GCP Cloud Digital Leader Study Guide

GCP Cloud Digital Leader Study Guide

GCP Cloud Digital Leader Preparation

Preparing for the GCP Cloud Digital Leader exam? Don’t know where to start? This post is the GCP Cloud Digital Leader Certification Study Guide (with links to each objective in the exam domain).

I have curated a detailed list of articles from the Google documentation and other blogs for each objective of the Google Cloud Platform Cloud Digital Leader exam. Please share the post within your circles so it helps them to prepare for the exam.

GCP Cloud Digital Leader Course Materials

Coursera (Professional Cert.)GCP Cloud Digital Leader Training
PluralsightGoogle Cloud Digital Leader Training
UdemyBecome a Google Cloud Digital Leader

Google Cloud Digital Leader Practice Test

Whizlabs Exam QuestionsGCP Practice Test (150+ Qs) & Course
Udemy Practice TestsGoogle Cloud Digital Leader Practice Test

GCP Cloud Digital Leader Other Materials

Amazon e-book (PDF)Google Cloud Digital Leader book

Check out all the other GCP certificate study guides

Full Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. I receive a commission when you purchase through them.

Section 1: Introduction to Digital Transformation with Google Cloud (approximately 10% of the exam)

1. Explain why cloud technology is revolutionizing business

a. Define key terms such as cloud, cloud technology, data, and digital transformation

What is Cloud Computing?

Define digital transformation

Data lifecycle

2. Explain why it is critical for businesses to adopt new technology

a. Compare and contrast cloud technology and traditional or on-premises technology

On-Premise vs. Cloud: Differences, Benefits, and Risks

Why cloud is better than on-premise?

On-Premises vs. Cloud: What’s the difference?

b. Describe how customer expectations have changed because of cloud technology

Understand customer needs & expectations of the cloud

3 ways to outpace customer expectations with cloud

c. Identify the business and technical considerations that organizations need to think about when adopting cloud technology, including infrastructure; application, and business platform modernization; the importance of data; security in the cloud

Cloud adoption to accelerate IT modernization

Accelerate enterprise cloud adoption with app modernization

The importance of Big Data & Cloud Computing

Google Cloud security best practices

Application modernization

Modernize your cloud infrastructure

Section 2: Innovating with Data and Google Cloud (approximately 30% of the exam)

1. Describe the role of data in digital transformation and the importance of a data-driven culture

The role of data in digital transformation

Importance & advantages of a data-driven culture

a. Explain how cloud technology enables data to be applied in new ways

5 ways cloud storage and data enable the future of development

Why is Cloud Computing the answer to your Big Data initiatives?

Data culture enabled by the cloud accelerates time-to-value

2. Identify common Google Cloud solutions for data management

Database Solutions in Google Cloud

a. Recognize examples of structured and unstructured data

Understanding structured and unstructured data

Structured vs. unstructured Data 101

3. Identify common Google Cloud solutions for smart analytics

Data analytics solutions in Google Cloud

a. Articulate the business benefits of storing data in the cloud

5 advantages cloud storage brings to businesses

Cloud Storage in Google Cloud

b. Apply appropriate business use cases for databases, data warehouses, and data lakes

Your Google Cloud database options explained

What is a data warehouse used for?

Data Lake use cases

c. Explain the benefits of Google Cloud data products, including Looker, BigQuery, Cloud Spanner, Cloud SQL, Cloud Storage

What Is Looker? Benefits use, & more

Benefits of BigQuery

Google Cloud Spanner benefits

Google Cloud SQL: How it can benefit you?

Key features of Google Cloud Storage

GCP Cloud Digital Leader

Amazon link (affiliate)

4. Identify Google Cloud’s solutions for machine learning and AI

a. Define artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML)

Artificial Intelligence vs. Machine Learning

Google Cloud Platform for Machine Learning & AI

b. Outline the importance of data quality in ML prediction accuracy

Data Quality and Machine Learning: What’s the connection?

Model Quality: Measuring prediction accuracy

The impact of data quality on Machine Learning

c. Describe Google Cloud’s differentiators with regard to AI and machine learning

What makes Google Cloud Platform different?

How does GCP differ from Azure and AWS?

