Google Professional Cloud Architect — Study Guide
Practice as you learn. Every concept maps to real exam questions with verified answers in the Google exam hub, or drill the full exam with timed practice on ExamRoll.io.
This guide covers each PCA domain in depth. Pick a domain to go deep, or work through them in order.
The domains
- Organization Design, IAM and Cloud Governance — Key design principles: - Use a single Organization to centralize governance. Create top-level Folders for major administrative boundaries (for
- Compute, Application Platforms and Workload Architecture — This domain covers how to select and design compute platforms on Google Cloud, how to package and deploy applications, and how to operate workloads
- Data Storage, Databases and Analytics Architecture — Designing data storage, databases, and analytics on Google Cloud requires matching workload patterns to services while planning for durability,
- Networking, Hybrid Connectivity and Traffic Architecture — Networking, hybrid connectivity, and traffic architecture on Google Cloud revolve around secure, scalable Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) design;
- Security, Compliance and Data Protection Architecture — Security, compliance, and data protection in Google Cloud are built on shared responsibility and defense in depth. Google secures the underlying
- Reliability, Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity — Reliability, disaster recovery (DR), and business continuity ensure that services continue to meet agreed objectives despite component, zone, or
- Migration, Modernization and Hybrid Cloud Strategy — A successful migration, modernization, and hybrid-cloud strategy aligns platform choices with business outcomes while managing risk to availability,
- Operations, Observability and Platform Automation — Operations, Observability, and Platform Automation on Google Cloud ensure that services are diagnosable, maintainable, and continuously improved
- DevOps, Delivery Engineering and Infrastructure as Code — - Source control, branching, pull requests, code review, and traceability - Use protected branches, required reviews, and commit signing. Tag
- Cost, Performance and Sustainable Cloud Design — - Billing analysis and allocation - Export billing data to BigQuery for queryable, near-real-time spend analysis by project, service, SKU, and label.
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