Questions 43

Chapter 3 Designing for Technical Requirements 49

High Availability 50
Compute Availability 52
Storage Availability 54
Network Availability 57
Application Availability 58
Scalability 58
Scaling Compute Resources 59
Scaling Storage Resources 60
Network Design for Scalability 61
Reliability 61
Measuring Reliability 61
Reliability Engineering 62
Summary 62
Exam Essentials 63
Review Questions 64

Chapter 4 Designing Compute Systems 69

Compute Services and Use Cases 70
Compute Engine 71
App Engine 74
Kubernetes Engine 76
Cloud Functions 78
Compute System Provisioning 79
Additional Design Issues 80
Managing State in Distributed Systems 80
Data Flows and Pipelines 82
Monitoring and Alerting 84
Summary 85
Exam Essentials 85
Review Questions 86

Chapter 5 Designing Storage Systems 91

Overview of Storage Services 92
Object Storage with Google Cloud Storage 93
Organizing Objects in a Namespace 93
Cloud Storage FUSE 94
Storage Tiers 94
Cloud Storage Use Cases 95
 Contents xvii

Network-Attached Storage with Google Cloud Filestore 96

Databases 97
Relational Database Overview 97
Cloud SQL 98
Cloud Spanner 99
Analytics Database: BigQuery 100
NoSQL Databases 101
Caching with Cloud Memorystore 103
Data Retention and Lifecycle Management 104
Networking and Latency 105
Summary 106
Exam Essentials 106
Review Questions 109

Chapter 6 Designing Networks 113

Virtual Private Clouds 114
VPC Subnets 114
Shared VPC 115
VPC Network Peering 115
Firewall Rules 115
IP Addressing and CIDR Blocks 116
Hybrid-Cloud Networking 117
Hybrid-Cloud Design Considerations 117
Hybrid-Cloud Implementation Options 118
Load Balancing 120
Regional Load Balancing 120
Global Load Balancing 121
Summary 122
Exam Essentials 122
Review Questions 124

Chapter 7 Designing for Security and Legal Compliance 127

Identity and Access Management 128
Identities and Groups 128
Resources 129
Permissions 130
Roles 130
Policies 132
IAM Best Practices 133
Data Security 134
Encryption 134
Key Management 136
Security Evaluation 137
xviii Contents

Security Design Principles 139

Major Regulations 141
ITIL Framework 143
Summary 144
Exam Essentials 144
Review Questions 147

Chapter 8 Designing for Reliability 151

Improving Reliability with Stackdriver 152
Monitoring with Stackdriver 153
Alerting with Stackdriver 156
Logging with Stackdriver 156
Release Management 157
Continuous Deployment 158
Continuous Integration 162
Systems Reliability Engineering 162
Overload 162
Cascading Failures 165
Testing for Reliability 166
Incident Management and Post-Mortem Analysis 167
Summary 168
Exam Essentials 168
Review Questions 170

Chapter 9 Analyzing and Defining Technical Processes 173

Software Development Lifecycle Plan 174
Analysis 174
Design 176
Continuous Integration/Continuous Development 179
Troubleshooting and Post-Mortem Analysis Culture 180
Incident Post-Mortems 180
Project Post-Mortems 182
IT Enterprise Processes 182
Business Continuity Planning and Disaster Recovery 184
Business Continuity Planning 184
Disaster Recovery 185
Summary 186
Exam Essentials 186
Review Questions 188

Chapter 10 Analyzing and Defining Business Processes 193

Stakeholder Management 194
Interests and Influence 194
Projects, Programs, and Portfolios 195
Stages of Stakeholder Management 196
 Contents xix

Change Management 197

Reasons for Change 197
Change Management Methodologies 198
Team Skill Management 199
Customer Success Management 199
Cost Management 200
Summary 201
Exam Essentials 202
Review Questions 203

Chapter 11 Development and Operations 207

Application Development Methodologies 208
Waterfall 208
Spiral 209
Agile 210
Technical Debt 211
API Best Practices 212
Resources and Standard Methods 212
API Security 213
Testing Frameworks 215
Testing Framework Models 215
Automated Testing Tools 216
Data and System Migration Tooling 217
Types of Cloud Migrations 217
Migration Services and Tools 217
GCP SDK Components 219
Summary 219
Exam Essentials 220
Review Questions 222

Chapter 12 Migration Planning 227

Integrating Cloud Services with Existing Systems 228
Migrating Systems and Data 229
Planning for Systems Migrations 229
Planning for Data Migration 231
Licensing Mapping 232
Network and Management Planning 233
Virtual Private Clouds 234
Network Access Controls 235
Scaling 235
Connectivity 235
Summary 236
Exam Essentials 236
Review Questions 238
xx Contents