Why ML capabilities of GCP is way ahead of AWS & Azure?

d. Recognize the ways customers can use Google Cloud’s AI and ML solutions to create business value

AI & Machine Learning products in Google Cloud

Business impacts of Machine Learning

Section 3: Infrastructure and Application Modernization with Google Cloud (approximately 30% of the exam)

1. Learn what modernizing IT infrastructure with Google Cloud means

Explain why legacy infrastructure struggles to deliver modern services to customers

Legacy systems in digital transformation: Risks & challenges

Why do legacy systems struggle to meet modern consumer expectations?

What are the biggest problems with legacy software?

8 challenges of legacy systems that businesses are facing

Explain the benefits of modernizing infrastructure with cloud technology

5 key benefits of infrastructure modernization

Migrate to Modernize: 3 key benefits of moving to the cloud

4 benefits of modernizing enterprise apps

Differentiate between hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructures

Hybrid Cloud vs. Multi-cloud

Multi-cloud vs. hybrid cloud: What’s the difference?

Differentiate between virtual machines, containers, and serverless computing within business use cases

VMs vs Containers vs Serverless Computing

VMs vs. Containers vs. PaaS vs. FaaS

Identify the Google Cloud solutions that help businesses modernize their infrastructure

Google Cloud infrastructure modernization solutions

GCP infrastructure modernization

2. Understand modernizing applications with Google Cloud

a. Describe the business drivers for modernizing applications

What are the drivers for application modernization?

Drive enterprise modernization with Google Cloud infrastructure

Application modernization

b. Describe the benefits of using cloud-native applications

Why Cloud-Native applications?

5 principles for cloud-native architecture

Cloud-native app development benefits

c. Apply the appropriate change pattern to different business use cases

Cloud change patterns

d. Explain the benefits of Google Kubernetes Engine, Anthos, and App Engine for application development

Benefits of Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)

Google Kubernetes Engine features & benefits

3. Understand the value of APIs

a. Explain how application programming interfaces (APIs) can modernize legacy systems

Unlock legacy applications using APIs

How APIs can Modernize legacy systems?

App modernization and the need for API management

b. Describe how APIs can create new business value

Using APIs to create new business value

API-first digital transformation

c. Explain the benefits of Apigee

What is Apigee?

Empowering Apigee with Google Cloud Platform

Section 4: Understanding Google Cloud Security and Operations (approximately 30% of the exam)

a. Explain how adopting cloud technology affects the total cost of ownership (TCO)

Understanding cloud pricing – Cloud TCO

TCO assessment

b. Identify the cost management strategy needed in a given business scenario

Strategy for optimizing cloud billing cost management

Cost management

2. Describe a cloud security approach and Google Cloud security benefits

a. Define fundamental cloud security terms, including privacy, availability, security, and control

What is data privacy in Cloud Computing?

Availability and durability

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) security fundamentals

Security, Privacy, and Cloud Compliance

b. Explain what is meant by a “shared responsibility model”

Shared responsibility model in GKE

GKE shared responsibility

c. Describe the security benefits of using Google Cloud

Google infrastructure security design overview

Understand security features in GCP

d. Identify today’s top cybersecurity challenges and threats to data privacy

Top 10 cybersecurity challenges

7 types of cyber security threats

e. Demonstrate how organizations can control and manage access to cloud resources

Using resource hierarchy for access control

Access control for projects with IAM

Resource access control IAM roles & permissions

Manage access to projects, folders, and organizations

Managing access to compute engine resources

3. Explain how IT operations need to adapt to thrive in the cloud

a. Differentiate service availability requirements in the cloud versus in on-premises environments

On-Premise vs Cloud

On-premise vs. cloud computing

b. Describe the operational challenges that DevOps solves

DevOps 101: What problems does DevOps solve?

How does DevOps solve the top 5 challenges?

c. Apply the goals of site reliability engineering (SRE) to different business use cases

Implement Site Reliability Engineering

SRE: Approach to achieve DevOps objectives

4. Identify Google Cloud solutions for cloud resource monitoring and application performance management

a. Explain the potential impact of unexpected or prolonged downtime

What is a Cloud Outage?

Top 5 ways system downtime impacts your company

b. Define monitoring, logging, and observability within the context of cloud operations

What is cloud monitoring?

Cloud logging

Designing for observability on Google Cloud

c. Identify the Google Cloud resource monitoring and maintenance tools

Cloud Monitoring in Google Cloud

Maintenance on Cloud SQL instances

This brings us to the end of the GCP Google Cloud Digital Leader Study Guide.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments section if I have missed out on anything. Also, I love to hear from you about how your preparation is going on!

In case you are preparing for other GCP certification exams, check out the GCP study guide for those exams.

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