Associate Cloud Engineer Cheat Sheet.
The night-before summary, built like the exam.

Google Associate Cloud Engineer: Exam Cheat Sheet

A condensed reference for the Google Cloud Certified - Associate Cloud Engineer exam. Use this alongside hands-on practice in the Google Cloud console and gcloud CLI — this exam rewards muscle memory, not just theory.

Exam Logistics at a Glance

Passing score is not published by Google; treat every domain as pass/fail-critical rather than banking on a specific cutoff.

Content Domains (Quick List)

• Setting up a cloud solution environment — 20% of the exam. Projects, billing, IAM basics, gcloud/Cloud Shell/console setup.
• Planning and implementing a cloud solution — 30% of the exam, the single largest domain. Compute, storage, network, and data solution selection and provisioning.
• Ensuring the successful operation of a cloud solution — 30% of the exam, tied for largest. Managing compute, storage, networking, and monitoring/logging in production.
• Configuring access and security — 20% of the exam. IAM roles, service accounts, and org-level security controls.

Because Planning/Implementing and Successful Operation together make up 60% of the exam, prioritize deep, scenario-based practice with Compute Engine, GKE, Cloud Storage, Cloud SQL, and VPC networking over memorizing feature lists.

Key Terms and Concepts to Memorize

• Resource hierarchy — Organization → Folder → Project → Resource; IAM policies inherit downward and combine (never restrict) at each level.
• IAM roles — Basic (Owner/Editor/Viewer), Predefined (service-scoped), and Custom roles; predefined roles are preferred for least-privilege design.
• Service accounts — Identities for workloads, not people; know how to attach one to a Compute Engine instance and scope its permissions.
• Compute options — Compute Engine (VMs, managed instance groups, autoscaling), GKE (containers), App Engine (PaaS), Cloud Run (serverless containers), Cloud Functions (event-driven serverless).
• Storage classes — Standard, Nearline, Coldline, Archive; differ by minimum storage duration and retrieval cost, not just price per GB.
• Networking basics — VPCs are global, subnets are regional; firewall rules are stateful and default-deny for ingress; Cloud NAT for outbound-only internet access from private instances.
• Deployment tooling — Deployment Manager and Terraform for infrastructure as code; gcloud, gsutil, bq as the primary CLIs.
• Monitoring stack — Cloud Monitoring (metrics/alerting), Cloud Logging (logs), uptime checks, and log-based metrics.
• Billing controls — Budgets and alerts, billing accounts linked to projects, and quota management to prevent runaway spend.

Common Gotchas and Traps

• Confusing predefined IAM roles with primitive (basic) roles — exam questions often test whether you'd reach for Owner/Editor when a narrower predefined role is the better-practice answer.
• Forgetting that firewall rules apply at the VPC network level, not the instance level, and that rule priority (lower number wins) determines evaluation order.
• Mixing up regional vs. zonal vs. global resources — persistent disks are zonal, static IPs can be regional or global, and VPCs are always global.
• Assuming Cloud Storage retrieval is free across all classes — Nearline/Coldline/Archive carry retrieval costs and early-deletion fees.
• Overlooking that managed instance groups need a health check and instance template to autoscale and self-heal correctly.
• Treating Cloud SQL as fully serverless — it still requires instance sizing, maintenance windows, and manual/automated backup configuration.
• Underestimating the operations domain — many candidates over-prepare on provisioning and under-prepare on monitoring, logging, and troubleshooting scenarios.

Night-Before Checklist

1. Review the resource hierarchy and IAM inheritance rules one more time — this underpins several other domains.
2. Skim the differences between Compute Engine, GKE, App Engine, Cloud Run, and Cloud Functions so you can match a scenario to the right compute product quickly.
3. Re-confirm storage class trade-offs (cost vs. retrieval speed vs. minimum duration).
4. Walk through a mental checklist for setting up a new VPC: subnets, firewall rules, Cloud NAT, and a test VM.
5. Practice reading exam scenarios for constraints (cost, latency, compliance) since most questions are scenario-based rather than pure recall.
6. Confirm exam logistics: arrive early, bring required ID, and budget time per question given the 120-minute window across 50-60 questions.
7. Get sleep — the exam rewards quick scenario reasoning over memorized trivia, and fatigue hurts that most.