Appendix Answers to Review Questions 241

Chapter 1: Introduction to the Google Professional Cloud
Architect Exam 242
Chapter 2: Designing for Business Requirements 244
Chapter 3: Designing for Technical Requirements 247
Chapter 4: Designing Compute Systems 249
Chapter 5: Designing Storage Systems 252
Chapter 6: Designing Networks 254
Chapter 7: Designing for Security and Legal Compliance 255
Chapter 8: Designing for Reliability 257
Chapter 9: Analyzing and Defining Technical Processes 259
Chapter 10: Analyzing and Defining Business Processes 261
Chapter 11: Development and Operations 262
Chapter 12: Migration Planning 264
Index 267
Introduction
The Google Cloud Platform is a diverse and growing set of services. To pass the Google
Cloud Professional Architect exam, you will need to understand how to reason about both
business requirements and technical requirements. This is not a test of knowledge about
how to do specific tasks in GCP, such as attaching a persistent disk to a VM instance.
That type of question is more likely to be on the Google Cloud Certified Associate Cloud
Engineer exam. The Google Cloud Certified Professional Architect exam tests your ability
to perform high-level design and architecture tasks related to the following:
■■ Designing applications
■■ Planning migrations
■■ Ensuring feasibility of proposed designs
■■ Optimizing infrastructure
■■ Building and deploying code
■■ Managing data lifecycles
You will be tested on your ability to design solutions using a mix of compute, storage,
networking, and specialized services. The design must satisfy both business and technical
requirements. If you find a question that seems to have two correct technical answers, look
closely at the business requirements. There is likely a business consideration that will make
one of the options a better choice than the other. For example, you might have a question
about implementing a stream processing system, and the options include a solution based
on Apache Flink running in Compute Engine and a solution using Cloud Dataflow. If the
business requirements indicate a preference for managed services, then the Cloud Dataflow
option is a better choice.
You will be tested on how to plan the execution of work required to implement a cloud
solution. Migrations to the cloud are often done in stages. Consider the advantages of start-
ing with low-risk migration tasks, such as setting up a test environment in the cloud before
moving production workloads to GCP.
The business and technical requirements may leave you open to proposing two or more
different solutions. In these cases, consider the feasibility of the implementation. Will it
be scalable and reliable? Even if GCP services have high SLOs, your system may depend
on a third-party service that may go down. If that happens, what is the impact on your
workflow? Should you plan to buffer work in a Cloud Pub/Sub queue rather than sending
it directly to the third-party service? Also consider costs and optimizations, but only after
you have a technically viable solution that meets business requirements. As computer sci-
ence pioneer Donald Knuth realized, “The real problem is that programmers have spent
far too much time worrying about efficiency in the wrong places and at the wrong times;
premature optimization is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming.”1 The
same can be said for architecture as well—meet business and technical requirements before
trying to optimize.
1
The Art of Computer Programming, Third Edition. Addison Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc.
Redwood City, CA, USA.
xxii Introduction

The exam guide states that architects should be familiar with the software develop-
ment lifecycle and agile practices. These will be important to know when answering ques-
tions about developing and releasing code, especially how to release code into production
environments without shutting down the service. It is important to understand topics such
as Blue/Green deployments, canary deployments, and continuous integration/continuous
deployments.
In this context, managing is largely about security and monitoring. Architects will need
to understand authentication and authorization in GCP. The IAM service is used across
GCP, and it should be well understood before attempting the exam. Stackdriver is the key
service for monitoring, logging, tracing, and debugging.

How Is the Google Cloud Professional Architect Exam Different from the
Google Cloud Associate Engineer exam?

There is some overlap between the Google Cloud Professional Architect and Google
Cloud Associate Cloud Engineer exams. Both exams test for an understanding of techni-
cal requirements and the ability to build, deploy, and manage cloud resources. In addi-
tion, the Google Cloud Professional Architect exam tests the ability to work with business
requirements to design, plan, and optimize cloud solutions.

The questions on the architect exam are based on the kinds of work cloud architects do
on a day-to-day basis. This includes deciding which of several storage options is best,
designing a network to meet industry regulations, or understanding the implications of
horizontally scaling a database.

The questions on the Cloud Engineer exam are based on the tasks that cloud engineers
perform, such as creating instance groups, assigning roles to identities, or monitoring a
set of VMs. The engineering exam is more likely to have detailed questions about gcloud,
gsutil, and bq commands. Architects need to be familiar with these commands and their
function, but a detailed knowledge of command options and syntax is not necessary.

