Associates Cloud Engineers deploy applications, monitor operations, and manage enterprise solutions. They use Google Cloud Console and the command-line interface to perform common platform-based tasks to maintain one or more deployed solutions that use Google-managed or self-managed services on Google Cloud data.

The Associate Cloud Engineer deploys and secures applications and infrastructure, monitors operations of various projects, and maintains enterprise solutions so they meet desired performance metrics. This professional has experience working with both public clouds and on-premises solutions. They can also use the Google Cloud Console and command-line interface to perform common platform-based tasks for maintaining and scaling one or more deployed solutions that use Google-managed or self-managed Google Cloud services.

The Associate Cloud Engineer exam assesses the following skills:

• Configure a cloud solution environment

  • Create a resource hierarchy

  • Apply organizational policies to the resource hierarchy

  • Assign member IAM roles in a project

  • Manage users and groups in Cloud Identity (manually and automatically)

  • Activate APIs in projects

  • Provision and configure products in Google Cloud Operations Suite

• Plan and configure a cloud solution

  • Select appropriate compute options for a given workload (e.g. Compute Engine, Google Kubernetes Engine, Cloud Run, and Cloud Functions)

  • Use preemptive VMs and custom machine types, as appropriate

  • And more

• Deploy a cloud solution

  • Install and configure the command line interface (CLI) for Kubernetes (kubectl)

  • Deploy a Google Kubernetes Engine cluster with different configurations, including Autopilot, regional clusters, private clusters, etc.

  • Deploy a containerized application on Google Kubernetes Engine

  • Configure Google Kubernetes Engine application monitoring and logging

• Ensuring the operation of a cloud solution

  • Manage a single VM instance (e.g. start, stop, edit settings, or delete an instance)

  • Connect to the instance remotely

  • Attach a GPU to a new instance and install necessary dependencies

  • View the inventory of running VMs (instance IDs, details)

  • Work with snapshots (for example, create a snapshot of a VM, view the snapshots and delete them)

  • Work with images (for example, create an image of a VM or a snapshot, view the images and delete them)

  • Work with instance groups (for example, set auto-scaling parameters, create and assign an instance template, and remove an instance group)

  • Work with management interfaces (for example, Cloud Console, Cloud Shell, Cloud SDK)

• Configure access and security

  • Visualize IAM policies

  • Create IAM policies

  • Manage the various role types and define custom IAM roles (e.g., primitive, predefined, custom)

  • And more