Examworthyexamworthy.comGoogle Cloud Associate Cloud Engineer cheat sheet
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At a glance
Format: Multiple choice and multiple select
Domain weight map
Heaviest first - spend your time hereHow this exam thinks
ACE rewards picking the right service, role, and scope for a concrete requirement, and knowing how the products actually behave, not just what they are called.
Spot the trap
Tempting wrong answers, and why they failTempting but wrong
Does Cloud Run make you size and patch worker VMs like Compute Engine, just billed per request?
Why it fails
No. Fully managed Cloud Run exposes no worker VMs for you to size or patch, so the operational overhead is not the same as Compute Engine. Google operates the hosts and you manage only the container image and its configuration.
Planning and implementing a cloud solution
Tempting but wrong
True or false: a node pool is a single Compute Engine VM whose machine type every workload must share, so mixed hardware means resizing that one VM.
Why it fails
False. A node is backed by a VM, but a node pool is a set of nodes rather than one VM, and a cluster can hold several pools, so mixed hardware is served by separate pools instead of resizing a single VM.
Ensuring the successful operation of a cloud solution
Tempting but wrong
Do organisation policies attach only to the organisation and folders, stopping above the project level so they never reach a project?
Why it fails
It sounds plausible if you assume policies protect only higher tiers, but organisation policies attach to and are enforced at organisation, folder and project nodes alike, so the folder constraint does reach the project.
Setting up a cloud solution environment
Tempting but wrong
Are the basic IAM roles the granular per-service roles and Owner, Editor, Viewer the predefined ones?
Why it fails
No, this swaps the definitions. Owner, Editor, and Viewer are the basic roles, while the granular per-service roles maintained by Google are the predefined ones.
Configuring access and security
Tempting but wrong
Does Compute Engine build and deploy your container image from source, giving it less deployment overhead than Cloud Run?
Why it fails
No, this inverts the products. Compute Engine gives raw VMs and does no source-to-container build. Cloud Run is the service designed to deploy container images or source directly.
Planning and implementing a cloud solution
Tempting but wrong
Can the Horizontal Pod Autoscaler resolve Pending Pods by provisioning extra nodes once node CPU utilisation crosses a target?
Why it fails
No. The HPA reacts to CPU but scales Pod replica counts, not nodes, so it cannot add the node capacity that unschedulable Pending Pods actually require. Adding nodes is the cluster autoscaler's job.
Ensuring the successful operation of a cloud solution
Tempting but wrong
Since existing policies do not propagate to resources created after they are set, must an admin re-apply the constraint on the new project?
Why it fails
The timing detail is tempting, but inheritance is evaluated dynamically at each request, so a project created later still inherits the folder policy without any manual re-application.
Setting up a cloud solution environment
Tempting but wrong
Are basic and predefined IAM roles authored by the customer, with custom roles supplied and updated automatically by Google?
Why it fails
No, this reverses authorship. Basic and predefined roles are provided and maintained by Google, while custom roles are the ones the customer authors and must maintain themselves.
Configuring access and security
Key terms
Exam-day rules
- Read the last line of the question first. It tells you the actual requirement, so you can read the scenario looking for the one constraint that decides the answer.
- Choose the best option for the stated requirement, not merely a workable one. Several services or roles often work; the exam wants the best fit under the constraint given.
- Default to the narrowest predefined IAM role. If the answer grants Editor or Owner where a scoped role would do, it is almost always the distractor.
- Check product names. Options built on retired names such as Stackdriver or Cloud Functions signal a wrong answer; the current names are Google Cloud Observability and Cloud Run functions.
- Treat any gcloud or kubectl command as suspect until the flags check out. A fabricated flag is a common trap, so a real command with real flags beats a plausible-looking invented one.
Revision schedule
- Day 1Map the blueprint and set a date
- Week 1Set up a real project and use the gcloud CLI
- Weeks 1-2Build the compute, storage, and networking decision tables
- Weeks 2-3Practise day-two operations and observability
- Week 3Drill IAM, least privilege, and service accounts