This book is designed to help you pass the Google Cloud Professional Architect certifica-
tion exam. If you’d like additional preparation, review the Official Google Cloud Certified
Associate Cloud Engineer Study Guide (Sybex, 2019).
 Introduction xxiii

What Does This Book Cover?

This book covers the topics outlined in the Google Professional Cloud Architect exam
guide available here:
https://cloud.google.com/certification/guides/professional-cloud-architect/

Chapter 1: Introduction to the Google Professional Cloud Architect Exam This chapter
outlines the exam objectives, scope of the exam, and three case studies used in the exam.
One of the most challenging parts of the exam for many architects is mapping business
requirements to technical requirements. This chapter discusses strategies for culling tech-
nical requirements and constraints from statements about nontechnical business require-
ments. The chapter also discusses the need to understand functional requirements around
computing, storage, and networking as well as nonfunctional characteristics of services,
such as availability and scalability.
Chapter 2: Designing for Business Requirements This chapter reviews several key areas
where business requirements are important to understand, including business use cases and
product strategies, application design and cost considerations, systems integration and data
management, compliance and regulations, security, and success measures.
Chapter 3: Designing for Technical Requirements This chapter discusses ways to ensure
high availability in compute, storage, and applications. It also reviews ways to ensure scal-
ability in compute, storage, and network resources. The chapter also introduces reliability
engineering.
Chapter 4: Designing Compute Systems This chapter discusses Compute Engine, App
Engine, Kubernetes Engine, and Cloud Functions. Topics in this chapter include use cases,
configuration, management, and design. Other topics include managing state in distributed
systems, data flows and pipelines, and data integrity. Monitoring and alerting are also
discussed.
Chapter 5: Designing Storage Systems This chapter focuses on storage and database
systems. Storage systems include object storage, network-attached storage, and caching.
Several databases are reviewed, including Cloud SQL, Cloud Spanner, BigQuery, Cloud
Datastore, Cloud Firestore, and Bigtable. It is important to know how to choose among
storage and database options when making architectural choices. Other topics include pro-
visioning, data retention and lifecycle management, and network latency.
Chapter 6: Designing Networks This chapter reviews VPCs, including subnets and IP
addressing, hybrid cloud networking, VPNs, peering, and direct connections. This chapter
also includes a discussion of regional and global load balancing. Hybrid cloud computing
and networking topics are important concepts for the exam.
xxiv Introduction

Chapter 7: Designing for Security and Legal Compliance This chapter discusses IAM,
data security including encryption at rest and encryption in transit, key management,
security evaluation, penetration testing, auditing, and security design principles. Major
regulations and ITIL are reviewed.
Chapter 8: Designing for Reliability This chapter begins with a discussion of Stackdriver
for monitoring, logging, and alerting. Next, the chapter reviews continuous deployment
and continuous integration. Systems reliability engineering is discussed, including over-
loads, cascading failures, and testing for reliability. Incident management and post-mortem
analysis are also described.
Chapter 9: Analyzing and Defining Technical Processes This chapter focuses on software
development lifecycle planning. This includes troubleshooting, testing and validation, busi-
ness continuity, and disaster recovery.
Chapter 10: Analyzing and Defining Business Processes This chapter includes several
business-oriented skills including stakeholder management, change management, team skill
management, customer success management, and cost management.
Chapter 11: Development and Operations This chapter reviews application development
methodologies, API best practices, and testing frameworks, including load, unit, and inte-
gration testing. The chapter also discusses data and systems migration tooling. The chapter
concludes with a brief review of using Cloud SDK.
Chapter 12: Migration Planning This chapter describes how to plan for a cloud migra-
tion. Steps include integrating with existing systems, migrating systems and data, license
mapping, network management and planning, as well as testing and developing proof-of-
concept systems.

Interactive Online Learning Environment

and Test Bank
Studying the material in the Official Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect
Study Guide is an important part of preparing for the Professional Cloud Architect
certification exam, but we also provide additional tools to help you prepare. The online
Test Bank will help you understand the types of questions that will appear on the
certification exam.
The sample tests in the Test Bank include all of the questions in each chapter as well as
the questions from the assessment test. In addition, there are two practice exams with 50
questions each. You can use these tests to evaluate your understanding and identify areas
that may require additional study.
The flashcard in the Test Bank will push the limits of what you should know for the
certification exam. There are more than 100 questions that are provided in digital format.
Each flashcard has one question and one correct answer.
 Introduction xxv

The online glossary is a searchable list of key terms introduced in this exam guide that
you should know for the Professional Cloud Architect certification exam.
To start using these to study for the Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect
exam, go to www.wiley.com/go/sybextestprep, and register your book to receive your
unique PIN; then once you have the PIN, return to www.wiley.com/go/sybextestprep, fi nd
your book, and click Register or Login to register a new account or add this book to an
existing account.

