I got my Associate Cloud Engineer Certification!

I finally did it—I passed my Associate Cloud Engineer Certification exam! The journey had a lot of ups and downs, and ironically, they weren't even related to the exam itself. Honestly, the biggest challenge was finding enough time to review and do the study sessions.

Back in March, I saw an email about a "Get Certified" program and was immediately interested. I really wanted to learn more about opportunities in the cloud, so I applied with my work email, which turned out to be a good move.

Early promotional email I received from GCP

A few days later, I got a confirmation email that I was in. The program included some really helpful review sessions. They gave me the confidence I needed to tackle the exam. As the sessions went on, it got a bit trickier to keep up. We had a lot of mixed discussions about the basics, principles, and different Google Cloud products. We often focused on which software was better for specific use cases. GCP has many solutions for a single problem, but each one has its own nuances in terms of pricing, reliability, maintenance, and others. These discussions were honestly super insightful.

We also covered topics like setting up virtual machines, routers, and load balancing. We learned how to store different types of data and how to follow security best practices. I was already familiar with most of these processes, but not with how to navigate Google Cloud's specific software. I didn't have much experience with that before.

I had to rely on diagrams to fully grasp the concepts (URL Map & Forwarding Rules)

Looking back, the hands-on labs were what helped me the most. They were awesome! They gave me a deeper understanding of how to actually manage and configure things in the cloud. They even covered the basics, like how to navigate the cloud's webpage, which is so simple yet so helpful when you don't know where to find things. We were often told the exam wasn't very technical; it was more essential to gain better understanding the available products, principles, best practices, especially with real-world examples. Even so, the program gave me the necessary experience and skills to deliver scalable solutions and setting up things in the cloud.

Almost three months went by, and with my no-cost voucher about to expire at the end of May, I finally took the exam. Today, after what felt like an endless two-day wait, I got my results! All those months of studying and learning paid off. Now, it's on to the next adventure: Cloud Architect! Wish me luck!

My official certification from Credly