Google Cloud Professional Cloud Database EngineerStudy guide
The professional certification for designing, building, managing, and troubleshooting Google Cloud databases (Professional Cloud Database Engineer).
About Google Cloud Professional Cloud Database Engineer (GCP-PCDE)
Google Cloud Professional Cloud Database Engineer (GCP-PCDE) is a Professional / Expert-level certification from Google Cloud. This page organizes the exam scope into a 4-chapter, 8-section study guide and lets you check your understanding with exam-style practice questions. A good flow is to read the chapters below in order, then test yourself via "Practice questions."
Exam domains (approximate weighting)
- Designing scalable, highly available cloud databases~32%
- Managing a solution spanning multiple database technologies~25%
- Migrating data solutions~23%
- Deploying scalable and highly available databases~20%
Weights are approximate guidance for the live exam. Each domain is covered in detail in the chapters and sections below.
Official exam information: https://cloud.google.com/learn/certification/cloud-database-engineer
1Designing scalable, highly available databases
- 1.1Capacity planning and HA/DR design
Understand database capacity/usage planning from current workload metrics and future requirements, performance/cost tradeoffs, multi-regional/regional/zonal deployment strategies, maintenance windows, and designing high availability and disaster recovery to meet RTO/RPO/PITR.
- 1.2Connectivity, access, and choosing databases
Understand network connectivity, key management, encryption, and security for databases, using session poolers, auditing policies, and choosing the right database solution by managed/unmanaged, SQL/NoSQL/vector, cost, regulation, and generative AI/LLM support.
2Managing across multiple database technologies
- 2.1Access management and monitoring/troubleshooting
Understand IAM and policies for database connectivity/access control, managing user authentication/access, investigating slow queries/locking/missing indexes, monitoring vitals (RAM/CPU/storage/IO) and audit logging, quota management, resource contention, and alerts for errors and performance.
- 2.2Backup/recovery, cost/performance optimization, and automation
Understand backup/recovery (automatic scheduled backups, export/import, RTO/RPO/PITR), data retention, optimizing cost/performance via scale up/out and replication strategies, query optimization, and automating common database tasks (index rebuilds, exports, upgrades, SLA/SLO monitoring).
3Migrating data solutions
- 3.1Migration strategy and planning
Understand migration strategies and planning (zero/near-zero downtime, extended outage, fallback), DDL/DML conversion, reverse replication from Google Cloud to the source, and choosing a migration approach by business requirements.
- 3.2Migration tools and replication
Understand choosing migration tools by scenario (Database Migration Service, Datastream, Storage Transfer Service, Transfer Appliance), migrating externally hosted databases, change data capture (CDC) replication, and validating migrations.
4Deploying scalable and highly available databases
- 4.1Provisioning and testing HA databases
Understand provisioning highly available database solutions, testing HA and DR strategies (failover drills), automating instance provisioning, and monitoring highly available databases.
- 4.2Multi-regional replication and read replicas
Understand setting up multi-regional database replication, deploying and scaling read replicas, separating reads from writes, and continuously monitoring the overall highly available setup.