Additional Resources
People learn in different ways. For some, a book is an ideal way to study, while auditory
learners may fi nd video and audio resources a more efficient way to study. A combination
of resources may be the best option for many of us. In addition to this study guide, here are
some other resources that can help you prepare for the Google Cloud Professional Architect
exam.
The Professional Cloud Architect Certification Exam Guide:
https://cloud.google.com/certification/guides/
professional-cloud-architect/
Exam FAQs:
https://cloud.google.com/certification/faqs/#0
Google’s Assessment Exam:
https://cloud.google.com/certification/practice-exam/cloud-architect
Google Cloud Platform documentation:
https://cloud.google.com/docs/
Cousera’s on demand courses in the “Architecting with Google Cloud Platform
Specialization”:
https://www.coursera.org/specializations/gcp-architecture
QwikLabs Hands-on Labs:
https://google.qwiklabs.com/quests/47
Google’s instructor-led courses:
https://cloud.google.com/training/courses/core-fundamentals
A Cloud Guru’s Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect video course:
https://acloud.guru/learn/gcp-certified-professional-cloud-architect
The best way to prepare for the exam is to perform the tasks of an architect and work
with the Google Cloud Platform.

Exam objectives are subject to change at any time without prior notice
and at Google’s sole discretion. Please visit the Google Professional Cloud
Architect website (https://cloud.google.com/certification/cloud-
architect) for the most current listing of exam objectives.
xxvi Introduction

Objective Map
Objective Chapter

Section 1: Designing and planning a cloud solutions architecture

1.1 Designing a solutions infrastructure that meets business requirements 2

1.2 Designing a solutions infrastructure that meets technical requirements 3

1.3 Designing network, storage, and compute resources 4

1.4 Creating a migration plan (i.e., documents and architectural diagrams) 12

1.5 Envisioning future solutions improvements 2

Section 2: Managing and provisioning solutions Infrastructure

2.1 Configuring network topologies 6

2.2 Configuring individual storage systems 5

2.3 Configuring compute systems 4

Section 3: Designing for security and compliance

3.1 Designing for security 7

3.2 Designing for legal compliance 7

Section 4: Analyzing and optimizing technical and business processes

4.1 Analyzing and defining technical processes 9

4.2 Analyzing and defining business processes 10

4.3 Developing procedures to test resilience of solutions in production (e.g., DiRT 8

and Simian Army)

Section 5: Managing implementation

5.1 Advising development/operation team(s) to ensure successful deployment of 11

the solutions

5.2 Interacting with Google Cloud using GCP SDK (gcloud, gsutil, and bq) 11
 Introduction xxvii

Section 6: Ensuring solutions and operations reliability

6.1 Monitoring/logging/alerting solutions 8

6.2 Deployment and release management 8

6.3 Supporting operational troubleshooting 8

6.4 Evaluating quality control measures 8

Assessment Test
1. Building for Builders LLC manufactures equipment used in residential and commercial
building. Each of its 500,000 pieces of equipment in use around the globe has IoT devices
collecting data about the state of equipment. The IoT data is streamed from each device
every 10 seconds. On average, 10 KB of data is sent in each message. The data will be used
for predictive maintenance and product development. The company would like to use a
managed database in Google Cloud. What would you recommend?
A. Apache Cassandra
B. Cloud Bigtable
C. BigQuery
D. CloudSQL

2. You have developed a web application that is becoming widely used. The frontend runs in
Google App Engine and scales automatically. The backend runs on Compute Engine in a
managed instance group. You have set the maximum number of instances in the backend
managed instance group to five. You do not want to increase the maximum size of the man-
aged instance group or change the VM instance type, but there are times the frontend sends
more data than the backend can keep up with and data is lost. What can you do to prevent
the loss of data?
A. Use an unmanaged instance group
B. Store ingested data in Cloud Storage
C. Have the frontend write data to a Cloud Pub/Sub topic, and have the backend read
from that topic
D. Store ingested data in BigQuery

3. You are setting up a cloud project and want to assign members of your team different per-
missions. What GCP service would you use to do that?
A. Cloud Identity
B. Identity and Access Management (IAM)
C. Cloud Authorizations
D. LDAP

4. You would like to run a custom container in a managed Google Cloud Service. What are
your two options?
A. App Engine Standard and Kubernetes Engine
B. App Engine Flexible and Kubernetes Engine
C. Compute Engine and Kubernetes Engine
D. Cloud Functions and App Engine Flexible