What are the prerequisites for taking the Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer exam?

There are no formal prerequisites, but Google recommends having at least 5 years of experience in DevOps or software development, including 3+ years with Google Cloud Platform. You should be comfortable with cloud infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure-as-code practices.

What topics are covered on the Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer certification exam?

The exam covers applying policies and managing service accounts, deploying and managing cloud resources, implementing deployment pipelines, managing Kubernetes clusters, and designing reliable systems. It also includes monitoring and troubleshooting, security and compliance, and cost optimization in Google Cloud.

How long is the Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer exam and what is the passing score?

The exam is 120 minutes long and consists of multiple-choice and multiple-select questions. You need to score approximately 70% or higher to pass, though Google does not publicly disclose the exact passing score.

What is the cost of the Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer certification exam?

The exam costs $200 USD. Some organizations or training programs may cover this cost, and Google occasionally offers promotional discounts or free exam vouchers.

How should I prepare for the Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer exam?

Google recommends taking the official Cloud DevOps Engineer learning path on Google Cloud Skills Boost, hands-on lab experience with GCP services, and reviewing the exam guide. Many candidates also use practice exams, study groups, and documentation to strengthen their understanding of DevOps practices on Google Cloud.

Free Google Professional-Cloud-DevOps-Engineer Exam Questions

Q1 MultipleChoice

Your company runs services on Google Cloud. Each team runs their applications in a dedicated project. New teams and projects are created regularly. Your security team requires that all logs are processed by a security information and event management (SIEM) system. The SIEM ingests logs by using Pub/Sub. You must ensure that all existing and future logs are scanned by the SIEM. What should you do?

ACreate an organization-level aggregated sink with a SIEM Pub/Sub topic as the destination. Set an inclusion filter to include all logs.

BCreate a project-level logging sink with a SIEM Pub/Sub topic as the destination. Set an inclusion filter to include all logs. Repeat for each project.

CCreate an organization-level aggregated sink with a SIEM log bucket as the destination. Set an inclusion filter to include all logs.

DCreate a folder-level aggregated sink with a SIEM Pub/Sub topic as the destination. Set an inclusion filter to include all logs. Repeat for each folder.

Correct Answer: A

Explanation:

Comprehensive and Detailed

To ensure all logs (existing and future) are automatically processed by the SIEM system, the best approach is:

Use an organization-level aggregated sink Captures logs from all existing and future projects automatically.

Send logs to a Pub/Sub topic Since the SIEM ingests logs via Pub/Sub, this ensures logs are streamed in real-time.

Set an inclusion filter To capture all logs needed by the security team.

Why not other options?

B (Project-level logging sink) Requires manual setup per project, which doesn't scale for new projects.

C (Log bucket instead of Pub/Sub) SIEM is expecting real-time log ingestion via Pub/Sub, not a storage-based approach.

D (Folder-level logging sink) Only applies to specific folders, not the entire organization.

Official Reference:

Aggregated Sinks for Cloud Logging

Exporting Logs to SIEM via Pub/Sub

Q2 MultipleChoice

You are writing a postmortem for an incident that severely affected users. You want to prevent similar incidents in the future. Which two of the following sections should you include in the postmortem? (Choose two.)

AAn explanation of the root cause of the incident

BA list of employees responsible for causing the incident

CA list of action items to prevent a recurrence of the incident

DYour opinion of the incident's severity compared to past incidents

ECopies of the design documents for all the services impacted by the incident

Correct Answer: A, C

Explanation:

For a postmortem to be truly blameless, it must focus on identifying the contributing causes of the incident without indicting any individual or team for bad or inappropriate behavior.

Q3 MultipleChoice

You use Cloud Build to build and deploy your application. You want to securely incorporate database credentials and other application secrets into the build pipeline. You also want to minimize the development effort. What should you do?

ACreate a Cloud Storage bucket and use the built-in encryption at rest. Store the secrets in the bucket and grant Cloud Build access to the bucket.

BEncrypt the secrets and store them in the application repository. Store a decryption key in a separate repository and grant Cloud Build access to the repository.

CUse client-side encryption to encrypt the secrets and store them in a Cloud Storage bucket. Store a decryption key in the bucket and grant Cloud Build access to the bucket.

DUse Cloud Key Management Service (Cloud KMS) to encrypt the secrets and include them in your Cloud Build deployment configuration. Grant Cloud Build access to the KeyRing.

Correct Answer: D

Explanation:

https://cloud.google.com/build/docs/securing-builds/use-encrypted-credentials

Q4 MultipleChoice

You are running an experiment to see whether your users like a new feature of a web application. Shortly after deploying the feature as a canary release, you receive a spike in the number of 500 errors sent to users, and your monitoring reports show increased latency. You want to quickly minimize the negative impact on users. What should you do first?

ARoll back the experimental canary release.

BStart monitoring latency, traffic, errors, and saturation.

CRecord data for the postmortem document of the incident.

DTrace the origin of 500 errors and the root cause of increased latency.

Correct Answer: A

Q5 MultipleChoice

You are configuring Cloud Logging for a new application that runs on a Compute Engine instance with a public IP address. A user-managed service account is attached to the instance. You confirmed that the necessary agents are running on the instance but you cannot see any log entries from the instance in Cloud Logging. You want to resolve the issue by following Google-recommended practices. What should you do?

AAdd the Logs Writer role to the service account.

BEnable Private Google Access on the subnet that the instance is in.

CUpdate the instance to use the default Compute Engine service account.

DExport the service account key and configure the agents to use the key.

Correct Answer: A

Explanation:

The correct answer is A. Add the Logs Writer role to the service account.

To use Cloud Logging, the service account attached to the Compute Engine instance must have the necessary permissions to write log entries. The Logs Writer role (roles/logging.logWriter) provides this permission.You can grant this role to the user-managed service account at the project, folder, or organization level1.

Private Google Access is not required for Cloud Logging, as it allows instances without external IP addresses to access Google APIs and services2.The default Compute Engine service account already has the Logs Writer role, but it is not a recommended practice to use it for user applications3.Exporting the service account key and configuring the agents to use the key is not a secure way of authenticating the service account, as it exposes the key to potential compromise4.

1:Access control with IAM | Cloud Logging | Google Cloud

2: Private Google Access overview | VPC | Google Cloud

3: Service accounts | Compute Engine Documentation | Google Cloud

4: Best practices for securing service accounts | IAM Documentation | Google Cloud

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