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Google Cloud Certified - Associate Cloud Engineer : Tips, Preparation & Resources

I recently cleared Google Cloud Certified - Associate Cloud Engineer Certification and I am sharing my experience with the same.

Things to know about exam :

The cost of certification is $125

Time duration of exam is 2 hours

There are 50 Multiple choice questions

All questions are single answer choice

The certification is valid for 2 years

You will be given ONLY passed/failed as a result, no detailed feedback or marks will be disclosed

It will be online examination

The examination is conducted by Kryterion at their respective testing center

Learning :

Linux academy has the best course for Google Cloud Certified - Associate Cloud Engineer exam preparation

Google officially recommend coursera for preparation but Linux academy is enough to clear the exam. If you go through coursera too, It will be like icing on the cake.

You must go through documentation of compute and storage services, and should know which service to use according to requirement.

You should have hands on experience/knowledge with gcloud SDK and CLI and how to configure it, definitely there will be few questions on it.

You should have hands on experience with architecting  applications on Google Cloud Platform by using its multiple services.

At least 6 Months of experience with cloud platforms (GCP, AWS or Azure), if you are familiar with other cloud platforms then nothing much to worry, you can easily relate other cloud platform services with GCP services once you get started.

You should have knowledge of Networking/CIDR ranges

Make sure you are familiar with all the topics given here

Do give practice tests on Linux academy and the one which google released here, it helps a lot in examination

Do complete GCP Essentials and Cloud Architecture quests on qwiklabs.com

Tips :

Be confident when you reach exam centre

Your mental state should be very fresh and relaxed

Read question at least 3 times to get its correct meaning. sometimes you end up selecting the wrong answer if you read it only once.

Focus and collect important keywords from question like cost effective, highly available, fault tolerance, shortest way etc. these keywords completely turn the table and you might end up selecting the wrong answer if you missed these keywords.

Use the method of elimination to reach the correct answer

Important links :

https://cloud.google.com/certification/cloud-engineer

https://cloud.google.com/certification/practice-exam/cloud-engineer

https://cloud.google.com/certification/guides/cloud-engineer/

https://cloud.google.com/certification/faqs/

https://cloud.google.com/docs/

https://www.qwiklabs.com/catalog?locale=en

https://cloud.google.com/products/

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Install GoCD in Ubuntu Machine

Follow the steps to install GoCD on your Ubuntu Machine,

GoCD Server and Agent requires Java 8 to be installed, to install Java 8 complete the following steps,

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:openjdk-r/ppa sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install -y openjdk-8-jre

Now, to install GoCD Server complete the following steps on your host machine

echo "deb https://download.gocd.org /" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/gocd.list curl https://download.gocd.org/GOCD-GPG-KEY.asc | sudo apt-key add - sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install go-server

To manage the go-server.

sudo /etc/init.d/go-server [start|stop|status|restart]

Visit http://localhost:8153/go here is your go server !!!

Now, to install GoCD Agent complete the following steps on your agent machine

echo "deb https://download.gocd.org /" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/gocd.list curl https://download.gocd.org/GOCD-GPG-KEY.asc | sudo apt-key add - sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install go-agent

To manage the go-agent.

sudo /etc/init.d/go-agent [start|stop|status|restart]

After installing the go-agent service, you must first configure the service with the hostname (or IP address) of your GoCD server, in order to do this -

Open /etc/default/go-agent in your favourite text editor.

Change the IP address (127.0.0.1) in the line GO_SERVER_URL=https://127.0.0.1:8154/go to the hostname (or IP address) of your GoCD server.

Save the file and exit your editor.

Run /etc/init.d/go-agent [start|restart] to (re)start the agent.

That’s all, you have successfully Installed GoCD Server and Agent.

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Install Ansible on Ubuntu Linux Machine

Apply the following commands to install ansible on Ubuntu Machine sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install software-properties-common sudo apt-add-repository --yes --update ppa:ansible/ansible sudo apt-get install ansible

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How to configure Ansible Hosts

First of all, list out the host/'s IP addresses in /etc/ansible/hosts file

the format and the examples are given in that file itself

Then, generate SSH key using ssh-keygen and then press enter,

then press enter multiple times till you get key fingerprint and randomart image.

Now, we need to copy this key to ansible nodes.

Write ssh-copy-id -i root@[ip address of your node]

press enter, yes and password.

Repeat the steps if you want to add multiple nodes in ansible cluster.

Make sure all your node machines have python installed, if not intall it by apt-get install python

That's all, you have successfully configured ansible and its nodes.

[varunelavia-blog]

Install Jenkins on Ubuntu Machine

Jenkins need Java 8 to be installed, if you already installed it skip Java 8 installation steps.

Java 8 installation steps

Step 1 : 

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java

Step 2 : 

sudo apt update; sudo apt install oracle-java8-installer

Step 3 : click ok and complete installation

Jenkins Installation

run following set of commands

wget -q -O - https://pkg.jenkins.io/debian/jenkins.io.key | sudo apt-key add -

sudo sh -c 'echo deb http://pkg.jenkins.io/debian-stable binary/ > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/jenkins.list'

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install jenkins

then Browse to http://localhost or IP:8080

the initial password for jenkins is located at 

/var/lib/jenkins/secrets/initialAdminPassword

Thats all !!

You have successfully installed jenkins on your ubuntu machine.

you can access it at http://localhost or IP:8080

[varunelavia-blog]

Install Docker Community Edition (CE) on Ubuntu Machine

To install Docker CE, you need the 64-bit version of one of these Ubuntu versions:

Bionic 18.04 (LTS)

Xenial 16.04 (LTS)

Trusty 14.04 (LTS)

To install Docker Community Edition (CE) on Ubuntu Machine you need to perform the following steps in order, in your machine terminal.

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install \ apt-transport-https \ ca-certificates \ curl \ software-properties-common

curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo apt-key add -

sudo add-apt-repository \ "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu \ $(lsb_release -cs) \ stable"

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install docker-ce

That's all, you have successfully installed docker community edition on your ubuntu machine.

[varunelavia-blog]

Where to keep the aws php sdk credentials file and what is its format ?

You have to keep the credentials file in .aws folder at the root of your machine.(Example: along with folders like etc, var, boot etc.)

Name the file as credentials

Format for credentials file is as under.

[default] 

aws_access_key_id = YOUR_AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID 

aws_secret_access_key = YOUR_AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY 

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/sdk-for-php/v3/developer-guide/guide_credentials_profiles.html

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Check php version

You can check Php version by php -v

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Location of apache / php error log in ubuntu

By default the location of error log is  /var/log/apache2/error.log.

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How to save password in git config

Step 1 )  Enter the following command git config credential.helper store

Step 2 ) Do pull request and enter the password.

That's all. now you don't need to enter password next time you do a pull or push.