Hello Everyone 👋!!!

Recently I have taken up my first Cloud Certification Exam from Google Cloud itself. Guess what I have cleared the exam you can find the certification credentials Here.and will be sharing my experience and some insights on how you can clear the exam and what you can expect from the exam.

What is a Cloud Digital Leader(CDL) certified by Google Cloud?

Google states that the certification is suitable for those in non-technical job categories who may benefit their company by learning more about the cloud and who have little to no hands-on experience with Google Cloud.

Understanding business requirements and how to leverage Google Cloud's products and services to accomplish desired business goals are the responsibilities of a cloud digital leader. According to the GCP team's definition, this certification would assist the senior management team in making business decisions by providing them with all the information and concepts on the GCP goods that are now on the market.

The Cloud Digital Leader test is irrespective of the work role.

Below is the image which shows the details about the CDL Exam

What will you learn in this certification?

This certification exam objectives are classified into three categories:

1. General Cloud of Knowledge
2. General Google Cloud Knowledge
3. Google Cloud Products & Services

General Cloud of Knowledge

Learning cloud computing fundamentals is a prerequisite for using any cloud-based technology. The Cloud Digital Leader certification exam evaluates your basic cloud knowledge to ensure your readiness for advanced cloud computing. To prepare for this section, the candidate should learn about the following cloud concepts:

• Types, benefits, and characteristics of cloud computing.

• Different cloud architecture terminologies and managed service models like IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS, along with Shared Responsibility Model.

• Common financial concepts of cloud procurement like TCO, CapEx, and OpEx and deploying cloud resources with the allocated budget.

General Google Cloud Knowlege

Mastering GCP requires years of hands-on experience, but it starts with learning GCP fundamentals. This section evaluates the candidate’s knowledge of global GCP infrastructure, resource hierarchy, GCP cost, and cloud support options. Focus on learning the following GCP concepts:

• Understand Google Cloud’s geographical strategy including regions, zones, edge networks, latency, and how regional, zonal, and multiregional resources are managed within the global Google Cloud infrastructure.
• Understand different aspects of Google Cloud resource hierarchy which includes organizations, folders, projects, and resources.
• Optimize Google Cloud costs by learning about billing models and discounts.
• Learn about common compliance requirements, different support options like billing support, technical support, role-based support, and enterprise support, and a variety of SLA applications for GCP.

Google Cloud Services & Products

In terms of VMs, serverless computing, data management, AI/ML, Cloud tools and SDKs, API administration, migration, networking, security, identity, and support, GCP provides a wide range of goods and services. This component makes up half of the Cloud Digital Leader certification test. For the candidates to at least comprehend the general features and advantages of the various Google Cloud product offerings, they must have bare-minimum hands-on experience. To ace the test, use the GCP products and services listed below:

• Learn about the essential VM-based compute services offered by Google Cloud, container-based compute alternatives such as Google Kubernetes Engine and container registry, and serverless compute solutions such as App Engine, Cloud Functions, Cloud Run, and Anthos.
• Recognize the advantages of employing relational and non-relational data management tools from Google Cloud, such as Cloud SQL, Cloud Spanner, Cloud Bigtable, BigQuery, Firestore, Datastore, and Memorystore.
• Differentiate between various AI and ML services and products, such as Vision API, AI Platform, AutoML, Conversational AI, Tensorflow, ML Compute, and TPUs.
• Discover more about the Google Cloud's services for Google Compute and Anthos workload migration.
• Find the best connectivity options available, such as hybrid Google Cloud connectivity and on-premises networking with SD-WAN and private Google access.
• Learn about Google Cloud Directory Sync, IAM, and Cloud Identity.

Resources

Below Github Repository contains all the study material for the CDL exam according to module wise and some practice and mock tests have been added for you throughout the preparation for the Final Exam

FAQs

1. Is cloud digital leader certification free? ANS: No. This certification exam is not free. You have to purchase this exam voucher from the Google Cloud authorized exam center.

2. How many questions are on the Google cloud leader exam? ANS: There will be 50-60 questions in the exam which has to be answered within 90 minutes of time.

3. Can I study question dumps to pass the cloud digital leader exam? ANS: It is strongly recommended not to buy question dumps or brain dumps to prepare for any certification exams. Using question banks or dumps would not help you to improve your knowledge and land a good career.

Conclusion

In Short, here is the summary of this exam:

1. This exam has 59 questions to be answered in 90 minutes. The passing mark is 70%
2. The cost of this exam is $99 USD
3. Covers the wide range of services and products offered by GCP and General Cloud
4. You don’t need hands-on experience to pass this exam. Just theoretical knowledge is good enough to crack this GCP exam.
5. The topics are divided into three categories: general cloud knowledge, google cloud knowledge and google cloud services.
6. This exam was launched in the middle of 2021.
7. This exam is toughest when compared to the CLF-C01 and AZ – 900 exams (the other two foundations exams from AWS and Azure respectively)

If any changes , feedback or suggestion are needed Feel free to reach out to me