This month I completed two beta Google certification exams (Security, Network) with another exam scheduled for March 11th. In preparing for these exams I realized that it is important to master a number of GCP topics/subjects. These topics become your core that you rely upon to pass these certification exams.

Something interesting happened when I published my article on Google Security. My website went nuts. Traffic increased dramatically (100x) and there is a hit to this article every couple of seconds, 24 hours a day. Totally took me by surprise. This dramatic traffic increase tells me that a lot of people want technical information about GCP. This is why I am creating this series of articles.

This article series will follow the pattern that I created for my preparation for the Google Professional Cloud Security Engineer Certification Beta exam. I will create an article that deep dives into one topic/subject with a list of materials and the schedule that I used to master that one single item. I will not be covering global topics, such as VPC. Instead, I will focus on one well-defined item such as Firewalls for App Engine or SSH for Compute Engine. My goal is to master well-defined topics, very deeply and broadly across GCP, one at a time. Add 50 or 100 topics together and you become an expert – note, I am just guessing at the number. I am already very proficient with GCP – now my goal is a deep understanding in many areas.

I am a software developer. I approach every service within GCP with a programmer’s eye. I want to know the APIs, how everything plugs together, how to optimize security, performance and pricing. I am not satisfied with only an architect’s view of a service. I usually dig deep into the SDKs, API calls, libraries and documentation. I turn on gcloud debugging and study the API calls and data formats.  I write code, test, and experiment – over and over.

One item that I have noticed when I deep dive into one specific topic: I am often taken all over GCP as I see how everything fits together and affects each other. Take SSH for example. I quickly got into project and instance metadata, IAM security, RSA keypairs, etc., etc. No topic in GCP is simple. The extent of their services amazes me very often.

The source for my articles will be real-world items from my normal consulting on Google Cloud plus items that I notice from the Google certification exams and Stack Overflow.

Released articles:

Upcoming articles ideas:
  • Google Cloud – Compute Engine System Service Account
  • Identity Aware Proxy Authorization (Python)
  • Google Cloud Billing
  • SSH and Compute Engine

There will be many more to come. If you have an idea that you would like to see an article cover, send me an email: blog@jhanley.com.

Related Posts