This module covers designing and implementing infrastructure solutions.
Design can get complicated.
Do you have an approach to design?
It's easy to confuse elements if you don't use an organized method.
Do you have favorite design elements?
For example, do you find most of your designs start with VMs?
You'll want to overcome these biases by understanding
the infrastructure services available and when to select them.
Today you'll be learning about and preparing for the Professional Cloud Architect exam.
A lot of that has to do with design.
Before you can design a solution,
you need to understand the building blocks,
the underlying services, and technologies that make up solutions in Google Cloud.
Here's a tip, use a layered model like this one.
It'll help you organize your thinking about each exam question,
so that you'll more easily recognize and focus on what's important.
Professional Cloud Architects often use
layered models to organize or separate solution designs.
It makes it much easier to deal with
the complexity and to make sure there are no dropouts in the design.
This model comes from our design and process class.
Sometimes people ask if the order of the layers is
significant in this diagram well, the order insignificant.
You start with service definition at the bottom and move up
the layers until you're planning the rollout and maintenance of the solution.
So, each layer has dependencies on the one beneath it.
Sometimes people also ask if the size of the layers in this diagram is meaningful.
For example, a security more important than costs because
the layer is bigger in the diagram and the answer to that is no.
Each of the layers is equally important to your design.
During the exam consider which layers are required as part of the answer.
Next consider which layers are involved in the background.
This can be a very useful way to surface exactly what skills are required by
the exam question and help focus your time and attention during the exam.
If you can rule out a layer there will be more time to
focus on what is important in the question.
Experienced Cloud Architects have assemblies that are familiar to them.
A good analogy is a chess expert who sees the board and
combinations of pieces rather than individual moves.
When they change out one element,
they may already know the consequences to security throughput reliability and so forth.
This familiarity takes time and practice to develop.
Until you develop your own familiar assemblies it's recommended that you use the model to
consider changes in design from each layer
and iterate to make sure you've covered everything.
It's better to be careful with design and followed a structure approach than to
accidentally introduce a design flow in
your thinking and maybe get an exam question wrong.